I liked Helium, but I was missing a command bar. So I added one and made it the main place to navigate the browser: search, open pages, switch tabs and reach browser actions, all from the keyboard.
Vanta builds on Helium, with a few small personal touches, including customizable accent colors. Most of the browser comes from Helium and Chromium; Vanta focuses on how I move around it.
This is an independent project, not an official Helium release.
- Command Bar: press
⌘Kto open a native bar backed by Chromium's omnibox, with URL/search suggestions, history, bookmarks and open tabs. - Tabs within reach: floating tab cards, keyboard switching and a searchable overflow list. New tabs open with the Command Bar focused.
- Browser actions: search for commands, appearance controls and installed extension actions from the same bar.
- Your accent color: choose a preset, use the color picker or enter a HEX value in Settings → Appearance. The choice is saved per profile.
- A familiar start: onboarding includes importing from Helium on macOS, with Vanta's own name and artwork.
See Command Bar behavior, accent colors and profile import for details and limitations.
The first experimental release is v0.1.0-alpha.1 for macOS on Apple Silicon.
Download the DMG · SHA-256 checksums · All releases
Open the DMG and drag Vanta into Applications. The app is ad-hoc signed and not notarized; macOS may require approval in Privacy & Security on first launch. Automatic updates are not configured. Read the release notes for tested platforms, the existing development profile identity and known limitations. Linux, Windows and Intel Mac builds have not been validated.
See building and packaging to build from source and release publishing for the repeatable upload procedure.
Vanta follows Helium's patch-based development workflow. The public repository
is skfallin/vanta, a fork of Helium with its
upstream history preserved. Vanta's ordered patches, artwork, scripts and docs
live in the vanta/ overlay; upstream's shared source layout remains at the root.
Builds use a separate, pinned Helium macOS checkout. See the
publication audit for what is included and excluded.
| Component | Pinned baseline |
|---|---|
| Helium macOS tooling | 0.17.2.1 · 10373c4c5e6b0323b56aa676be8a96f9e12342c1 |
| Helium shared patches | 8c19f4c6d624e31293bca13e655f2fe542ba6fdb |
| Chromium | 153.0.8010.52 |
Start with the build guide. It covers dependencies, stock Helium verification, the Vanta launcher and local packaging. Apply the complete patch series following upstream maintenance. Artwork is installed by the patch script automatically.
Inside the vanta/ overlay:
assets/branding/ Vanta source artwork
patches/series Ordered Vanta patch list
patches/vanta/ Native UI, onboarding, appearance and branding changes
scripts/ Patch application, branding, build and packaging tools
tests/ Focused checks and synthetic fixtures
docs/ Build instructions, behavior and validation notes
Local builds and manual checks are documented in TESTING.md.
The full native browser-test target remains blocked by an upstream avatar-test
mismatch. Performance observations are limited to the workloads recorded in
PERFORMANCE.md; they are not a general performance claim.
References to logs/ and dist/ in development notes describe local artifacts,
which are intentionally excluded from Git.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Keep changes focused and preserve the upstream patch workflow. Report Vanta-specific issues in the Vanta issue tracker.
- Helium and its contributors, for the browser Vanta is built on, including its privacy work, interface and platform tooling.
- The Chromium Project, for the underlying engine.
- ungoogled-chromium for its upstream contributions.
- Other patch sources credited by Helium: Inox, Debian, Bromite, Iridium and Brave.
Vanta-specific code and modifications are licensed under GPL-3.0, following Helium. See LICENSE. Imported code retains its original license, including the ungoogled-chromium BSD license. Existing copyright and attribution notices must be preserved.