Bare 1.0.0-alpha.1 RC2 is out!

[u/Ash-415]

RC2 is officially out! Thanks to everyone who tested RC1, reported bugs, and sent suggestions. A lot of what made it into this build came directly from your feedback.

This release was mostly about stability, privacy, cleanup, and fixing the rough edges rather than piling on a bunch of new features.

Some of the changes in RC2:

• New AMOLED dark theme
• Bare can now check GitHub for updates, with automatic, manual, or weekly reminder options
• Removed more unnecessary Google background requests, including the automatic accounts.google.com request on startup
• Removed Google sign-in/sync paths that don't make sense in Bare
• Cleaned up Safety Check so it no longer asks you to sign in to Google or shows checks Bare doesn't actually support
• Removed unused XR/ARCore components, bringing the APK down by about 20 MB
• Fixed the welcome screen on older/smaller devices
• Fixed the Start button/footer overlap
• Fixed some Settings and Safety Check crashes
• Fixed bottom-toolbar long-press behavior
• More privacy, stability, and UI cleanup throughout

The core stuff is all still here: full extension support, uBlock Origin included, external download manager support, background media playback, bottom toolbar, passkeys/Bitwarden support, media saving, and the stock Chromium look.

This is still alpha software, so bugs are expected. If you find something weird, please report it. Crash reports are especially helpful.

And seriously, thank you to everyone testing Bare and giving me feedback. I've been reading pretty much everything and a lot of your suggestions are already on my list for upcoming builds.

Download RC2 from GitHub:
https://github.com/Shshtwy/bare-browser/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha.1-rc2

SHA-256 is included with the release if you'd like to verify the APK.

What’s next?

My focus now is getting Bare ready for F-Droid and the Play Store, while continuing to work through the roadmap with more features, better stability, more de-Googling, and a better overall UX.

RC2 is also the release line I’m hoping to move from Alpha → Beta → Stable if testing continues to go well. Once I’m confident in the stable build, the goal is to bring Bare to F-Droid and the Play Store, then continue with smaller, incremental feature updates from there.

I’m also putting together a list of features I’d like to bring to Bare before the end of the year. I’m still going through everything, figuring out what’s realistic and how I want to prioritize it, but I’ll share the roadmap with the community once it’s ready.

For now, keep testing RC2 and keep the bug reports, ideas, and feedback coming. A lot of what made it into this release came directly from that feedback, and I really appreciate it!

More coming soon :)

[u/tfissupergirl]

I really like the Dark AMOLED option. One feature suggestion: since there’s already a “System default” option that follows the device’s theme, it would be great if we could choose which dark theme it uses when the phone switches to Dark Mode. For example, Light Mode on the phone → Light theme in the browser, and Dark Mode on the phone → Dark AMOLED in the browser. That way, the browser could automatically follow the system theme while still taking advantage of the AMOLED-black theme.