The Problem
Privacy-focused browsers have long forced a painful tradeoff: either you use a browser with almost no privacy protections, or you use one that breaks half the internet. Sites stop loading. Streaming services refuse to play. Banking portals lock you out. The message was always the same โ privacy is hard, and you'll have to suffer for it.
That tradeoff was never acceptable. Privacy shouldn't require technical expertise or a willingness to fight your browser every day. It should be something that works quietly in the background, on by default, without breaking the web you depend on.
Our Philosophy
Umbra exists on a simple principle: a privacy browser that doesn't break the web. Strong defaults, sensible tradeoffs, and a transparent record of every change made to the underlying Firefox ESR codebase.
We believe you shouldn't need to choose between watching Netflix and protecting your data. You shouldn't have to disable your privacy settings to log into your bank. And you shouldn't have to trust that a browser is private โ you should be able to verify it yourself.
Privacy by Default
Telemetry off. Trackers blocked. Ad network fingerprinting resisted. All from the first launch.
Usable by Design
The web should work. Sites load. Streaming works. Banking works. Privacy doesn't have to mean frustration.
Fully Transparent
about:umbra shows every modification made to Firefox ESR. Nothing hidden, nothing unexplained.
User Control
Three privacy presets. Per-site overrides. You choose how private to be โ Umbra respects that choice.
What Umbra Is Built On
Umbra is a fork of Firefox ESR 140.8 โ Mozilla's Extended Support Release, chosen for its longer maintenance cycle and stability. We apply privacy patches on top of the ESR base: disabling telemetry, removing sponsored content, hardening the sandbox, and shipping uBlock Origin pre-configured.
The entire source is available on GitHub under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. You can audit every patch, every config change, and every enterprise policy we apply.
The Maintainer
Umbra is an independent open-source project maintained by a single developer. It's built for people who want a better default browser โ not a project driven by corporate interests or ad revenue.
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