OpenNyx

A beautiful, Google-free browser for developers and privacy lovers.

OpenNyx is built on CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) — real, full Chromium that we embed and control: no Google API keys, no metrics, no crash reporting, no background phone-home. Full web compatibility, zero Google services.

🚧 Early development. Windows first, macOS and Linux to follow.

What works today (M3 + M4)

• Real Chromium (CEF 150) with a custom dark UI: tab strip, toolbar, address bar — built with the CEF Views framework, no Chrome UI dependencies.
• Multi-tab browsing: new tab (Ctrl+T / + button), close tab (Ctrl+W / ×), switch (Ctrl+Tab, click).
• Everyday features (M3):
  • History — every visited page is recorded locally; browse/search/clear it at opennyx://history (Ctrl+H).
  • Bookmarks — star the current page (toolbar ☆ / Ctrl+D); manage them at opennyx://bookmarks.
  • Downloads — files download with a save dialog and appear with live progress at opennyx://downloads (Ctrl+J).
  • Settings — opennyx://settings (Ctrl+,): default search engine (Brave/DuckDuckGo/Mojeek/custom), homepage, privacy toggles, clear browsing data — all persisted to a local config file.
• Privacy layer (M4):
  • Tracker & ad blocking — a bundled ~250-domain blocklist cancels known ad/tracking requests at the network layer; a toolbar shield shows the per-site blocked count. Toggle-able in Settings.
  • DNS-over-HTTPS — on by default in secure mode; resolver selectable (Quad9 🇨🇭 default / DNS0.eu 🇪🇺 / Mullvad 🇸🇪 / Cloudflare US opt-in / custom).
  • Network audit — a documented, reproducible procedure to capture every outbound connection and verify the de-googled at runtime claim: docs/NETWORK-AUDIT.md.
• Privileged opennyx:// pages served locally by a custom scheme handler with a small JSON bridge (opennyx://api/*) — no render-process plumbing.
• Shortcuts: Ctrl+L address bar, F5/Ctrl+R reload, Alt+←/→ history, Ctrl+Shift+I DevTools, Ctrl+H/Ctrl+D/Ctrl+J/Ctrl+,. Full list in docs/BUILD-STATUS.md.
• Privacy defaults: no Google API keys, metrics/crash reporting disabled, no background phone-home switches. De-googled at runtime.

Why OpenNyx?

• 🔒 Privacy by default — no Google pings, no telemetry, tracker & ad blocking built in, DNS-over-HTTPS out of the box
• 🛠️ Made for developers — command palette (Ctrl+K), built-in JSON viewer, request inspector, API client — no extension zoo needed
• 🎨 Actually beautiful — a clean, dark-first UI that gets out of your way
• 🌍 Cross-platform by design — one codebase, Windows / macOS / Linux targets
• 📖 Fully open source — MIT licensed, no strings attached

Architecture

┌───────────────────────────────────────┐
│           OpenNyx Shell (UI)          │   ← our code: tabs, omnibox,
│   command palette · themes · tools    │     dev tools, privacy dashboard
├───────────────────────────────────────┤
│      Engine: Chromium via CEF         │   ← prebuilt CEF binary distro,
│     (Blink · V8 · full web compat)    │     privacy-hardened switches
└───────────────────────────────────────┘

We deliberately do not fork Chromium itself. We consume the official prebuilt CEF binary distributions and de-google them at runtime via the command line and shell code (telemetry/updates/crash-reporting/sync disabled, no Google API keys, encrypted DNS, tracker blocking). That keeps security updates fast (bump the pinned CEF version) and the project maintainable for a small crew. See docs/ENGINE-STRATEGY.md for the roadmap toward a source-patched engine, and docs/NETWORK-AUDIT.md for how to verify the claim.

Wording: we say "de-googled at runtime", not "ungoogled" — ungoogled-chromium is a source-patched build; OpenNyx ships stock CEF and removes Google's runtime phone-home surface via flags + blocking.

Local data & storage

History, bookmarks, downloads and settings are stored as plain JSON files in an OpenNyx/ folder in the CEF user-data directory (chosen over bundling the SQLite amalgamation to keep the build dependency-light; the storage backend is isolated behind OpenNyxStore and can be swapped later). Everything stays on your device.

Roadmap

• Project setup
• M1 — real Chromium (CEF) embedded, window, navigation, Windows CI artifact
• M2 — shipped: custom dark UI (tab strip, toolbar, address bar), multi-tab, Brave Search default, new-tab page, keyboard shortcuts, app icon
• M3 — shipped: history, bookmarks, downloads, settings (opennyx:// pages) with local persistence
• M4 — shipped: privacy layer — tracker/ad blocking + shield, DNS-over-HTTPS, network-audit trust proof
• M5 — Dev tools: JSON viewer, request inspector, API client; command palette (Ctrl+K)
• M6 — macOS & Linux builds
• M7 — Auto-updates & release pipeline

Building

See shell/README.md. Short version (Windows x64, VS 2022 + CMake):

cmake -S shell -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release --target opennyx --parallel

Every push to main also builds on GitHub Actions (windows-latest) and uploads a ready-to-run OpenNyx-win64 artifact (unzip → opennyx.exe).

License

MIT © Open Cosmic Software