Goldfinch — a privacy-first browser you can drive

Why Goldfinch

Three things no mainstream browser gives you.

Not a fork of anyone's browser UI — a purpose-built shell where privacy, media, and automation are first-class, inspectable, and yours.

🛡

Shields, on every session

Tracker & ad blocking, tracking-param stripping, third-party cookie isolation, and fingerprint farbling — applied automatically to every container, burner, and default tab. Per-site pause when you need it.

🍪

Real container jars

Every jar is its own session partition — separate cookies, storage, cache, and farble seed. Per-jar history with retention controls, one-click identity wipes, and ephemeral burner tabs that evaporate on close.

⬇

A media panel, built in

Scans the live DOM for images, srcset, CSS backgrounds, video, audio, and known embeds — preview in a lightbox, play audio in a docked player, or download with the page's own session, individually or in one batch.

Containers

Identities you can see, name, and burn.

Click the ▾ by the new-tab button. Personal, Work, and your own jars run in isolated partitions; a burner tab leaves nothing behind.

New Identity — wipe cookies + storage, reroll the fingerprint seed, reload.
Per-jar data controls — clear cookies, site storage, or cache per jar, confirm-gated.
Per-jar history — recorded per jar with configurable retention (1–3650 days), powering local address-bar suggestions.

Personal

default · persist:personal
retention 30d

Work

persist:work
retention 90d

Research

persist:research
retention 7d

Burner tab

in-memory
evaporates on close

Automation

Drive your browser from an agent — gated, local, audited.

Goldfinch exposes an MCP-compatible automation surface over Streamable HTTP, bound to 127.0.0.1 only. Off by default; per-jar API keys; Origin/Host pinned against DNS rebinding.

30 tools — drive (navigate, click, type, scroll), observe (screenshot, DOM, a11y tree), eval, devtools.
Human-gated — the Settings toggle is the sole bind gate; minting a key never enables it.
Jar-scoped keys — an automation client sees only its own jar's tabs and history.

MCP · streamable HTTP · 127.0.0.1:49707

# .mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "goldfinch": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:49707/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <jar-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

→ 30 tools: enumerateTabs, openTab, click,
  captureScreenshot, readDom, getHistory…

Download

v0.10.4 — free, MIT, no account.

Grab an installer, or build from source with npm install && npm start.

Platform

Installer

macOS Apple Silicon

Goldfinch-0.10.4-arm64.dmg .zip

Windows x64 · NSIS

Goldfinch-Setup-0.10.4.exe

Linux x64

Goldfinch-0.10.4.AppImage .deb

Note: builds are currently unsigned — the first launch shows a Gatekeeper (macOS) / SmartScreen (Windows) warning. Allow it through to run.

Open source

Small enough to read. Strict enough to trust.

Goldfinch keeps its footprint auditable on purpose — you can read the entire trust boundary in an afternoon.

runtime dependency (the MCP SDK, pinned exact)

telemetry, analytics, or silent network egress

MIT

license — use it, fork it, ship it

tests · typecheck · lint · audit on every PR

Hostile-URL defense at two independent enforcement points — renderer gate + main-process will-navigate guard.
Internal pages served from a privileged goldfinch:// scheme with a strict CSP; privileged IPC origin-checked in the main process.
Accessibility regression-gated: axe-core sweeps against the live app, WCAG 2.1 A/AA.
Supply-chain hardened CI — every action pinned to a full commit SHA.

The browser that minds its own business — and lets you mind yours.

Media 23 items