Using Vulpine

Install

Vulpine runs on Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. There is no macOS or Linux installer.

The installer is not released yet. When it is, it will be on the download section of the home page.

It installs for your Windows account only, so it needs no administrator rights, and adds Start Menu and desktop shortcuts. To remove it, uninstall it from Settings › Apps like any other program.

Check the download

The installer is not code-signed yet, so the first time you run it Windows SmartScreen says it protected your PC. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

To be sure the file is the one published, compare its checksum. In PowerShell, in the folder you downloaded it to:

Get-FileHash .\Vulpine-Setup-0.5.0.exe -Algorithm SHA256

The expected value is published on the download page alongside the installer.

First run

Bring your bookmarks and history. If another browser is installed, the new tab page offers to import from it once. You can also do it any time from Settings › Import from another browser, which shows how many bookmarks and history entries each one holds first. Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox are supported. Nothing already in Vulpine is changed, and importing twice adds nothing twice.

Choose a search engine. DuckDuckGo is the default. Brave, Startpage, Mojeek and Google are in Settings › Search & startup.

Reopen your tabs. Turn on Reopen tabs from last time in the same section. Tabs come back asleep and load when you click them. Private windows are never saved.

Shields

The shield in the toolbar shows how many requests were stopped on the current page. Click it to open the Shields panel: the counts by kind, a switch for each protection, and Blocked on this page, the list of hosts stopped.

Switches in the panel apply to that site only and are remembered. To change what applies everywhere, use Settings › Shields defaults. A site’s own setting wins over the default.

The protections are: blocking ads and trackers, blocking third-party cookies, upgrading connections to HTTPS, blocking fingerprinting, hiding leftover ad space, stripping 50 tracking parameters from addresses, and blocking all third-party scripts. The last one breaks a fair number of sites and starts switched off.

Always on, whatever the switches say: the Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals, a cross-site Referer trimmed to the bare origin, and protection against WebRTC revealing your local IP address.

Your own rules. Settings › Filter lists › Custom rules takes one rule per line: tracker.example blocks a domain, @@site.example allows one, and /ads/ matches part of an address. The downloaded lists stay loaded alongside them.

Fingerprinting

A site can tell browsers apart without cookies, from readings such as how your graphics card draws, how many CPU cores you have and which plugins are installed. With fingerprint protection on, Vulpine changes 11 of the 15 signals the live check on the home page measures.

The rest cannot be hidden without breaking pages: screen size, time zone, language, and your IP address, which every site you visit sees. A VPN or Tor changes the IP address; no browser setting can.

Private windows

Open one with Ctrl+Shift+P or from the menu. Its toolbar is tinted purple. It uses its own session, kept in memory and never written to disk: no history is recorded, and its new tab page shows none of yours. Files you download are still saved.

Extensions do not load in private windows.

Encrypted DNS and proxies

Without encrypted DNS, the name of every site you visit goes in plain text to whichever resolver your network hands you. In Settings › Network, DNS over HTTPS can be off, automatic (falling back if needed) or strict (failing rather than leaking a plain query). Resolvers: Cloudflare, Quad9, Google, AdGuard, Mullvad, or your own. Test lookup checks it works.

Proxy can be system settings, direct, manual or PAC. Manual takes ordinary rules, such as socks5://127.0.0.1:9050 for a local Tor daemon. It applies to every window, private ones included.

Extensions

Open an extension’s page on the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons and use the Add to Vulpine button there. Before installing, Vulpine shows what the extension asks for and whether it will work here. You can also add an unpacked folder, a .xpi or a .crx from Settings › Extensions.

Modern ad blockers such as uBlock Origin Lite, AdGuard and Ghostery work: Shields enforces the filter lists inside them. Older Manifest V2 blockers, which filter from their own code, cannot work in Vulpine. Installed extensions are checked for updates daily.

Protected audio and video

Vulpine includes Widevine L3. Services that need only L3 work, such as Spotify and YouTube rentals. Netflix does not: it also requires a build signed with castlabs’ VMP tooling, which this build is not.

Memory saver

Idle background tabs are put to sleep, freeing the memory their pages hold. They stay in the tab strip and reload where you left them, history and scroll position included. Set how long a tab waits in Settings › Memory, or use Sleep idle tabs now.

A tab is never put to sleep while it is playing sound or video, or while you have typed something into it that has not been sent.

Updates

Vulpine checks for a new version when it starts and once a day, downloads it in the background and installs it when you quit. Filter lists and extensions are refreshed daily. Settings › Updates shows what each last did and has a Check now button.

Keyboard shortcuts

Your data

History, bookmarks, settings and per-site choices are stored on your computer and nowhere else. Saved passwords are encrypted by Windows. There is no analytics, telemetry or crash reporting. The privacy policy lists every request the browser makes and what is in it.

To clear history, cookies or cached files, press Ctrl+Shift+Delete and choose what to clear. The time range applies to history; cookies and cached files are cleared in full.