Hermit 26 — More Sandboxes, lots of tiny improvements, and a $4.99 sale on Premium
- Get Hermit now from Google Play or our own Chimbori App Store (F-Droid repo with automatic updates).
- Get Hermit Premium
$7.99 USD$4.99 USD (the sale is global, at this price in your local currency).
More Sandboxes — now up to 10
We heard from some of you that 5 sandboxes weren’t enough for compartmentalizing your digital life, so we’ve now doubled the number.
A frequently-asked question we get is, why not allow infinite sandboxes: the way sandboxes work, they have to be individually created and defined inside the app. They cannot be created at run-time. Each sandbox works in its own process, so there are also performance concerns with enabling a large number of sandboxes. We will continue to listen to feedback, and as hardware evolves, we’ll consider adding even more sandboxes in the future.
Copy a Lite App to Create a New One
For those of you creating multiple Lite Apps that are similar, or to use the same Lite App in different sandboxes, you can now copy an existing Lite App, and use it as a template to create as many new ones as you need. In the main Hermit app, tap on the three-dots menu, select “Copy”.
UserScripts in Incognito Mode
UserScripts are quick and easy ways to modify the content of any page you visit. Written in JavaScript, you can run UserScripts within Hermit, and achieve what extensions, add-ons, boosts, and power-ups do in other browsers.
In previous versions, UserScripts could only be used for Lite Apps.
Now, you can turn on UserScripts that will be applied to all pages loaded in Incognito Mode.
Note that any site inclusions or exclusion defined in a UserScript file (using the @match or @exclude headers) will still be checked first.
Install UserScripts from a Library
To make it easier to discover and start using UserScripts, we now offer a Library within the app itself. More UserScripts will be added over time, and feel free to suggest ones you would like to see added.
Install UserScripts by opening .user.js files from your device
Use any file manager app, and choose to open any existing JavaScript files in Hermit. You will be prompted to install it as a UserScript or a Bookmarklet.
Reader Mode Improvements
Reader Mode has been available for several years in Hermit. Now, the Reader Mode button in the toolbar shows up for even more sites. The new Reader UI shows images from the original page in addition to page content.
Search for Lite Apps in Library by name
The Lite Apps Library in Hermit has grown over the years. There are now over 250+ Lite Apps available to install in one click. That made it hard to quickly find the ones you’re looking for. So now, you can type the first few letters to search for Lite Apps by name, and then install them in Hermit.
Downloaded files open automatically when ready
When a download completes, you no longer need to open your file manager to view it. Downloaded files will open automatically in the default viewer app, giving you easy and quick access to all files.
New to Hermit?
Lite Apps are fast and lean Web apps, tightly integrated with Android. With Hermit, you can create your own Lite Apps out of any Web site. Unlike a usual traditional browser, Hermit integrates Lite Apps into your Android OS, so that you can share from any other Android app to a Lite App, search from within the Lite App, get notifications via Atom & RSS feeds, and customize Privacy Settings, Content Settings, and Behavior for every single Lite App individually — features you won’t find in any other browser.
Hermit is proudly Android-first and Android-only, and follows Material Design guidelines to bring you a superb user experience backed by solid engineering & a commitment to your privacy: no personal data collection, no behavior tracking, all brought to you by a small California indie developer.
Unlike other browser makers, we are not in the business of selling ads or your personal information. You pay for our app with money, not your privacy. Most features can be used for free. Your purchases are our only source of support for many more years of innovative feature-packed updates. Thank you!
For 8+ years, you’ve known, downloaded, and loved Hermit, the Lite Apps Browser — and told all your friends about it too! And we have continued to release regular updates with brand new features in every version. All this, for the same low one-time purchase price that you paid early on.
We have maintained the same high level of trust you put in us, and Hermit continues to be a privacy-first app with no ads, no upgrade nags, no personal data collection, no behavior tracking, and no shady SDKs. Thank you for all your support, we truly appreciate it!
It takes a bit of learning & understanding before you can use Hermit effectively & we’re here to help!
- Getting Started Guide: https://hermit.chimbori.com/help/getting-started
- Help Articles & FAQ: https://hermit.chimbori.com/help
- Compare with Traditional Browsers: https://hermit.chimbori.com/features/compare
- Send Feedback: https://chimbori.com/feedback
Get it on Google Play or from our own App Store
- Google Play
- Chimbori App Store: Skip the waiting time for Google to approve every release, and get it straight from us.
Hi, sharing to Hermit allows for features like:
- opening links from another browser in Hermit (e.g. if you are reading a Lemmy link in Chrome, you can share a link from Chrome to Hermit, and it will open in the Lemmy Lite App.
- You can also pass entire URLs to other sites, e.g. set up a Facebook Share URL so the site can accept the URL.
If piped.video can accept a URL as part of a GET URL, you can use the %u parameter to use it.
We've seen reports of this exact error message, but there's no clear way for us as a browser maker to help debug.
