ungoogled-chromium

Welcome back, self-hosters! Today, we’re diving into a browser project designed with privacy in mind — ungoogled-chromium, available as a ready-to-deploy Docker image via LinuxServer.io.

What is ungoogled-chromium?

ungoogled-chromium is a lightweight browser that strips out all the Google-dependent services and trackers from Chromium, Google’s open source version of Chrome. It aims to provide a safer, private, and more transparent browsing experience while maintaining most of the core functionality that makes Chromium popular — like speed and strong HTML5 support.

Why run it in Docker?

Running ungoogled-chromium in a Docker container gives you a fully isolated browser environment. This is great for testing, secure browsing, accessing content privately, or creating a kiosk setup. With Docker, you get portability, easy updates, and reproducibility — perfect for any self-hosted setup.

Getting Started

The easiest way to deploy ungoogled-chromium in Docker is using a docker-compose file. LinuxServer.io provides updated images and documentation to get you running in minutes.

Requirements

• Docker installed on your system
• docker-compose installed (optional, but recommended)

Example docker-compose Setup

You can find the official compose examples at the official documentation page here. Below is a minimal example:

version: '3.7'
services:
  ungoogled-chromium:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/ungoogled-chromium:latest
    container_name: ungoogled-chromium
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined # for shared memory access
    shm_size: "2gb"
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/London
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    restart: unless-stopped

This setup will make ungoogled-chromium accessible via a VNC-like web session in your browser. You may want to secure it or run it behind a reverse proxy with authentication depending on your needs.

Use Cases

• Secure browsing: Never worry about browser isolation — your browsing session is sandboxed away from your main OS.
• Kiosk mode or digital signage: Create self-contained browser displays powering smart mirrors, dashboards, or infoboards.
• Thin clients: Serve ephemeral browser sessions to terminal clients without requiring them to have a full desktop env installed.
• Testing: Quickly test websites in a clean, controlled browser environment.

Tips & Tricks

• Persist config and bookmarks using the volume mount to ./config.
• Change resolution or behavior using additional environment variables documented in the image docs.
• Restrict access with a firewall or VPN — never expose browser containers directly to the Internet.

ungoogled-chromium in Docker is a power tool for the privacy-minded self-hoster. Fast, simple, and private — just the way we like it!

Happy selfhosting, and I will see you in the next post!