Thorium Browser Alternatives

Features

• Compiler optimizations include SSE4.2, AVX, AES, and modifications to CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, thinLTO flags, import_instr_limit flags, and PGO, as well as other compiler flags.
• LLVM LOOP optimizations as -mllvm flags
• Learn more about these compiler optimizations and how they work here.
• UI Changes and Patches for Linux and Windows that fix bugs, enhance useability, and strengthen privacy/security.

What's New

• This is also Thorium's 30th major version anniversary. Very first Thorium was based on M96.
• Skipped M125 because it was too old. I was house-sitting for my dad/stepmom while they were away on a month long trip. I didn't have access to my workstation which I really need to do anything more than minor development work.
• kAllowWindowDragUsingSystemDragDrop was re-enabled at the source level. This should fix tab/window dragging issues on Wayland, but may cause other unforeseen bugs on Wayland. File bugs if appropriate. Can be disabled with the cmdline flag --disable-features=AllowWindowDragUsingSystemDragDrop
• Google Hangouts component extension was removed, following concerns about privacy. However, if you use hangouts frequently and would like this extension back, see this ReadMe. Closes #743, #740, #449, #410
• The Chrome Refresh 2023 UI is now the default.
• I moved the tab search button back to the right of the tabstrip. I think it was a bad decision to put it on the left in the 2023 UI. However, if you prefer it on the left (to have Thorium's UI match Chrome's), enable the new chrome://flags/#left-aligned-tab-search-button flag I added.
• Another performance bump due to some new PGO configs courtesy of @RobRich999. See this commit. In some limited testing it got better Speedometer 3.0 scores than Chrome.
• libjxl updated to 0.10.3
• Manifest V2 support force enabled (Starting in M128 they are experimenting with disabling MV2). It will be completely removed in M136 (10 months from now), and when they finally do remove the actual code for loading MV2 extensions, it will be restored, because F**k Google! Even if it takes a crapload of work, I am determined to restore it, because without UBlock Origin working properly in Thorium, I wouldn't even want to use my own browser! If you want to use other Chromium based browsers, you will eventually be out of luck, and will either need to use Firefox, or find another Chromium fork that has MV2 support when the time comes.
• New flag chrome://flags#revert-from-portable can be used to prevent data loss when reverting a user profile from portable mode to normal mode (i.e. when turning off the disable-encryption and disable-machine-id flags). Can also be used when moving the user profile from one machine to another. Read the flag description for details.