Helium on Linux: what it is, why it exists, and how to install

What Helium is, in one sentence

Helium is a Chromium-based web browser built by imput with two hard commitments: the uBlock Origin ad/tracker blocker is built in and cannot be turned off, and nothing about your browsing leaves the machine. There is no telemetry, no account, no sync, no “send crash report” prompt. The Linux build is maintained by the same team in imputnet/helium-linux and is the build the rest of this article covers.

If that one-sentence pitch didn’t either hook you or repel you, you probably don’t need a new browser. If it did one of those two things, read on.

Why it exists — the case for Helium

The Chromium browser you almost certainly have installed today is Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Arc, or ungoogled-chromium. Each one made a different trade-off. Helium’s trade-off is the simplest to state:

• Google Chrome is the most-tested Chromium build on the planet, but Google ships a substantial telemetry and ad-business layer on top of upstream. You can disable most of it in flags, but it defaults on and Chrome has a structural conflict of interest with the sites you visit.
• Brave added an ad blocker and an opt-in ad network (Brave Rewards). The blocker is solid; the ad network is opt-out only if you actively find the right toggle, and Brave itself participates in the ad economy it claims to fix.
• ungoogled-chromium removes as many Google hooks as it can. It is the right answer for people who want a maximally-stripped-down browser, but the bar is “compile and patch it yourself or hunt a community build,” and the user experience is what upstream gives you, no niceties.
• Firefox is the obvious escape hatch. It is not Chromium, the extension story is its own, the way sites look is sometimes subtly off, and its market share is small enough that a handful of major sites still default-test on Chrome and treat Firefox as an afterthought.

Helium’s bet is that most people do not want to make a philosophy decision. They want Chrome-without-the-spyware, with an ad blocker they don’t have to remember to install. Helium ships that. The uBlock Origin fork (imputnet/uBlock) is a native component, not an extension, so it loads before any page script and cannot be disabled from the extension page. The rest of the browser is upstream Chromium, with Google’s tracking hooks removed the same way ungoogled-chromium does it.

What it doesn’t do (be honest before you install)

• No mobile companion app. The Helium project ships macOS, Windows, and Linux. iOS and Android are out of scope.
• No cross-device sync. Bookmarks, history, and tabs live on the machine. There is no Helium account, by design.
• No built-in VPN or password manager. Add your own.
• No Widevine DRM. Google restricts Widevine licensing to partners, and the licensing fees would sink a crowdfunded browser like Helium. The practical effect: a handful of streaming services (Netflix’s higher tiers, some Disney+ content) will not play in Helium. YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, audio streams, and most podcasts work fine.
• No Flatpak. The project is explicit about this — the README refuses Flatpak because the Chromium sandbox does not survive Flatpak’s containerization reliably. Use the AppImage or, better, the official Debian/Fedora packages.
• Beta software. Releases are tagged beta. Some sites will misbehave. The team fixes fast and the GitHub issues are worth reading.

What you get that other browsers don’t bother with

• uBlock Origin as a native component. Not an extension — it loads before any page script and cannot be disabled from chrome://extensions. That’s the difference between “has an ad blocker” and “the ad blocker is part of the browser.”
• Anonymized Chrome Web Store access. Helium routes Chrome Web Store requests through its own relay so Google can’t track which extensions you install or update. No other browser does this — Brave, Arc, ungoogled-chromium all hit the Web Store directly.
• 13,000+ !bangs. DuckDuckGo’s bang shortcuts as a first-class feature: type !k latest world cup scores and you jump straight to a Kagi search, !w Banana radiation to Wikipedia, !wa sqrt(-1337 + 2 * 3049) to Wolfram Alpha. Processing is local, no Helium server in the loop.
• Vertical tabs, split view, tab groups, MRU tabbing, tab hibernation. The layout settings actually ship. The browser is also designed to be visually quiet — 4 layout options, frameless mode, the noise is dialed down.
• Fingerprinting protection that goes further than most. Helium “noises” certain web APIs to make your browser harder to fingerprint, and the project claims protections against fingerprint analysis attacks no other browser does. Their own honest caveat: “browser fingerprinting is impossible to prevent completely without breaking core functionality.”
• Passkeys. Full WebAuthn / passkey support, which means the modern passwordless login flow works.

