Preview 0.4.1 · Apple Silicon · WebKit
Browse fast.
Carry nothing extra.
A small native browser for Mac on the WebKit that already ships with macOS. No bundled Chromium, no AI assistant, no account, no subscription, no cloud sync, no telemetry.
Needs an Apple Silicon Mac and macOS 14 or later. The build is ad-hoc signed and not yet notarized by Apple — details below.
A browser, not a platform
Native by default
SwiftUI, AppKit and WKWebView keep the app close to macOS instead of dragging in another browser engine.
A browser, nothing else
Tabs, search, history, downloads, private windows, session restore and content blocking — with no ecosystem of services around them.
Cheap when idle
Empty tabs stay light, and inactive ones release their WebView until the page is needed again.
What is in — and what is left out on purpose
The browser itself
- Tabs and an address bar with search
- History and downloads
- Private windows
- Session restore
- Content blocking
- Inactive tabs that go to sleep
What bloats browsers
- An AI assistant
- An account or sign-up
- A subscription
- Cloud sync
- Telemetry and analytics
- A bundled Chromium or Electron
Passport
Open source under MPL-2.0. An independent fork of Candoa Browser, unaffiliated with Apple, Google, the Chromium project or Candoa. Web content is rendered by the WebKit that ships with macOS.
An honest preview, not a stable release
Version 0.4.1 is ad-hoc signed for local testing and has not been through Apple notarization. On first launch macOS may show a security warning — open the app with right-click then Open.
This is not the stable version yet. The bar for stable is Developer ID signing, Apple notarization, stapling, a Gatekeeper check and a launch on a clean machine. Until those are in place, treat 0.4.1 as an early preview: expect bugs, and expect the interface and data formats to change between builds.
Download NeChrome 0.4.1
A ZIP for Apple Silicon from the GitHub Release. Unpack it, move it to Applications, and on first launch open it with right-click then Open.
Questions and answers
No. Despite the name there is no Chromium inside and no Electron. Pages are rendered by the system WebKit (WKWebView) already built into macOS. NeChrome is an independent fork of Candoa Browser under the MPL-2.0 licence.
Build 0.4.1 is ad-hoc signed for local testing and has not been through Apple notarization yet. Open the app with right-click then Open, or clear the quarantine flag by hand. The stable release will carry Developer ID signing and notarization.
No. Apple Silicon (M1–M4) and macOS 14 or later only; the build is ARM64-only. The preview interface is guaranteed in English.
No. No account, no cloud sync, no telemetry, no AI assistant. Tabs, history and browser state live locally on your Mac.
Through the GitHub Release only. Every binary release points at the tagged source and carries a SHA-256 checksum — check it after downloading.
No. The built-in blocker reduces the usual tracking but promises no anonymity. Sites can still follow visitors by ordinary web means. What you type into search and the address bar goes only to the search engine you chose or to the destination site.
