Varce

Varce is a from-source Chromium fork focused on privacy-respecting defaults, a lean footprint, and a distinct visual identity. It builds on Chromium's own codebase and infrastructure rather than replacing it — most changes are targeted defaults, a small amount of new UI, and one bundled helper extension.

Varce v0.1.0 — based on Chromium 153.0.8010.0

Disclaimer: Varce is an independent, personal/community project. It is not associated with, endorsed by, or affiliated with Google LLC or the Chromium Project in any way, beyond being built from their open-source code. "Chrome," "Chromium," and related marks belong to their respective owners.

Features

Privacy

• DuckDuckGo set as the true default search engine fallback.
• Third-party cookies blocked by default.
• Google sign-in promotional nudging disabled by default (signing in remains fully available for anyone who wants it).

Extensions

• uBlock Origin (full MV2 version) is force-installed via a narrow, targeted exemption from Chromium's Manifest V2 deprecation — this exempts only that specific extension ID, not a blanket re-enablement of MV2 for all extensions.
• A bundled Chrome Web Store compatibility helper extension (built from the open-source NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store project) enables native-feeling installs directly from the Chrome Web Store. It ships as a normal, user-manageable default extension — not an elevated or hidden browser component — so it can be disabled or removed like any other extension.

Branding

• Full custom branding — name, application icons (generated from custom artwork), and wordmark — replacing Chromium/Google branding throughout the browser, including Settings, History, Downloads, Bookmarks, Extensions, and the New Tab Page.
• A varce:// URL scheme, usable as an alias for chrome:// on internal pages (e.g. varce://settings), which displays correctly in the address bar.

Visual identity

• A custom dark graphite / blue-violet default theme, implemented as a native ColorProvider color mixer (not a CSS reskin), with rounded pill-shaped tabs and a floating "island" toolbar with a drop shadow.
• A fully vertical, collapsible sidebar tab strip as the default tab layout, built on top of Chromium's own existing vertical-tabs infrastructure rather than a from-scratch rewrite.
• An easter-egg "OG Chrome Mode" (toggle in chrome://flags) that reverts the UI to a flat, 2017–2018-style Chrome look, for fun/nostalgia.

Leaner by default

• AI-related features — Compose, Lens, Gemini/Glic, Skills, History Embeddings, AI Mode, Autofill AI, and on-device AI model / component-updater entries — are disabled by default via feature flags.
• Chromium's field-trial-testing-config system is disabled at the build level (disable_fieldtrial_testing_config = true), so these disabled defaults can't be silently re-enabled at runtime by upstream's built-in test/experiment configuration.
• Several services that Chromium constructs eagerly at startup/idle — Optimization Guide, omnibox ML scoring, and AI Mode eligibility checks — have been made lazy instead, so they're only instantiated if actually needed.

Not Included / Known Limitations

• No auto-update mechanism. Varce does not currently ship any automatic update system. Getting upstream Chromium security fixes requires manually rebuilding from a newer base checkout. This is a real, meaningful limitation for anyone considering Varce as a daily-driver browser — you are responsible for keeping it up to date yourself.
• The Chrome Web Store still detects Varce as a non-Chrome browser. The bundled compatibility helper extension makes installing extensions functional, and rewrites the install button's own text to "Add to Varce." However, Google's page still independently shows its own "Switch to Chrome?" dialog and an inline browser-detection banner on top of that — those are rendered directly by Google's page logic and are not something a browser extension can change.
• This is a personal/community project, built and maintained on a best-effort basis, with no official Google affiliation, endorsement, or support of any kind.

Building

See BUILDING.md for full build instructions, including the exact base Chromium commit, args.gn configuration, and how to apply this repository's changes to a fresh Chromium checkout.

Repository contents

This repository does not contain the Chromium source tree (Google's codebase, already public at chromium.googlesource.com). It contains only Varce's own changes on top of it:

• varce.patch — a unified diff (git diff) of all modifications to files that already exist in upstream Chromium. Apply it against a matching Chromium checkout to reproduce those changes.
• src-overlay/ — full copies of every changed and newly-added file, laid out at the same relative path they occupy in the Chromium source tree. New/untracked files (e.g. the bundled chromium_web_store_helper extension, the new color mixer, new CSS files) are not captured by varce.patch and only exist here — copy them over a fresh checkout at the matching paths.

License

Varce's own modifications, along with the upstream Chromium code they are based on, are licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE for details.