M116.0.5845.169 - 33rd Release

M116

• chrome://whats-new page has been re-enabled by me, after Google made it "Chrome only". You will see it launch in a new tab on every version upgrade.
• I enabled an experimental setting in Appearance to toggle tab hover cards. This can also be controlled via the traditional chrome://flags flag
• I enabled an upcoming UI design change that was supposed to land in M117, but I enabled it early. This moves the Extensions submenu from "More Tools" in the main menu, into its own dedicated menu item.
• New "Name Window" item in "More Tools". This allows you to manually override the window name, i.e. what appears in the window's title and what appears in the taskbar.
• initial_preferences file is now included in the Windows installer, to show the Welcome page on first launch after the first install.
• New internal variable specifying the type (i.e. AVX, AVX2, SSE3, etc.) is being shipped to facilitate the new Thorium-Win-Updater project me and ltguillaume have been working on, to allow auto update for Windows (Linux users already have it, if you are using the deb repo).

Thanks @gz83 @ltguillaume for helping.

Also, on another note, people have been complaining about me not releasing a new version on the exact same day as a new major Chromium version. To those people, I say, every major version takes me about 6+ Hours of intensive work to rebase. This is followed by many more hours for both me and @gz83 and @midzer to build each version, and this is assuming we are using all of our CPU cores pegged at 100% usage, which also slows our machines to a crawl for if we want to do anything else. Please be patient. If people still make issues or discussions about this, my response will be going forward: Then you try maintaining a Chromium fork!

M115.0.5790.172 - 32nd Release

M115 : This release is all about bug fixes, rather than new features.

• Storage Access API enabled by default upstream. I actually have a web app on the Thorium website that can make use of this new web standard > https://thorium.rocks/misc/vector-icon-app/
• Added Middle Click AutoScroll for Linux (normally only enabled on Windows). Please report any bugs encountered - Fixes Alex313031/thorium#199
• REMOVED Wayland VAAPI patch as it was causing too many bugs for too many people to be worth it. - Fixes Alex313031/thorium#162
• Tabstrip window dragging bug fix for Windows (and possibly Linux and Mac, pending further investigation). - Fixes Alex313031/thorium#197
• Profile picker crash fix. This was a major bug that occurred on all platforms, causing the browser to crash when trying to select a different profile other than the default one or guest one. Fixes #58 and Alex313031/Thorium-Win-AVX2#95. The cause of it was narrowed down to this line, something completely unrelated code wise, but somehow caused a segmentation fault in the memory manager.
• NTP Discovery fix for Android (Not so much a "fix" but just removing it so it doesn't look ugly). - Fixes Alex313031/Thorium-Special#16 (comment)
• Fixed potential building problems on MacOS.

Might also fix other strange tabstrip bugs that people experienced in M114.

Next release we are planning to update libjxl and add a "Close tabs to the left" menu item.

31st Release - M114.0.5735.205

• Minor revision update to fix security vulnerabilities, as an interim release until M115 which will come in 2 weeks.
• Fixed minor WebUI images missing
  Otherwise, same release notes as the previous release.
   

30th Release - M114.0.5735.134

M114

Upstream Changes

• Chromium 114 has even better support for WebGPU than 113. For more info about this, see the previous release notes.
• Chromium and Thorium now support specifying and appending commandline flags via the CHROME_EXTRA_FLAGS environment variable. For example:
  export CHROME_EXTRA_FLAGS="--no-sandbox" and then running thorium-browser from the same shell, will append --no-sandbox. You could set this in your ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile However, keep in mind that Thorium already also has a custom way to set default flags, by making/editing ~/.config/thorium-flags.conf
• V8 (Chromium's JavaScript engine) has added some new optimizations to the Maglev compiler. A noticeable difference in JIT javascript compilation can be seen between Chromium 113 and 114. Interesting read here > https://blog.chromium.org/2023/06/how-chrome-achieved-high-scores-on.html Thanks @midzer for telling me about this.

Thorium Changes

• libjxl updated to 0.8.2 (Adds better transparency/alpha support) Thanks @gz83 for helping me with this.
• libhighway updated to 1.0.4 (Minor SIMD upgrade)
• Fixes for Wayland (should hopefully fix Alex313031/thorium#162)
• HEVC and AC3 support have been restored (as promised)
• More Android ARM64 optimizations
• New "media foundation" widevine path on Windows by using the enable_media_foundation_widevine_cdm = true args.gn flag (should hopefully fix #48 and Alex313031/Thorium-Win-AVX2#84)
• RPM support so that people on those distros don't have to use the .zip or .appimage anymore. (Fixes Alex313031/thorium#139)
• Debian 12 "Bookworm" Support

29th Release - M113.0.5672.134

M113

Upstream Changes

113 brings better support for WebGPU, and enables it by default. You can test it on my site here > https://thorium.rocks/misc/webgpu-test/ There are still some bugs with Nvidia GPUs on Linux. M114 seems to fix this. If you want to force WebGPU on, you can enable the chrome://flags/#enable-unsafe-webgpu flag. (I disabled the warning infobar with this flag since I use it alot, but know that by enabling it, malicious processes could potentially extract frames from GPU memory)
It also brings the new Performance pane in settings, to enable memory saver > chrome://settings/performance This allows Thorium to sleep tabs in the background. Edge users will be familiar with this feature.

