Helium Browser is a Chromium-based web browser that’s designed from the ground up to give you privacy along with performance. What makes it special is that it can block ads, trackers and fingerprinting by default without you needing to tweak settings. Simply put, it treats privacy as a starting point and not as an opt-in feature.
Strips the extras and Google ties compared to Brave Browser
Based on the description, you can argue that Brave Browser overlaps a lot with what Helium promises, but there are some differences between them. For starters, there are fewer settings to fiddle with to benefit from protection and it blocks a lot from the start. The browser has no ties and anonymizes internal requests to Google services.
This is not to say that what Brave does is not good, as it comes with strong privacy protections out of the box and can block trackers, cross-site cookies, fingerprinting and many ads, just like this tool.
The application uses DuckDuckGo as the primary search engine, which is relevant if you think about the fact that this is the biggest source of data about you. While the Google search engine is said to build detailed profiles of people based on their searches and use that for targeted ads, DuckDuckGo works differently, meaning it doesn’t track you.
Works with all Chromium extensions, but privately
Besides search engines, extensions are another way for some companies to gather data about you, as many add-ons request broad permissions, like reading and changing data on every website you visit, which can mean yet another window into your browsing habits.
Helium Browser works with all extensions you’ll find on Chrome Web Store but anonymizes the add-ons’ requests. What this means is that when you download or update an extension, Google doesn’t get to link that activity back to you personally.