ObladabetaDonate to ZenENITDownload

Changelog

The logbook.

What changed in each release of Oblada, newest first.

  1. 0.5.2Latest

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Fixed

    • YouTube and other sites no longer lag with the Barrier on, on networks whose DNS settings keep changing (as some routers' do): requests to other sites waited for the DNS each time, to check whether they were trackers in disguise.

  2. 0.5.1

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • Settings > Oblada > Privacy can turn off each protection Oblada applies as it starts: HTTPS memory (HSTS) and connections kept apart for each site, web features that mostly serve to recognize you, shorter referrers, cookies kept 6 months at most.

    Changed

    • Firefox add-ons install and update only from addons.mozilla.org.
    • Certificate Transparency is on, as in Chrome: sites' certificates must be in public logs.
    • Sites' wish to always be opened over HTTPS (HSTS) is kept apart for each site when it comes from inside another site's pages, as in Brave, rather than holding for pages only.

    Fixed

    • Safe Browsing works: Oblada warns before opening sites Google lists as phishing or malware, and before downloading files from addresses on its lists. Settings showed it on, but without a key for Google's Safe Browsing API it never got its lists.
    • Security: another site could offer a Firefox add-on, or change where an installed one took its updates from, even if you said no.
    • Security: a page sending a tab to a container, AMP pages left for the original and peeks opened sites as if you had typed their address, so other sites could act on them as you.
    • Security: pages in containers could be prerendered, and searches prefetched, outside the container.
    • Security: only uBlock Origin's and Brave's own filter lists can run their most powerful scripts, lists come over HTTPS only, and their rules can't have pages report where you are.
    • Security: the Barrier checks where redirects lead, its questions (sensitive sites, Google sign-ins, blocked sites) can't be answered by the sites themselves, and only the page you picked an element on can add a filter.

  3. 0.5.0

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • The Barrier: Oblada now blocks trackers and ads with Brave's engine and its lists (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, uBlock Origin's, Brave's), including the elements they leave on pages, cookie notices and the scripts that fight ad blockers.
    • The Barrier's button at the end of the address bar shows how many trackers and ads it blocked on the page, and opens its controls for the site: turn it off for the site, block aggressively, upgrade to HTTPS strictly or not at all, block scripts, fingerprinting, cookies, forget the site when you close it. In the sidebar layouts, the controls are at the top of the site panel.
    • Fingerprinting protection: sites see slight changes to canvas and audio readouts, to your processor, memory, screen size, fonts and speech voices, and generic GPU names, the same on a site until Oblada restarts but different from site to site and from container to container, so they can't follow you around. It reaches sites' workers too, and limits how many connections a site keeps open.
    • Third parties' cookies are blocked, and what they store on a site is erased once you close it. Sites can be set to be forgotten when you close them.
    • Tracking parameters (fbclid, gclid…) are removed from the addresses you open, tracking redirects are skipped for where they lead, and AMP pages, on Google's cache or the sites' own, for the original.
    • Trackers hiding behind a site's own addresses (CNAME cloaking) are blocked too.
    • Global Privacy Control asks sites not to sell or share your data.
    • Sensitive sites, like those that help against domestic violence, can open in a temporary container, which keeps nothing once you close it: Oblada asks first.
    • Before a site lets you sign in with Google in a way that needs Google's cookies on that site, Oblada asks.
    • With aggressive blocking, Oblada warns before opening a tracker's address as a page.
    • Block an element: pick anything on a page to hide it for good, from the Barrier's controls or the page's context menu.
    • Settings > Oblada has the Barrier's defaults, its privacy settings (languages sites see, WebRTC's IP addresses, social media embeds, Do Not Track…), its filter lists, your own filters and lists from an address, and the sites with settings of their own.
    • A DANGEROUS switch in Settings > Oblada turns all of the Barrier off.

    Changed

    • Web APIs that mostly serve to recognize you are off, as in Brave: Web Bluetooth, Web Serial, opening local files and folders from pages, FedCM, the Reporting API and others. Referrers never say more than the site across sites, and cookies last 6 months at most.

