This release makes WebLibre easier to set up, simpler to navigate, and more personal to use—with new interface presets, an interactive layout editor, more comfortable searching, and important privacy and reliability fixes.
This is an alpha release. Back up important profiles before trying it.
Choose how much WebLibre shows
The redesigned first-time setup offers three starting points:
- Just browsing: Everyday browsing essentials, with less clutter.
- Tinkerer: More controls for containers, isolated tabs, connections, gestures, and customization.
- Expert: The full set of settings and advanced controls.
The simpler setup still includes core privacy protections. Choosing more controls does not automatically enable on-device AI.
Setup now includes a clearer summary of your choices. You can revisit your search engine, layout, and protection settings before finishing, and ask to open browser-lock, connection, or Firefox Sync setup afterward.
Your configuration is applied when you tap Done. Interrupted saves can recover on the next launch, and unsuccessful uBlock Origin installation or recommended-filter setup is retried. Declining installation or removing uBlock Origin is respected.
Keep unused features out of the way
New Settings > Feature Control lets you show or hide groups of features, including containers, tree tabs, gestures, connection controls, and advanced settings. You can change individual switches or apply one of the three presets.
- Hidden features disappear from relevant menus and creation tools.
- Their settings remain discoverable in Settings and search. Grayed-out controls offer to show the feature again.
- While hidden, most settings belonging to a feature use their defaults. Your saved changes are kept and apply again when you show it.
- Warnings explain which custom settings will stop applying. A restart is offered where needed.
Hiding a feature does not delete your containers, profiles, tabs, or installed web apps. Existing connection routing and account separation are preserved, and controls needed to access or leave existing browsing spaces remain available.
Customize your layout by touching it
Toolbar & Layout now has an interactive editor:
- In Select mode, tap a toolbar, button area, or tab-switcher section to open its settings.
- In Try mode, scroll a sample page and try the controls, including toolbar auto-hide.
- Preview your layout on a phone, a phone in landscape, a large screen, or your current window.
- Check how it looks with a page open, on the home page, or with a collapsed side panel.
- Arrange toolbar buttons and menu items without losing sight of the preview.
On larger or suitably wide landscape windows, the preview and settings sit side by side. On phones, a resizable settings panel keeps the selected part visible.
Toolbar editing also handles rapid changes more reliably and reports failed saves rather than silently losing them.
More comfortable searching
- Put the search field at the top or bottom. By default, it follows the tab bar: a bottom tab bar means a bottom search field when opening a new tab or editing an address.
- With the field at the bottom, local suggestions appear above it, with the best matches nearest your thumb. Web search results retain their normal reading order.
- Dragging the results list dismisses the on-screen keyboard, giving you more room to browse.
- Short landscape and split-screen windows keep the search field reachable above the keyboard.
- Tapping text you already typed now places the cursor instead of unexpectedly accepting an autocomplete suggestion. Tap the suggested completion itself to accept it.
- Autocomplete behaves more predictably when moving the cursor, dismissing the keyboard, or switching to a physical keyboard.
The field position can be changed in Settings > Home & New Tab.
Fewer repeated questions
Selected dialogs now offer Don’t ask again, including:
- Keeping or discarding a tab when returning to the app that opened it.
- Closing isolated tabs or closing all tabs from a container menu.
- Starting Tor or a VPN/proxy connection when needed.
Review or change these choices in Settings > General > Confirmations.
Bulk tab closing also checks more consistently whether it will delete an isolated group’s cookies and site data, without asking two overlapping confirmation questions.
More reliable extension updates
- Fixed extension-update notification buttons that could fail to respond, repeatedly ask for permission, or crash.
- Updates requesting new permissions can now be reviewed directly on the extension’s details page—even with system notifications disabled.
- Update checks and permission decisions are kept with the correct profile.
- Missed automatic update checks are caught up when that profile’s browser next opens, instead of leaving update work waiting while the browser is closed.
- Optional collection of technical and interaction data is no longer granted automatically during extension installation.
Privacy and connection improvements
- Strengthened protection against websites recognizing your device through graphics and keyboard-related details.
- Updated fingerprinting presets for the new browser engine while preserving individual custom choices where supported.
- Clearing history or cookies/site data now also removes additional connection information that could help websites recognize a returning browser.
- Safe Browsing now checks embedded content, such as scripts and frames, as well as the main page.
- Improved safeguards against website-address lookups escaping a required proxy connection.
- WireGuard connections now report when the server stops answering, rather than continuing to appear healthy merely because the connection started.
- Fixed connection failures with WireGuard configurations that support only IPv4 or only IPv6.
- Removed unnecessary connection-configuration copies containing VPN keys or proxy passwords from local diagnostic files.
Connection settings are now labeled Connections, bringing Tor, VPNs, proxies, and routing under a clearer name.
Everyday fixes and polish
- Selecting text no longer accidentally triggers browsing gestures or hides the toolbar while you drag selection handles.
- Files chosen for upload in one tab are no longer deleted when another tab navigates elsewhere. Files with matching names are kept separate.
- Fixed thin visual gaps around bottom toolbars and resized side panels.
- Tab-type filters stay out of the way when there is nothing to filter, while remaining visible when an active filter could hide tabs.
- Tab Groups can now be used without showing container controls.
- Improved profile handling for installed web apps and preservation of their launch information in backups.
- Expanded settings search to find more controls on deeper settings pages.
- Reworded many settings and permission descriptions in plainer language.
- Reduced unnecessary updates and background work across tabs, menus, search, bookmarks, and history.
- Updated the browser engine to Gecko 159.0 and the built-in VPN/proxy component to sing-box 1.14.4. About now lists more bundled component versions.
Upgrading from v0.40.0
- Existing profiles are not automatically switched to a new interface preset.
- Existing choices for on-device AI, URL-cleaning confirmation, and local-connection permission prompts are preserved. New profiles start with AI off and websites required to ask before contacting local apps or network devices; the Just browsing setup applies URL cleaning automatically.
- A saved selection of the retired built-in Mullvad Secure DNS address is changed to Quad9.
- Android 8.0: Fixed profile separation for download lists, site permissions, recently closed tabs, and installed-web-app records. Previously shared records are moved into the first profile opened after updating; other profiles keep separate records going forward.