How to install on Linux

Pick the path that matches your distro. The team maintains the official packages themselves; anything else is community and unsupported.

Debian / Ubuntu (recommended)

This is the path with a real signed apt repo, automatic updates via unattended-upgrades, and zero fiddling. One-time setup:

# 1. Add the signing key
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/imputnet/helium-linux/main/pubkey.asc 
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/helium.gpg

# 2. Add the repo
echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/helium.gpg] https://pkg.helium.computer/deb stable main" 
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/helium.list

# 3. Install
sudo apt update && sudo apt install helium-bin

Want the pre-release channel? Replace stable with prerelease in step 2. After that, sudo apt upgrade keeps it current like any other apt package.

Fedora

sudo dnf copr enable imput/helium
sudo dnf install helium-bin

The COPR repo is also signed and gets updates when Helium does.

Arch / Manjaro / EndeavourOS

No official package. The community AUR packages exist but the project warns they are not maintained by them and should be used carefully. If you want the safe path on Arch, use the AppImage.

AppImage (any distro, including Arch)

For any distro without a first-party package — Arch family, openSUSE Tumbleweed, NixOS without the right overlay, immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue or Vanilla OS — the AppImage is the right move.

Download from the latest Linux release. Look for the file named Helium-*.AppImage. Mark it executable and run:

chmod +x Helium-*.AppImage
./Helium-*.AppImage

To get a desktop entry so it shows up in your application menu, drop a .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/. Or use AppImageLauncher, which handles that and auto-update integration for you.

Don’t try Flatpak. It will not give you a sandboxed Chromium; you will get an unsandboxed Chromium in a Flatpak wrapper. The Helium project deliberately does not support this and explains why in their README.

First-run checklist

Once it’s installed and open:

1. Set Helium as the default browser. On GNOME: Settings → Default Applications → Web. On KDE: System Settings → Applications → Default Applications. On XFCE / Cinnamon / MATE, the same idea, different menu.
2. Import bookmarks from your old browser. Helium’s first-run flow asks; if you skipped it, you can re-run from chrome://settings/importData. Chromium imports from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox, Safari, and most Chromium-based browsers without trouble.
3. Check the ad blocker is on. Visit helium://settings/privacy and confirm “Content blocking” is set to “Strict” (the default). To see what it’s doing in real time, the toolbar shows a blocked-count badge while you browse.
4. Sign into the sites you actually want to be signed into. Helium has no built-in sync, so each Google / Microsoft / GitHub account lives in its own session cookie. If you had Chrome sync before, you don’t anymore — export your bookmarks and import them once.
5. Optional: harden DNS. Helium respects system DNS. If you want encrypted DNS without installing another app, point your system resolver at Quad9 (9.9.9.9) or Mullvad’s 194.242.2.2. This is a separate layer from the ad blocker.

How it compares

If you want the simplest version: Helium is Chrome with the surveillance turned off and an ad blocker you can’t accidentally disable. That is the whole product.

When not to use it

• You rely on a Chrome extension that does not work in de-Googled Chromium. Some paid password managers and enterprise SSO extensions talk to Google’s component updater; those will misbehave. If your bank or employer uses one, you’ll find out fast — Helium is fine for most consumer sites.
• You need mobile sync. Use Firefox or Brave, which have working mobile companions.
• You want a stable, 1.0-or-later browser. Helium is beta. It is stable enough for daily use but you will see the occasional regression; the GitHub issues page is the place to watch.

Uninstall

sudo apt remove helium-bin on Debian/Ubuntu, sudo dnf remove helium-bin on Fedora, rm the AppImage on other distros. Bookmarks are in ~/.config/Helium/ if you want to back them up before removing.

Where to follow the project

• Homepage: helium.computer
• Source: github.com/imputnet/helium
• Linux packaging: github.com/imputnet/helium-linux
• Issues: the same GitHub repos, Issues tab