    Fixed

    • Tabs restored at startup no longer load in the background before you open them, except those of sites known to work in the background.

  4. 0.4.2

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Fixed

    • The sidebar keeps its width when Oblada restarts, instead of opening at its default width again.

  5. 0.4.1

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Changed

    • The sidebar shows the reload button next to back and forward when it's wide enough for it; in a narrower one, Reload is in the ⋯ menu, as before.

  6. 0.4.0

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • Four new window layouts, for seven in all: pick one in Settings > Oblada, in the menu's Window layout or in the welcome.
    • Expanded scaffold: the address bar at the top, as in Scaffold, and the full sidebar below it, with the tabs' titles and the workspaces. ⌘⇧L turns it into Scaffold and back.
    • Horizon: the address bar in the middle at the top, and the tabs sharing a row below it, as in Safari.
    • Horizon compact: a single row, where the active tab is the address bar, which floats over the page as you type.
    • Classic: the tabs in a row at the top, the address bar below them.
    • With the tabs at the top, they're as plain as the sidebar's and take little room, and the workspace shown is a pill before them: click it to switch workspace or make a new one, or swipe across the tabs. Hold the + down to open a tab in a container, as in the sidebar.

    Changed

    • The welcome lists the window layouts by where the tabs are, and shows the one picked, or the one under the pointer, at work next to the list.

    Fixed

    • The welcome and the New Tab page no longer turn opaque when reloaded.
    • Extensions opened from the site panel show their popups under it, rather than at the top left of the window, in the Scaffold layouts.

  7. 0.3.2

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Changed

    • Oblada is now built with the optimizations Chrome is built with, tuned on how the browser really runs: web pages and apps respond faster, scoring about 40% higher on the Speedometer benchmark. Oblada also takes about 200 MB less on disk, and 25 MB less to download.

    Fixed

    • Oblada no longer crashes when a tab opened as it starts, such as a link that opened Oblada, goes to another page.

  8. 0.3.1

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Changed

    • When Oblada reopens your last session, tabs load when you open them, so it starts faster. Pinned tabs, and tabs that work in the background such as chats and mail, still load right away.
    • Memory Saver is on: tabs left alone for a while are unloaded to free memory, and reload when you open them. Settings > Performance can turn it off.
    • Large downloads come over several connections at once, where the site allows it, so they finish sooner.
    • Live Caption's speech recognition and Read aloud's voices are downloaded only when you use them, and large components no longer keep a second copy of themselves, which could take hundreds of MB.

    Removed

    • History no longer groups your visits by topic, which worked in the background as pages loaded.
    • Oblada no longer measures every page's CPU and memory every two minutes, for statistics it never sent.

    Fixed

    • A container tab unloaded to free memory, or by an extension, reloads in its container, and a temporary container's data is no longer erased when its last tab is unloaded.

  9. 0.3.0

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • Themes for the window: up to three colors in a gradient, how see-through the window is, grain, and light or dark. Right-click the sidebar to edit the default theme, or a workspace to give it its own.
    • Three window layouts, in Settings > Oblada or the menu's Window layout: Sidebar, as before; Scaffold, with the tabs as icons on the side and the address bar at the top; and Compact, only the page, the sidebar showing over it when the pointer reaches the window's left edge.
    • Settings > Oblada, a page for Oblada's own settings.
    • The welcome lets you pick the window layout, each shown at work in a little window.
    • Copy Clean Link, in a link's right-click menu and in the address bar's, copies the link without the parameters sites add to track who follows it (utm_source, fbclid and the like), from Firefox's lists, which Oblada keeps up to date from Mozilla. Copy link, in the site's panel, copies the page's link that way too, and Copy Clean Link to Highlight, for selected text, a link to that text.

