Ultralight - Web Browser v0.9.5

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.9.5 - First General Update

Changelog: v0.9.2 → v0.9.5

Release Information

• Release Public Version: v0.9.5
• Previous Public Version: v0.9.2
• Release Date: November 2025
• Code Name: "Enhanced Experience"

---

🏆 Highlights

Most Impactful Features

1. Dark Mode System - Production-ready adaptive theming
2. Complete Settings System - 26 configurable options with persistence
3. Download Manager - Full-featured download handling
4. ARM64 Support - Complete cross-platform build pipeline
5. URL Suggestions - Intelligent autocomplete system

Best UI/UX Improvements

1. Unified glassmorphic design language
2. Consistent color palette with CSS variables
3. Refined toggle switches and controls
4. Keyboard shortcuts with Chrome-standard bindings
5. Smooth animations and transitions

---

🎉 Major Features & Systems

🎨 Dark Mode System (NEW)

• Intelligent Dark Mode with automatic brightness detection
  • Only applies to bright pages (luminance > 0.5) to prevent over-darkening
  • Filter-based inversion approach (invert(0.9) hue-rotate(180deg))
  • Preserves images, videos, and SVGs with counter-filters
  • Persistent toggle state across sessions
  • Removed "experimental" label - now production-ready

⚙️ Complete Settings System Overhaul

• 26 Configurable Settings across 7 categories:

  • Appearance (4): Dark Mode, Vibrant Window, Transparent Toolbar, Compact Tabs
  • Privacy & Security (8): AdBlock, Trackers, JavaScript, Web Security, Cookies, DNT, Clear History, File URLs
  • Address Bar & Suggestions (2): Autocompletion, Favicons
  • Downloads (3): Badge notifications, Auto-open panel, Ask save location
  • Performance (4): Smooth scrolling, Hardware acceleration, Local storage, Database
  • Accessibility (3): Reduce motion, High contrast, Caret browsing
  • Developer (2): Remote inspector, Performance overlay

• New Settings UI/UX:

  • Modern glassmorphic design matching downloads panel aesthetic
  • Unified dark theme with CSS custom properties
  • Smaller, refined toggle switches (40x20px with gradients)
  • Settings open in dedicated tab (not overlay)
  • JSON-based persistence with automatic migration
  • Runtime updates without restart (where applicable)
  • Settings Bridge for JavaScript ↔ Native communication

📥 Advanced Download System

• Complete Download Manager with:
  • Progress tracking with live percentage and size indicators
  • Download notification badge on toolbar icon
  • Auto-open panel on new downloads (configurable)
  • GUID-like filename filtering for cleaner UI
  • Blob/data URL handling with intelligent suppression
  • Download history persistence
  • Custom save location support
  • Stale request pruning
  • Full-featured download overlay panel with glassmorphic design

🔍 URL Suggestions & Autocomplete

• Intelligent Address Bar Suggestions:
  • Popular sites database from popular_sites.json
  • Real-time URL matching and autocomplete
  • Suggestion overlay with glassmorphic design
  • Smart caching for performance
  • Favicon integration in suggestions
  • Configurable via settings

🔧 Quick Inspector Tool

• Lightweight Developer Inspector:
  • Minimal overlay for quick page inspection
  • Runtime DOM/CSS debugging
  • No heavy DevTools overhead
  • Toggle via toolbar icon
  • Glassmorphic overlay design

⌨️ Enhanced Keyboard Shortcuts

• Available Shortcuts List:
  • Ctrl+H - Open History
  • Ctrl+J - Open Downloads
  • Ctrl+, - Open Settings (Chrome-standard)
  • Ctrl+L - Focus Address Bar
  • Ctrl+T - New Tab
  • Ctrl+W - Close Tab
• JSON-based shortcut mapping system (shortcuts.json)
• Menu displays shortcuts next to corresponding items

---

🎨 UI/UX Improvements

Appearance & Design

• Unified Color Palette:

  • CSS custom properties for consistent theming
  • Neutral grayscale backgrounds (#1e1e1e → #2d2d2d)
  • Single accent color (#8b7cf5 purple) replacing mixed blues/purples
  • Consistent border opacity system (0.06/0.08/0.12)
  • Three-tier text hierarchy (#e4e4e7, #a1a1aa, #71717a)

• Settings Panel Redesign:

  • Complete glassmorphic makeover
  • Backdrop blur effects with semi-transparency
  • Smooth animations and transitions
  • Better visual hierarchy with section grouping
  • Improved toggle switch aesthetics

• Toolbar & Icons:

  • Enhanced button tooltips with better positioning
  • "Ad Blocking" renamed to "AdBlock"
  • Improved icon accessibility
  • Vibrant window theme option
  • Transparent toolbar option (experimental)

Tab System Enhancements

• Compact Tabs Mode:
  • Reduced tab height for more screen space
  • Configurable via settings
  • Better tab positioning and spacing
  • Refined add-tab button styling and placement
  • Smooth drag-and-drop improvements

Animations & Transitions

• Global Page Transitions:
  • Smooth fade-in effects for page loads
  • Consistent animation timing across UI
  • Reduced motion option for accessibility
  • Transition effects in HTML assets

