Minimal Browser
A bare-bones desktop browser that accidentally became popular at school
github.com
Minimal Browser is exactly what the name promises: a desktop web browser built on Electron, with the interface stripped back to the essentials. I built it as a learning project alongside Minimal Browser’s sibling, Minimal Editor, mostly to understand how Electron talks to its underlying Chromium.
It then had a second life I really did not plan for. It turned out that, because Minimal Browser was a standalone executable with its own rendering engine, it quietly bypassed my school’s network filters. Within a few weeks it had been downloaded thousands of times by students who wanted to watch YouTube during break. That was not the intended use case. It was a very instructive lesson in how software can pick up a life of its own once it leaves your hands.
The project is still up on GitHub for anyone who wants a very simple starting point for an Electron-based browser. Just maybe don’t install it on a school computer.