Thorium Changes

I had to remove HEVC/H.265 and AC3 support temporarily. M114 will have it back again, so stay on M112 if you need this. This is because the guy who makes the patch skipped M113, and HEVC support is a prerequisite for my custom AC3 patch. I could manually patch ffmpeg by looking at how the M112 patch was formatted. But thats alot of files, more than Thorium as a whole even uses. Sooooooo....Sorry....LoL. Like I said, use 112 or wait until 114 if you wanna watch H.265 videos or AC3 audio.

4 new flags:
Two features I had previously enabled by default were removed upstream. I re-added them, but this time I put them behind two new flags > chrome://flags/#tab-outlines-in-low-contrast-themes and chrome://flags/#prominent-dark-mode-active-tab-title. They are disabled by default, and so in dark mode/incognito mode you will see a reversion back to the stock Chromium tabstrip theme. If you want the old behavior and look that Thorium has had since M100, simply enable these flags. Putting them behind flags was partially in response to this issue.

Then, the other two are flags from UnGoogled, one of which I modified.

• chrome://flags/#scroll-tabs The default behavior on Linux is to have this on. On other platforms you had to use a cmdline flag. Now, you can control it through the UI for ALL platforms (even Android). This is different from the scrollable tabstrip flag here > chrome://flags/#scrollable-tabstrip which moves the entire tabstrip. The one I added simply changes which tab is active (which I think is more useful).
• chrome://flags/#keep-all-history This is the one I modified. Chromium by default only keeps history for 90 days. I raised this to 120 days. By enabling this flag, it will keep history forever. Note that this could cause your user profile dir to grow up to its maximum allowed of 2GB, if you were to enable this flag and then browse for ~many months, etc.

---

Also I am proud to finally announce a new ThoriumOS release. Updated many packages, it uses Thorium 113, and it has Google Drive support and NVidia GPU support!! Get it here > https://github.com/Alex313031/ThoriumOS/releases/tag/V113.0.5672.177

28th Release - M112.0.5615.166

M112

M112 versions newer than 112.0.5615.137 fix important security vulnerabilities. See > CVE-2023-2136 and CVE-2023-2135
– Enabled AC3 for MacOS
– More compiler optimizations thanks to @RobRich999 See > Alex313031/thorium@18ef745
– Added LLD Tail Merging for Windows

– Added some new keyboard shortcuts:

• "Ctrl+Shift+Q" to close all windows (exit)
• "Ctrl+Shift+K" to open a new tab to the right
• "Ctrl+Shift+D" to duplicate the current tab
• "Ctrl+Shift+P" to pop out the current tab into a new window

Known Issue: Text highlighting doesn't work on some sites. It will still copy/paste, just sometimes won't highlight what you are selecting. @midzer and I are working on this.

IMPORTANT - Thorium for Windows 7/8/8.1 builds have been moved to their own repo > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-win7 , where development continues. I will no longer be posting builds of M109 here, and instead it will be there and of course on the https://thorium.rocks/win7 site.

27th Release - M111.0.5563.111

M111
– Added two new flags:

• chrome://flags/#media-router to enable/disable the media router, i.e. for Cast.
• chrome://flags/#close-confirmation modified from an ungoogled flag. Prompts the user before closing browser window(s) if enabled. Options are 'last window' and 'multiple windows'

Compiled with Polly enabled

– Pre-compiling of inline scripts enabled
– Added "Ctrl+Shift+Q" keyboard shortcut to close all windows.
– Added snap support

26th Release - M110.0.5481.178

M110 is shaping up to be a great release!

• JPEG-XL functionality RESTORED; thanks to @jonsneyers @mo271 and @gz83 for helping with this.
  There is a new repo for the source code for this, used as a submodule in this repo. > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-libjxl
  In case you didn't know, Google decided to be a d**k and remove JPEG-XL support after M109, as well as Windows 7/8/8.1 support.
• Thorium now supports the AC3 codec, including in HEVC/H.265 videos. Thanks to @midzer for helping find a patch, which I manually converted to work on M110.
• HEVC/H.265 videos now support all profiles.
• More optimization flags for V8, Chromium's Javascript engine.
• Added four new chrome://flags flags:
  – chrome://flags/#force-gpu-mem-available-mb - Set available VRAM to be used by Thorium. Options are 128, 256, 512, and 1024 Mb. Useful for systems with very low or very high video memory. The default (if unset) is 512 Mb.
  – chrome://flags/#enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers - Enable native CPU-mappable GPU memory buffer support on Linux. (Linux only) You can see the effect of this on chrome://gpu in the "GpuMemoryBuffers Status" section.
  – chrome://flags/#double-click-close-tab - A flag that @gz83 came up with and we both implemented. Allows you to close a tab by simply double-clicking on it, similar to an option in Vivaldi.
  – chrome://flags/#show-fps-counter - Show a F.P.S. counter on each display, which also shows used/available GPU memory. Useful for Web development.
• Logo has had padding removed, and a new logo was created for the windows installer .exe.
• New desktop action on Linux, to "Open New Window with a temporary profile". This can be used even if Thorium is already running. It will make a new profile in /tmp, and use that. NOTE: Upon system restart, the /tmp dir is cleared.
• Thorium mascot image added to chrome://version page, under the copyright (for fun)

