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Nordstjernen

Nordstjernen is an independent, unique web browser

Nordstjernen Web Browser

Nordstjernen is a web browser, written from scratch in C, focused on supporting the HTML and CSS standards. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with builds for Android, iOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and the JVM. Nordstjernen is built in Norway.

Nordstjernen Browser version 1.0.22 released! The source-available flagship — real-site layout fixes, a rebuilt grid, faster text and regular expressions, and a much more capable Android app. Read the announcement · More info here.

Northstar Browser version 1.0.6 released! The GPL-licensed, more minimalist sibling — an indexed CSS cascade, Web Audio that renders, and relative colour syntax. About Northstar · Read the announcement · More info here.

Nordstjernen 1.0.22's about:start start page — the Nordstjernen Navigator splash above a search box
Nordstjernen 1.0.22’s about:start page — the Nordstjernen Navigator splash, over the night side of the earth. more screenshots »

HTML Standard. Behaviour is measured against the spec text, section by section, not against another browser — 140 spec rows fully implemented, 31 partial and 0 absent across WHATWG HTML sections 1–16 (July 2026). No element or API row is fully absent any more: every one is implemented, partial, or a deliberate non-goal. Against the Web Platform Tests, the full wpt-fast tree now passes 88.4% of subtests overall — 91.7% of the HTML suite — and QuickJS runs the test262 conformance suite clean. See docs/HTML-compatibility.md.

Secure. Process-per-tab design — each tab runs in its own sandboxed renderer process (seccomp + Landlock on Linux), talking to the UI over IPC and shared-memory framebuffers · no JIT.

Minimalism. The core engine is about 185,000 lines of project C and headers, excluding the vendored libraries and generated assets — small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end.

Capable. JavaScript on QuickJS with Canvas 2D, WebCrypto, Service Workers and the Navigation API · an experimental V8 backend behind -Djs_engine=v8 · WebAssembly via WAMR · WebGL 1 & 2, enabled by default since 1.0.20 · inline <video> (MPEG-1 always, WebM/VP9 where FFmpeg is present) with WebVTT captions, and HLS and DASH streams fed through Media Source Extensions · in-engine SVG with masks and markers · presentation MathML · on-device safe browsing against a local blocklist.

Fast. Desktop builds shape text through ns-pango, a Pango fork that caches finished glyph strings and font metrics across layouts — on a table-heavy page it serves 92% of shaping requests and cuts layout time by 24%. Regular-expression search skips positions that cannot start a match, the way V8's Irregexp does, and a page on an origin that does not speak QUIC is upgraded to HTTP/3 through the alt-svc cache instead of stalling on a connect timeout: Acid3 loads in 2.2 seconds rather than 15.5.

Private. No telemetry and no update pings. Since 1.0.21 the client hints identify Nordstjernen as itself rather than impersonating Chrome, and --private starts a private-browsing session. Cookies are partitioned, and the safe-browsing check never leaves your machine.

Nordstjernen has no JIT so it is much more secure, and can still be fast enough. It ships no telemetry of any kind, and deliberately includes no AI assistant and no AI-style web APIs.

the Northstar browser

Northstar is the free-software sibling of Nordstjernen: a single-window, single-page, single-process desktop browser built from the same clean-room C engine, licensed under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later. It keeps the standards-first engine — lexbor, quickjs-ng (no JIT), ns-pango, WAMR, Wuffs — in about 149,000 lines of original C, and adds WebExtensions support, while leaving out multi-window browsing, per-tab renderer processes, WebGL and WebGPU. It renders SVG in-engine, decodes WebP and APNG, and plays MPEG-1 <video> with play, pause and seeking. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, behind a Landlock filesystem sandbox and a default-deny seccomp filter on Linux.

Read the full Northstar documentation » · or see the comparison table below for how the two browsers differ.

Read more about the innovations in the Nordstjernen web browser.

news

specifications

Two browsers, one clean-room engine. Nordstjernen is the flagship multi-tab browser; Northstar is the GPL-licensed single-window, single-process edition.

Swipe the table sideways to see both browsers.