Our best guess is that there's some web framework somewhere that's doing some non-standard verification that Hermit does not pass, presumably because of the tight privacy restrictions that Hermit enables by default.
If you have a way to contact the web admins, that would be really helpful. Even if you can figure out which specific web framework this is, we can try to look into it.
Disappearing icons is a bug with your launcher, nothing to do with the actual browser you're using.
If you're looking for a browser that was specifically designed for web apps, check out Hermit. (Disclaimer: I'm the author).
Not exactly. It's possible to make an app run on older versions (select lower minSdk) and yet take advantage of newer features (select higher targetSdk). This one can be easily be fixed by the F-Droid developers like almost all other developers have already.
Droidify is amazing, I'd totally recommend that over the official F-Droid client any time. 👍
Not sure how Samsung does it, we (the app, Hermit) pass it a square icon, and the launcher is supposed to take it and display it however it sees fit.
Have you tried the Touch-and-Hold method to see if it works better?
Hermit 25, now supporting UserScripts: make the Web yours, customize every page you visit!
Get Hermit now from Google Play or our own Chimbori App Store (F-Droid repo with automatic updates).
UserScripts
UserScripts are quick and easy ways to modify the content of any page you visit. Written in JavaScript, you can run UserScripts within Hermit, and achieve what extensions, add-ons, boosts, and power-ups do in other browsers. There are several thousands of UserScripts written by others & shared online that you can install and use directly.
More information about UserScripts in Hermit is available as a Help Article: <https://hermit.chimbori.com/features/userscripts>
UserScripts is a Premium feature: you can either buy it separately for $1.99, or it’s also included as part of the full Premium bundle.
Using a Web browser with Ad Blocking & customized UserScripts is a great alternative for sites whose CEOs have started imposing wacky draconian rules for third-party apps. And also for upcoming new communities like Lemmy, that have yet to see high-quality third-party apps developed for it.
Other Noteworthy Improvements
Icon Picker for Icon Packs
You can now pick custom icons from icon packs more easily, without being limited to photos and images from your device.
Tablet Layout Optimizations
While previous versions of Hermit have already been well-optimized for tablets, we re-did a lot more testing with the new Google Pixel Tablet, and thus this release includes a few more quality fixes specifically for tablets.
New to Hermit?
Lite Apps are fast and lean Web apps, tightly integrated with Android. With Hermit, you can create your own Lite Apps out of any Web site. Unlike a usual traditional browser, Hermit integrates Lite Apps into your Android OS, so that you can share from any other Android app to a Lite App, search from within the Lite App, get notifications via Atom & RSS feeds, and customize Privacy Settings, Content Settings, and Behavior for every single Lite App individually — features you won’t find in any other browser.
Hermit is proudly Android-first and Android-only, and follows Material Design guidelines to bring you a superb user experience backed by solid engineering & a commitment to your privacy: no personal data collection, no behavior tracking, all brought to you by a small California indie developer.
Unlike other browser makers, we are not in the business of selling ads or your personal information. You pay for our app with money, not your privacy. Most features can be used for free. Your purchases are our only source of support for many more years of innovative feature-packed updates. Thank you!
For 8+ years, you’ve known, downloaded, and loved Hermit, the Lite Apps Browser — and told all your friends about it too! And we have continued to release regular updates with brand new features in every version. All this, for the same low one-time purchase price that you paid early on.
We have maintained the same high level of trust you put in us, and Hermit continues to be a privacy-first app with no ads, no upgrade nags, no personal data collection, no behavior tracking, and no shady SDKs. Thank you for all your support, we truly appreciate it!
It takes a bit of learning & understanding before you can use Hermit effectively & we’re here to help!
- Getting Started Guide: https://hermit.chimbori.com/help/getting-started
- Help Articles & FAQ: https://hermit.chimbori.com/help
- Compare with Traditional Browsers: https://hermit.chimbori.com/features/compare
- Send Feedback: https://chimbori.app/send-feedback
Get it on Google Play or from our own App Store
- Google Play
- Chimbori App Store: Skip the waiting time for Google to approve every release, and get it straight from us.
Did you mean “offline” as in not online (which makes little sense for a browser), or more like “not tied to a specific service that may hold your data hostage or infringe upon your privacy”?
If the latter, then I've found that a simple HTML file with manually added entries works great. I've set it as the home page in all my browsers. I retain full control over content and layout as well.)
Yes I'm planning to add it to the library. 👍 Currently testing it to make sure it's stable (I ran into a few issues earlier, I think the instance was under maintenance and Wefwef showed an unrelated error)
For now, please add it yourself and let us know how it goes.
That's exactly how opening links works in Hermit.
You can also have multiple Lite Apps for the same URL, and also (optionally) have them be completely sandboxed from each other.
Let's use this thread to introduce yourselves! I'm the developer, and have been developing Hermit for 8+ now. You all, the community, have shown a lot of support with your suggestions, feedback, and requests, making Hermit the app it is today.