Recommended browser Cromite site offline

Questions
1

Privacyguides recommends Cromite for Android but their site has been unreachable for quite some time. Needless to say this makes their repo unreachable too in case of updates. What is going on with the Cromite project?

2

WIP: You will be redirected to GitHub - uazo/cromite: Cromite a Bromite fork with ad blocking and privacy enhancements; take back your browser! soon!

There is a message when you go to the site before it redirects to the Github page.

Not sure what the issue is. APKs are available on the Github.

3

Maybe Privacy guides should monitor this and change their recommendation pointing to the Githib if Cromite.org remains unreachable

4

Actually their Github tells you the Fdroid repo is on Cromite.org , which is unreachable

Manually downloading APKs can be done but I prefer the route via Fdroid repos for the sake of convenient updates

5

cromite.org is working just fine, it is and always has been a redirect to the repo: GitHub - uazo/cromite: Cromite a Bromite fork with ad blocking and privacy enhancements; take back your browser!

6

I don’t see a redirect and couldn’t add their repo to Fdroid , because it points at cromite.org

But I was just recommended FFupdater and am using this now. This works just fine and also solved my problem with a outdated Guardian project repo in Fdroid

7

I’ve been trying to update Cromite via F-Droid repo but I keep getting a ‘Download failed! Hash not matching’ error.

8

the server their f-droid repo is on is quite slow and the download is likely cutting out.
you can get it from their github repo instead or use the ffupdater app which is the same.
they’re both identical.

edit: just downloaded it just fine from cromite.org, hash matched the index and the github release, was just slow <200KBps

9

Perhaps I’ll dump F-Droid and move to Obtainium. I was reluctant to switch all my apps over because I found Obtainium very complicated and difficult to use, but I think I am getting the hang of it.

10

Why do you want to use the F-droid repo for updates? Cromite already has an auto update function, if you have it enabled then you will get “Update cromite” option in the 3 dot menu, and if you click it the apk will be downloaded directly from github.

11

For those who want updates on this subject → see GitHub issue #2325 on Cromite GitHub project

(I don’t have the necessary knowledge to understand or confirm everything that’s being said in the discussion, but the TLDR seems to be that cromite.org is very rarely reachable and that Cromite’s dev doesn’t seem to plan to do something to solve the problem. This is the cause of 2 issues:

  • almost impossible to update Cromite via its official F-Droid repo, which is easy to work around with Obtainium, FFUpdater, GitHub Store, etc (By the way, someone pointed out in the GitHub issues discussion that allowing a web browser to install apps from ‘unknown sources’ constitutes a major security hole)
  • the built-in ad blocker is useless, which is another security flaw)
12

I like the idea of Cromite, but I don’t understand why it’s still recommended… It was updated in GitHub on Apr 10, while Brave was updated yesterday.

IMO, use Vanadium on GrapheneOS, Brave on Android or iOS, or Safari on iOS. Anything else for mobile browsers seems to be a letdown.