"Just the Browser is a new project by developer Corbin Davenport. It aims to fight the rising tide of undesirable browser features such as telemetry, LLM bot features billed as AI, and sponsored content by a clever lateral move. It uses the enterprise management features built into the leading browsers to turn these things off. The concept is simple and appealing. Enough people want de- enshittified browsers that there are multiple forks of the big names."
"Another fairly prominent Chrome-based browser is also the reason why Davenport's name might be familiar. Back in 2023, he wrote an elegant list of reasons to stop using Brave Browser - an article that The Reg FOSS desk has previously cited. Those with long memories may have encountered Davenport's work nearly a decade earlier, though. Way back in 2014, The Register described him as an enfant terrible for running Windows 95 on a smartwatch."
Just the Browser uses built-in enterprise management policies in major browsers to disable unwanted features like telemetry, LLM bot features marketed as AI, and sponsored content. The approach avoids maintaining full browser forks by applying readable policy scripts that toggle features off. Multiple projects fork browsers to remove bloat, but maintaining a fork is labor-intensive because modern browsers are tens of millions of lines of code. Using enterprise policies offers a lightweight, centralized way to de-feature browsers across Chromium and Firefox families, making privacy and bloat controls accessible without rebuilding or forking codebases.
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