    Changed

    • The workspace's name is no longer shown above its tabs: the workspaces at the bottom of the sidebar tell which one is open. It can be turned back on in Settings > Oblada, where it looks like a heading rather than a tab.
    • The address bar shows a container's icon, or a temporary container's number, instead of its name, which hid the address. The name is in the tooltip.
    • A container's color mark on a tab sits against the tab's edge, further from its icon.
    • In compact mode only the page shows: the sidebar widens over it from the window's left edge, with the window's theme, soon after the pointer gets there.
    • In full screen, the bar with the window's buttons shows over the sidebar and the page when the pointer reaches the top, rather than pushing them down.
    • The site's information is in the Site and extensions panel, at the end of the address bar, rather than at its start. Sites with warnings still show them there.

    Removed

    • Send feedback, which went to Google, is gone from the sidebar's right-click menu.
    • Settings no longer has Theme and Customize your toolbar: workspaces have their themes, and the toolbar is the sidebar's.

    Fixed

    • The sidebar shows what's behind the window, blurred, instead of a solid gray.
    • In compact mode, ⌘L and ⌘T open the address bar over the page, which didn't show.
    • Pages opened in a peek work with extensions as in a tab: ad blockers filter them, also once they're made a tab.
    • Full screen from a peek (a video's button, for one) makes the page a tab, in full screen. It used to do nothing, and the page couldn't go full screen even once made a tab.

  10. 0.2.0

    Based on Chromium 156.0.8078.48

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • Media playing in other tabs has controls at the bottom of the sidebar: hover over them for what's playing, how far along, picture in picture and closing them.

    Changed

    • Oblada is now based on Chromium 156, with its 353 security fixes.
    • oblada://version shows Oblada's logo and authors, and no longer calls every build a "Developer Build".
    • The media button in the toolbar is gone: its controls are at the bottom of the sidebar.

  11. 0.1.2

    Based on Chromium 155.0.8059.85

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • Oblada updates itself: once a day it looks for a new version, downloads it in the background and installs it when you quit, or right away from About Oblada's Relaunch button. Your tabs come back after the relaunch.
    • Before importing passwords from another browser, Oblada tells you macOS will ask for your Mac's password.

    Fixed

    • On a Mac with another Chromium-based browser, Oblada no longer asks for your password when it first opens: it keeps its own key in the Keychain.

    Known issues

    • After each update, macOS asks once for your Mac's password before Oblada can read its saved passwords and cookies.

    Notes

    • Updates are signed: Oblada installs only versions signed by its developers, and checks them before unpacking them.
    • This version still has to be installed by hand, as before; the next ones arrive on their own.
    • If you used an earlier version, you'll have to sign in to websites again, and passwords saved in Oblada can't be read anymore: Oblada's key for them changed.

  12. 0.1.1

    Based on Chromium 155.0.8059.85

    Release on GitHub

    Added

    • A downloads button at the bottom of the sidebar, next to your workspaces: it shows how your downloads are going, and lists the recent ones.
    • Install a website as an app from the site panel (the button at the end of the address bar), or open it in its app once it's installed.

    Changed

    • The bookmark star moved from the address bar to the site panel, leaving the address more room. It's filled when the page is already bookmarked.
    • Oblada now reopens your tabs and workspaces when it starts. You can change this in Settings, On startup.
    • The first launch opens Oblada's welcome, instead of Chromium's window for signing in to Google.
    • "Import bookmarks and settings" opens Oblada's own import.
    • Clicking the address bar shows the whole address, not just the site.
    • About Oblada shows Oblada's own version and the Chromium version it's based on.
    • "Get help" leads to Oblada's issues on GitHub.

    Removed

    • "You and Google" in Settings: Oblada doesn't use Google accounts.
    • The "Continue where you left off" bar at startup.
    • The update check in About Oblada, which always failed. Download new versions from GitHub.

    Fixed

    • The site's icon could stay stuck above the address bar after hovering it.
    • The credits page (oblada://credits) now lists every open source project in Oblada and its license.
    • About Oblada said "made possible by the Oblada open source project" instead of Chromium.

    Known issues

    • Oblada doesn't update itself yet: new versions are on GitHub.