Goldfinch Goldfinch v0.10.4 · MIT
An open-source desktop browser

A browser for people who read the source.

Goldfinch is a Chromium-based browser built on Electron — privacy by default, containerized identities, a media panel that catalogs the page, and an automation surface your AI agent can drive. One runtime dependency. No telemetry. MIT licensed.

The Goldfinch mark
The American goldfinch — small, bright, hard to track.
MITLicense — fork it, ship it, audit it
1 depOne runtime dependency, pinned exact
0 egressNo telemetry, no analytics, nothing silent
3 OSmacOS · Windows · Linux installers
01 — Privacy

Shields up on every session, not just the default one.

Four independent strategies, each individually toggleable, applied automatically to every container, burner, and default tab the moment its session is created.

Tracker & ad blocking

Cancels requests to known tracker and ad domains — analytics, ads, social pixels — classified by registrable domain.

Tracking-param stripping

Removes utm_*, fbclid, gclid, and 30+ other ad-click parameters from outgoing URLs; trims Referer to origin only.

Third-party cookie isolation

Strips Cookie headers and drops Set-Cookie on all cross-site requests.

Fingerprint farbling

Per-session noise injected into Canvas, WebGL, and AudioContext APIs, plus navigator spoofing — every jar gets its own seed.

“The whole trust boundary fits in an afternoon of reading. That’s the feature.” Design principle — one runtime dependency
02 — Containers

Cookie jars you can name, color, wipe, and burn.

Each jar is its own session partition — separate cookies, storage, cache, and farble seed. New installs ship with Personal and Work; add your own from the jar management page.

Per-jar history & retention

Browsing history is recorded per jar with configurable retention (1–3650 days) and powers frecency-ranked address-bar suggestions — purely local, never suggested across jars.

Burner tabs

A non-persistent partition that evaporates when the tab closes. No cookies, no storage, no history — nothing left behind.

New Identity

One click wipes the jar's cookies and storage, rerolls its fingerprint seed, and reloads — the site can't link the new session to the old.

Per-jar data controls

Confirm-gated clear cookies / site storage / cache, plus full identity wipe — from the goldfinch://jars management page.

03 — Automation

An MCP surface your agent can drive — gated and local.

Off by default. The Settings toggle is the sole bind gate, and it ships in the installed binary — a human turns it on, per-jar API keys authenticate every request, and the server binds to loopback only with Origin/Host pinned against DNS rebinding.

30 tools

Drive (navigate, click, type, scroll, drag), observe (screenshot, DOM read, a11y tree), eval (evaluate, injectScript — zero CDP), DevTools, and jar-scoped history.

Jar-scoped keys

A jar key sees only its own jar's tabs and history. An env-gated admin tier adds chrome/app-level ops for dogfooding.

Agent-native history

The getHistory tool gives an automation client read access to its own jar's browsing memory — the browser as a first-class MCP citizen.

Audited

Every authenticated request lands in an audit log, viewable in Settings. Activity indicator in the toolbar while any session is live.

04 — Download

Get v0.10.4.

Free, MIT, no account. Or build from source: npm install && npm start (Node ≥ 22).

PlatformInstallerAlt
macOSApple Silicon Goldfinch-0.10.4-arm64.dmg .zip
Windowsx64 · NSIS Goldfinch-Setup-0.10.4.exe
Linuxx64 Goldfinch-0.10.4.AppImage .deb

Heads up: builds are currently unsigned — the first launch shows a Gatekeeper (macOS) / SmartScreen (Windows) warning; allow it through. macOS builds are Apple Silicon only for now.

05 — Contribute

Small codebase, high standards, real reviews.

Run it

Node ≥ 22, one install, one start. Electron does the rest.

npm install && npm start

Verify it

Unit tests, typecheck, lint, and a live-app axe-core a11y gate.

npm test && npm run typecheck && npm run lint

Shape it

Issues and PRs welcome. CI runs tests, typecheck, lint, and a package smoke-build on every PR.

github.com/msieurthenardier/goldfinch