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Android Authority: Cleaning USB-C Ports May Fix Charging Issues Before RepairSlashdot Reader Announces Northstar, a From-Scratch Open Source BrowserSamsung Gallery Drops OneDrive Backup, Adds Direct Google Photos SyncTechRadar Review Credits Windows 11 Fixes After Six Months, Flags BugsMotorola Edge 70 Wins Over Reviewer Despite Missing Telephoto CameraReturning to Duolingo After a Year: More Ads, Energy Limits, and a Switch to Gemini
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Slashdot Reader Announces Northstar, a From-Scratch Open Source Browser

Long-time Slashdot reader Andreas(R) announces Northstar 1.0.11, a minimalist open source browser built from scratch in C without Gecko, WebKit or Blink.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-04 21:14

The browser is built around a one-window, one-page, one-process model, according to the announcement. Its codebase is about 160,000 lines of original C, which the author says is small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end. Northstar is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later, and runs on Linux, macOS and Windows.

The announcement says compliance is not inherited from an upstream engine. Instead, it is measured section by section against the specification text. The author describes the browser as private by construction. It has no telemetry, no update pings, and no AI assistant or AI-style web APIs.

Safe browsing in Northstar checks a top-level navigation's host against a local SHA-256 blocklist before the page is fetched, according to the post. The check never leaves the user's machine. Cookies, storage and the cache are partitioned by origin.

The Slashdot post also notes that Northstar's logo reminds the author of the old Netscape logo. The author says he loves the “Best viewed in...” GIF at the upper-right of its web site.