Browser Developers
XFII logo, a dark shield with a red wireframe wolf head above the wordmark XFII

Custom Chromium Builds

XFII Browser

A Chromium build with a custom new-tab page, disabled extensions and branding, and React pages inside the browser.

  • Chromium
  • React
  • New tab page
  • Branding

What was built

XFII is a Chromium build with a rebuilt new-tab experience in place of the stock Chromium page. Extensions are switched off, which keeps the browser’s feature set to what is built into it rather than what a user might add afterward. Parts of the interface are React pages rendered inside the browser instead of Chromium’s native UI toolkit, and the build carries its own branding throughout.

The engineering challenge

Disabling extensions and replacing the new-tab page both change how Chromium’s UI layer decides what a user sees first and what they can add to the browser afterward. Rendering parts of that interface as React pages inside the browser, instead of native Chromium UI, means those screens can be built and updated with ordinary web tooling rather than rebuilding the browser binary for every interface change.

Engineering scope and what shipped

  • A custom new-tab page
  • Extensions disabled
  • Custom branding
  • React pages displayed inside the browser

Engineering approach: how it fits together

How the XFII Browser is put together

  1. XFII Browser

    The browser’s own branding, carried across the interface.

  2. Custom new-tab page

    A new-tab page built for XFII in place of the Chromium default.

  3. React pages in-browser

    • React
    • Extensions disabled

    Parts of the browser interface are React pages rendered inside the browser, with extensions switched off.

  4. Chromium

    • Chromium

    The underlying Chromium engine the build runs on.

  5. Build and release

    Packaging and release of the branded build.

  • Your product
  • Our engineering
  • Upstream, kept as close to unmodified as possible
  • Platforms and release
XFII replaces Chromium’s default new-tab page and branding, with parts of the interface built as React pages and extensions switched off.

Related services

Facing a similar engineering problem?

Tell us what you are building. A browser engineer will walk you through how we would approach it, what is hard about it and what it takes to maintain.

Tell Us What You're Building

More in Custom Chromium Builds