IMPORTANT for Windows Users

– Two new flags from ungoogled chromium, to enable truly portable usage were added. They unencrypt your user data dir, and remove tying it to a specific machine. Meaning you can drag the .zip around with you from machine to machine, and you wont lose passwords, extensions, etc. You will need to back up your current config, or start with a fresh one. I.E. you can go from Unencrypted > Encrypted, but not Encrypted (the default) > Unencrypted. I should have introduced these a long time ago. Sorry if this annoys users of the portable .zips. Note that enabling these flags is inherently less secure.
They are:
chrome://flags/#disable-encryption and
chrome://flags/#disable-machine-id

Win7/8/8.1 Maintenance Release

M109 Windows 7/8/8.1 Maintenance Release

IMPORTANT: PLEASE USE THE NEW WINDOWS 7/8 REPO HERE FOR FUTURE RELEASES > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-win7

As promised, here is a maintenance release of Thorium M109 for Windows 7/8/8.1!
Backported some stuff, and bumped minor rev number 109.0.5414.120 > 109.0.5414.139 which includes security fixes from upstream Chromium.

– Compiled with Polly enabled
– Pre-compiling of inline scripts enabled
– Added "Ctrl+Shift+Q" keyboard shortcut to close all windows.

• Backported more optimization flags for V8, Chromium's Javascript engine, from the M111 release.

• Backported five new new chrome://flags flags from the M110 & M111 release:
  – chrome://flags/#force-gpu-mem-available-mb - Set available VRAM to be used by Thorium. Options are 128, 256, 512, and 1024 Mb. Useful for systems with very low or very high video memory. The default (if unset) is 512 Mb.
  – chrome://flags/#enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers - Enable native CPU-mappable GPU memory buffer support on Linux. (Linux only) You can see the effect of this on chrome://gpu in the "GpuMemoryBuffers Status" section.
  – chrome://flags/#double-click-close-tab - A flag that @gz83 came up with and we both implemented. Allows you to close a tab by simply double-clicking on it, similar to an option in Vivaldi.
  – chrome://flags/#show-fps-counter - Show a F.P.S. counter on each display, which also shows used/available GPU memory. Useful for Web development.
  – chrome://flags/#media-router to enable/disable the media router, i.e. for Cast.

• Logo has had padding removed, and a new logo was created for the windows installer .exe.

• Thorium mascot image added to chrome://version page, under the copyright (for fun)

25th Release - M109.0.5414.120

IMPORTANT: PLEASE USE THE NEW WINDOWS 7/8 REPO HERE FOR FUTURE RELEASES > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium-win7

• Special Windows 7/8/8.1 release! (Not only for these platforms, but see below.)
• M109 Maintenance release.
• HEVC patch updated.
• Icon updated for Linux and Windows, which removes the padding on the outside of the thorium logo to match
  upstream change, the only effect is that the logo is slightly bigger.
• More LLVM optimization flags
• Removed the "unsupported OS" infobar banner for Win7/8/8.1 and Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 9, and Arch<2018.12

NOTE: Going forward, Thorium will be built to more stable versions. This one is based on M109 stable (see below), future versions will be based on the equivalent of "beta" or "dev" channel, rather than tip-o-tree, i.e. "canary" channel.

IMPORTANT M109 is the last version of Chromium for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 😢 as per Here. I still use and enjoy Windows 7, and so have made a site for it here > https://thorium.rocks/win7 This is why this release is based on stable M109. I will be updating the links on my win7 page to link to these. Another deviation from standard Thorium releases, is that the windows 7 release will have a special 32 bit SSE2 build for old computers, on top of the SSE3, AVX, and AVX2 builds. There is also a small easter egg on the chrome://version page, to show love for one of Micro$oft's greatest OSes, back when that $ sign was a little smaller, lol.

M109 will also be getting maintenance releases for the Win7/8/8.1 version, tracking the official chrome stable versions as per https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases?platform=Windows and I will be attempting to backport patches from M110 into M109, as time and knowledge permits.

@gz83 @midzer