Technical specifications: Nordstjernen 1.0.22 compared with Northstar 1.0.6
Nordstjernen 1.0.22Northstar 1.0.6
version 1.0.22 — released 31 July 2026 · announcement 1.0.6 — released 31 July 2026 · announcement
character flagship browser · multi-window, multi-tab free-software edition · single window, single page
language C · ~185 kLOC clean-room · GTK 4 shell · Java/JVM binding via JNI · fully auditable C · ~149 kLOC original · GTK 4 shell · fully auditable
architecture process-per-tab — each tab in its own sandboxed renderer process, IPC + shared-memory framebuffers single process — all rendering in one compact, auditable process
html / css lexbor (parser, WHATWG URL, selectors) lexbor v3.0.0 (parser, WHATWG URL, selectors)
javascript quickjs-ng — bytecode interpreter, no JIT · experimental V8 backend quickjs-ng v0.15.1 — bytecode interpreter, no JIT
text ns-pango on the desktop — a Pango fork with a process-wide shaping cache · system Pango on Android and iOS ns-pango — the same fork, sharded sixteen ways for thread throughput
webassembly WAMR — interpreter behind the WebAssembly JS API WAMR (vendored subset) — interpreter
webgl WebGL 1 & 2 — enabled by default since 1.0.20 · experimental WebGPU over wgpu-native, behind --enable-webgpu —
images Wuffs v0.4 (PNG / APNG / GIF / BMP / JPEG / lossy WebP) · libwebp (animated WebP) · libavif (AVIF, optional) · ICO and SVG rendered in-engine · inline PDF (optional) Wuffs v0.4 (PNG / APNG / GIF / BMP / JPEG / WebP) · AVIF (optional) · SVG rendered in-engine
media inline <video> — MPEG-1 via pl_mpeg · WebM (VP9/VP8 + Opus/Vorbis) via optional FFmpeg · HLS and DASH fed through Media Source Extensions · WebVTT captions · SDL2 audio MPEG-1 <video> via pl_mpeg, with play, pause and seeking · audio — MP3, MP2, Ogg Opus/Vorbis · Web Audio graph · no H.264 and no Media Source Extensions, so streaming video sites do not play
extensions — WebExtensions — local extensions with content scripts, packaged resources, storage and runtime messaging
ai none — no AI assistant and no AI-style web APIs, by design none — no AI-style web APIs, by design
ui GTK 4 (≥ 4.22.1 on Windows, ≥ 4.14 elsewhere) · tabs, page zoom, dark theme following the desktop GTK 4 (≥ 4.14) · page zoom, dark theme following the desktop
network libcurl ≥ 8.5 · HTTP/2, upgraded to HTTP/3 through the alt-svc cache · optional in-tree nghttp2 backend, with HTTP/3 over QUIC via ngtcp2 + nghttp3 · speculative loads reused rather than refetched · Vary-aware HTTP cache libcurl ≥ 8.5 · HTTP/2, upgraded to HTTP/3 through the alt-svc cache when the linked libcurl provides it · request deduplication and reusable preloads
hardening process-per-tab · seccomp + Landlock sandbox on Linux · sandboxed renderer processes · no JIT Landlock filesystem sandbox + PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS · default-deny seccomp filter on Linux · no JIT
privacy no telemetry · client hints identify Nordstjernen, not Chrome · --private browsing mode · partitioned cookies · HSTS · CSP · SRI · on-device safe browsing no telemetry · HSTS · CSP · SRI · safe browsing via local blocklist
standards 140 spec rows fully implemented, 31 partial, 0 absent · WHATWG HTML sections 1–16 · Web Platform Tests: 88.4% of subtests overall, 91.7% HTML (July 2026) same engine lineage · behaviour measured against the spec text, section by section · per-area WPT scores in docs/compliance.md
platforms linux (gtk) · alpine (musl) · windows · macos · android · ios · java/jvm · freebsd · netbsd linux · macos · windows
license NSL-1.0 → MIT after 10 years · The Nordstjernen Source License is inspired by the Functional Source License (FSL), a Fair Source license that converts to Apache 2.0 or MIT. GNU GPL v3 or later — free software
source github.com/nordstjernen-web/nordstjernen github.com/nordstjernen-web/northstar-browser
docs innovations in Nordstjernen · architecture guide the Northstar Browser page · build instructions

download

Latest tagged release: Nordstjernen 1.0.22 — released 31 July 2026. Builds for Windows, macOS and Linux — plus Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Alpine, FreeBSD, NetBSD, a Java jar and the source — are all on the download page. Android is available on Google Play, and Windows on the Microsoft Store.

Northstar 1.0.6 — released 31 July 2026 — is on GitHub, with a Windows build, a Fedora source RPM and the GPL source. Northstar downloads »

Download Nordstjernen »

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