---

🔒 Privacy & Security

AdBlock System

• Enhanced Ad & Tracker Filtering:
  • Toggle via toolbar icon (shield badge)
  • Settings integration with persistent state
  • Runtime enable/disable without restart
  • Filter synchronization across tabs
  • UI state sync improvements

Privacy Controls

• Do Not Track (DNT) header configuration
• Clear History on Exit option
• Web Security Controls (JavaScript, cookies, storage)
• File URL Access control
• Cookie Management settings

---

🏗️ Architecture & Build System

Cross-Platform ARM64 Support

• Complete ARM64 Build Pipeline:
  • Linux ARM64 automated builds with aarch64 detection
  • macOS ARM64 (Apple Silicon) automatic SDK selection
  • Improved SDK extraction and root detection logic
  • GCC aarch64 workaround for Linux ARM compilation
  • ARM64-specific CI workflows with fallback to x64

CI/CD Enhancements

• GitHub Actions Improvements:
  • Orchestration workflows for multi-architecture builds
  • Workflow dispatch inputs for custom builds
  • Git config integration in CI
  • Override options for build customization
  • Permission configurations
  • macOS runner updated to latest version
  • Removed pull_request triggers from build workflows

Package Creation

• Build Artifacts:
  • TGZ archives for Linux/macOS
  • DEB packages for Debian/Ubuntu
  • RPM packages for Fedora/RHEL
  • ZIP portable packages for Windows
  • Optional NSIS installer for Windows
  • Optional DMG for macOS

---

📄 Static Content & Assets

Custom Static Pages

• Google-like Start Page:
  • Custom static Google homepage design
  • Hosted in assets/static-sites/
  • Fallback for offline browsing
  • Improved visual design matching modern Google

Asset Organization

• New Asset Files:
  • shortcuts.json - Keyboard shortcut mappings
  • popular_sites.json - Popular site suggestions database
  • blocklist.txt - Main ad/tracker blocklist
  • filters/ directory - Additional filter lists (adservers.txt, trackers.txt, urlpatterns.txt)
  • contextmenu.html - Context menu overlay
  • suggestions.html - URL suggestion overlay
  • quick-inspector.html - Developer inspector tool

---

🐛 Bug Fixes & Refinements

Settings System

• Improved settings file handling and migration logic
• Fixed settings persistence across sessions
• Better error handling for malformed JSON
• Runtime settings catalog generation
• Legacy settings migration support

Download System

• GUID-like filename detection and filtering
• Blob/data URL handling improvements
• Stale download request cleanup
• Progress tracking accuracy improvements
• Download state synchronization

UI Refinements

• Fixed indentation in HTML assets
• Improved tooltip positioning for toolbar buttons
• Better AdBlock toggle state handling
• Enhanced button accessibility
• Fixed formatting and spacing in tab UI files
• Reformat HTML for consistency

Build System

• Improved Ultralight SDK root detection
• Better ARM64 SDK handling
• CMake configuration improvements
• CPack packaging enhancements

🔮 Future Roadmap (Post v0.9.5)

Planned for v0.9.6+

• Extensions system support
• Bookmark management
• Session restore
• Reading mode
• Password manager integration
• Sync capabilities

🙏 Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

• Ultralight SDK Team for the amazing renderer
• All beta testers and early adopters
• Community contributors for feedback and bug reports

---

Testing

This release has been tested on:

• ✅ Windows 10/11 (x64)
• ✅ macOS 12+ (x64, arm64)
• ✅ Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 (x64)
• ✅ Fedora 38+ (x64)
• ✅ ARM64 Linux (limited testing)

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.9.2

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.9.2 - First Major Update

Updates:

• Fixed many issues and bugs
• Added workflow files for autobuild on Windows, Linux and macOS

Features:

• Universal Context Menu
• Local Browsing History
• Built-in Ad-Blocking System
• Built-in Track-Blocking System
• Universal Menu and Dropdown
• Automatic Dark Browsing
• Unified C++ <-> JS Bridge
• Every Favicon Support
• Improved UI/UX

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.5.2

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.5.2 - Favicons Support

Updates:

• Add proper tabs favicon loading and rendering

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.5.1

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.5.1 - Minor Fixes

Updates:

• Create initial Linux, MacOS and Windows GitHub Actions Build Pipelines
• Change Browser ICO to more transparent one
• Add support for multicolor (dark) window bar, automatically adjusting to the system

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.5.0

Ultralight - Web Browser v0.5.0 - Public Release

Initial build - v0.5.0!

Updates:

• Add proper keyboard shortcuts handlinng to navigate the browser
• Enhance events passing and tab activity workflow to better handle keyboard shortcuts
• Fix the directory where inspector data should be moved
• Create better workflow for the navbar and websites input fields

What's Changed

• Upgrade CI/CD Workflows by @ovsky in #27
• Upgrade Local Build Scripts and Dependencies by @ovsky in #29
• Refactor Static Homepage - 240x Lighter Homepage by @ovsky in #30
• Add cross-platform libcurl auto-install scripts to CI by @ovsky in #31
• Add browser UI fade-in transition animation by @ovsky in #32
• Fix the Toolbar Icons Sizes and SVGs by @ovsky in #33

---

Initial browser release!