Midori () is a
free and open-source
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
. In 2019, the Midori project was acquired by the Astian Foundation.
After the acquisition, the project became a derivative of the
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
browser.
History
Midori began as a lightweight
web browser using the
WebKitGTK rendering engine
and the
GTK
GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both Free software, free and ...
widget toolkit. Midori was part of the
Xfce desktop environment's Goodies collection of applications and followed the Xfce principle of "making the most out of available resources". It was the default browser in the
SliTaz Linux distribution,
[Spotlight on Linux: SliTaz GNU/Linux 3.0](_blank)
. Linux Journal Trisquel Mini,
Artix Linux, old versions of
Raspbian, and
wattOS in its "R5 release". It was the default browser in
elementary OS
Elementary OS (stylized as elementary OS) is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu LTS. It promotes itself as a "thoughtful, capable, and ethical" replacement to macOS and Microsoft Windows, Windows and has a pay what you want, pay-what-you-wan ...
"Freya" and "Luna", and
Bodhi Linux. Midori was part of the standard
Raspbian distribution for the
Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...
ARMv6-based
computer
A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
, while
Dillo and
NetSurf are also in the menu.
Midori passed the standard compliance
Acid3 test.
In March 2014, Midori scored 405/555 on the HTML5 test.
In July 2015, Midori 0.5 on Windows 8 scored 325/555 on the updated HTML5 test.
In June 2024, Astian's CEO announced Midori would launch their own open source
VPN service. The VPN service became available in February 2025, though not yet integrated within the browser.
In March 2025, Astian released version 11.5.2, the first version to support
macOS
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
. It also announced plans for making Midori available on iPhone and iPad.
Features
Midori featured:
* Support for integration with GTK2
[Midori Web Browser](_blank)
. BeginLinux.com and GTK3
*
WebKitGTK rendering engine
* Tabs, windows and session management
* Configurable web search engine
* User scripts and user styles support
* Bookmark management
* Customizable and extensible interface
* Extension modules can be written in
C and
Vala
* Support for
HTML5
HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...
[Arch Linux and desktop adventures with the Raspberry Pi](_blank)
. greenhughes
*
DuckDuckGo as a default search engine
*
Internationalized domain name
An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacrit ...
s support
*
Smart bookmarks
* Extensions
**
Adblock Plus
**
Form history
**
Mouse gestures
** Cookie management
**
RSS Feed panel
*
Maemo integration for mobile devices
*
Speed dial
* 'Next Page' feature
[Web-browser Midori Adds Unity Support and Neat 'Next Page' Feature](_blank)
OMG! Ubuntu!
* Support for
Ubuntu Unity
Ubuntu Unity is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, using the Unity (user interface), Unity interface in place of Ubuntu's GNOME Shell. The first release was 20.04 LTS on 7 May 2020. Prior to the initial release it had the working names of U ...
*
Private browsing
* Tab backup for the next session by default
Reception
The former Midori was recommended by ''
Lifehacker
''Lifehacker'' is a weblog about life hacks and software that launched on 31 January 2005. The site was originally launched by Gawker Media and is owned by Ziff Davis. The blog posts cover a wide range of topics including Microsoft Windows, M ...
'' due to its simplicity. The major points for criticism are the absence of the process isolation, the low number of available extensions and occasional crashes.
Nick Veitch from ''
TechRadar'' included Midori 0.2.2 in his 2010 list of the eight best web browsers for Linux. At that time he rated it as "5/10" and concluded, "while it does perform reasonably well all-round, there is no compelling reason to choose this browser over the default Gnome browser, Epiphany, or indeed any of the bigger boys".
Himanshu Arora of ''
Computerworld'' reviewed Midori 0.5.4 in November 2013 and praised the browser's speed and uncluttered interface, while additionally underlining the private browsing which uses a separate launch icon and displays the details of this mode on the home tab.
Victor Clarke from
Gigaom praised the former Midori's minimalism in 2014 and stated that it will "satisfy your humble needs without slowing down your PC", despite stressing the lack of advanced functionality.
See also
*
GNOME Web – a similar web browser based on GTK and WebKitGTK
*
List of web browsers for Unix and Unix-like operating systems
References
External links
Midori website archiveson
Archive.org
Midori projecton
GitLab
GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition.
History
GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Midori (Web Browser)
Free software programmed in C
Free software programmed in Vala
Free web browsers
Web browsers based on Firefox
Software_based_on_WebKit
POSIX web browsers
Windows web browsers