Ungoogled Chromium alternative: how do I replace Ungoogled Chromium?

A privacy fork with the same furniture

Stripping Google URLs, safe-browsing keys and spellcheck pipes is a legitimate Chromium diet. It does not invent a new install model. You still fetch a full browser, still live in a profile directory and still play security catch-up with upstream. Every Ungoogled release is a race: merge Chromium, keep the de-Google diffs alive and hope nothing in Blink assumed a Google endpoint. That is advanced maintenance; it is not advanced portability. Capsule’s zero tracking is a product position from Komby Limited, not a patch series. PIN and Vault are available when the machine is not yours: lock the session, keep secrets on the device, recover with Google Authenticator rather than through a mailbox. Categories cover logins, passkeys, notes, payment and ID documents, with auto-lock at 5, 15 or 30 minutes. That is local control, not “more Ungoogled.” The upstream argument is on the Chromium alternative page, the Google-branded cousin on the Google Chrome alternative, and the ads-on-Chromium story on the Brave alternative.

The install is still the tax

Ungoogled builds still land on disk the way Chrome does. Portable unofficial zips exist in the same way they exist for every heavy browser — as a wrap. Capsule is native portable: USB, SSD, folder, no admin. When you leave a school PC, you take the binary; you do not leave an Ungoogled folder behind “because it felt lighter ethically.” Ethics did not shrink the bytes; 15 MB did. A privacy fork can still write crash dumps and GPU caches like any Chromium — the diet was services, not the furniture. If the host forbids unknown installers but allows a copied exe, Capsule is the advanced fit. If the host forbids unknown binaries entirely, neither Ungoogled nor Capsule is a skeleton key.

Web Audio remains after Ungoogled’s subtractions

The fork removes Google glue; it does not grant ASIO. You still sit on sandboxed Web Audio (about 50 to 100 ms on the pro-audio page). Capsule Nightclub PRO covers ASIO under 5 ms with 128 samples near 2.7 ms for DJ work, WASAPI Exclusive around 10 ms, CoreAudio under 10 ms and JACK under 5 ms. More than fifty MIDI mappings sit alongside USB auto-detect, MIDI Guard, Learn and LEDs. DVS reads Serato, Traktor Scratch, rekordbox and MixVibes timecode as a bridge rather than a clone. Komby DJ runs four decks inside Capsule, with a two-deck Web Audio version at komby.music; Demucs stems are extra, Icecast needs a network and the PRO licence has a seven-day grace. Removing chrome.google.com from a binary does not move a needle on vinyl.

Replace Ungoogled Chromium

• If you forked away from Google and still hate the installer, you are done with the experiment. Download Capsule, copy it and browse. Keep Ungoogled in a VM if you still verify sites against Blink. Daily carry should be the 15 MB file. School images, hotel business centres and back-office PCs do not care that you compiled without Google APIs; they care whether you needed admin. Capsule does not.
• Bring passwords into Vault if the host is hostile, with auto-lock at 5, 15 or 30 minutes. That is a different workflow from Ungoogled’s about:flags archaeology.
• For live sound, open the pro-audio page, pick ASIO and stop asking a privacy fork to become a driver. The related Chromium-family pages are the Chromium alternative and the Brave alternative.
• The Capsule home page carries the summary. No invented league table where Capsule “beats” Ungoogled at being Chromium is published here — it is not trying to be.

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