A high-performance, ultra-lightweight Android web browser built on Android System WebView, featuring an embedded Brave adblock-rust C++/Rust engine, uBlock Origin filter lists, multi-language page translation, and Material Design 3 UI.
Designed to run smoothly on devices with 1 GB RAM and fully compatible with newer Android versions.
- Webapp mode — pin any site to your home screen and it opens as a fullscreen window with no address bar, in its own task; ad blocking and downloads work inside it.
- Downloads — handled through the system DownloadManager, with a progress
notification and files landing in Downloads; APK links served without a
Content-Dispositionheader now work. - Ad popup blocking —
window.opencalls to domains the engine flags as popups no longer open a window, in both the browser and webapp mode. - Russian filter lists on by default — AdGuard Russian and RU AdList, bringing the catalog to 14 lists; existing installs pick them up automatically.
- Privacy — history, bookmarks and open tabs no longer go into Google cloud backup or device transfer; the Private tab now states plainly that cookies and logins are shared with regular tabs.
- Signing — signed with a real RSA-4096 key instead of the Android debug key, with a
SigningCertificateLineageso 2.0.0 installs over 1.228 without a reinstall. - Interface — Jelly-style bottom bar (Home / Address / Reload / Tabs / Menu), a thin progress bar over the page, and edge-to-edge layout with proper insets for cutouts and the keyboard.
Full changelog, in Russian and English: CHANGES.md — release notes.
- Embedded C++/Rust JNI Engine: Powered by Brave Software's
adblock-rustcrate executing directly at native speed. - Live Blocking Stats: Tapping the Shield icon opens a bottom sheet showing blocked item counts for the current page and total blocked requests.
- Per-Site Protection Toggle: Easily toggle adblocking ON/OFF for any website with a single tap (per-site allowlist).
- Popup Blocking:
window.opencalls to domains the engine flags as popups are consumed instead of opening a window, with a short toast in their place.
- Flexible Source & Target Languages: Tap "Translate Page" from the overflow menu to translate any webpage.
- Auto-Detection & System Locale Matching: Source language is auto-detected; target language defaults to system language (supports English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, etc.) while keeping the webpage layout and links intact.
- Google is set as default (switchable to DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yandex, Brave, Startpage).
- Dynamic search bar hint automatically updates to reflect the chosen engine ("Search with Google or type URL").
- Optional real-time OpenSearch autocompletion in Settings.
- Complete Material Design 3 Day/Night theme with synchronized status bar and navigation bar icon colors.
- Independent Web Darkening: Web pages are NOT forcibly darkened just because Dark Theme is on. Web darkening ("Force Dark Web") is an independent option in Settings > Appearance.
- "Restore open tabs" setting under Settings > General automatically restores tabs and URLs when reopening the app (Disabled by default).
- Scrolling down automatically slides the top Omnibox and bottom navigation bar out of view for immersive full-screen reading. Scrolling up smoothly restores toolbars.
- Pin any site to the home screen through the system dialog (
requestPinShortcut); the shortcut icon is the site favicon, cached per host. - The site opens as a fullscreen window with no address bar or toolbars, in its own task, so it multitasks as a separate app. Re-tapping the shortcut returns to the same window.
- Ad blocking, popup blocking and downloads all work inside a webapp window.
- Files go through the system DownloadManager into the Downloads folder, with a progress notification, in both the browser and webapp mode.
- Handles APK links served without a
Content-Dispositionheader.
Orbit is meticulously engineered for minimal resource consumption and peak fluidity:
- Ultra-Low Memory Footprint: Consumes only ~78 MB RAM total (~0.078 GB).
- Single Live WebView Architecture: Background tabs are serialized into memory states (
saveState()) to free renderer memory, waking only when selected. - Compiled Engine Binary (
engine.bin): Pre-compiles 4 MB filter rule sets into a binary cache to eliminate cold-start parsing delays. - Overdraw & Pre-Warming: Off-main-thread SQLite DB & WebView provider initialization.
- @timcho968 — webapp mode, downloads, popup blocking, Russian filter lists, the Jelly-style interface, and the privacy and signing work that went into 2.0.0 (#2).
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome.
Orbit Browser is open-source software distributed under the terms of the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0).
- Orbit Browser: Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0)
- Brave adblock-rust Engine: Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) — Native C++/Rust adblock JNI engine by Brave Software.
- uBlock Origin Filter Lists: GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPLv3) — Community filter lists by Raymond Hill (gorhill) & contributors.
- AndroidX & Jetpack Libraries: Apache License 2.0 — Core-KTX, AppCompat, RecyclerView, WebKit, Lifecycle.
- Google Material Components: Apache License 2.0 — Material Design 3 UI components & BottomSheet dialogs.
- Kotlin Standard Library: Apache License 2.0 — Language runtime & tools by JetBrains.
Clone the repository and build using Android Studio or terminal:
./gradlew assembleReleaseTo re-compile the native .so adblock JNI engine from Rust sources (optional):
rustup target add aarch64-linux-android armv7-linux-androideabi x86_64-linux-android
cargo install cargo-ndk
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$ANDROID_HOME/ndk/27.2.12479018
./gradlew buildNativeAdblockapp/src/main/
java/com/orbit/browser/
adblock/ AdblockService (downloading, compilation, decision cache), filter list
catalog, host blocklist, JNI wrapper (NativeAdblock)
browser/ OrbitWebView (touch focus & scroll listener), WebView clients, tab
management, DownloadHelper, FaviconStore, cosmetic filtering bridge
data/ Preferences (Prefs), Search Suggestions, SQLite DB, browsing data
ui/ MainActivity, WebappActivity, SettingsActivity, ShieldSheet, MenuSheet,
TabsSheet, TranslateSheet, HomeView, ListActivity, AboutActivity
util/ URL helpers
res/
layout/ activity_main.xml, activity_settings.xml, activity_list.xml,
dialog_shield.xml, dialog_translate.xml, view_home.xml
values/ strings.xml (English default), themes.xml
values-night/ dark theme overrides
values-tr/ strings.xml (Turkish)
rust/adblock-jni/ JNI bridge for Brave adblock-rust engine