| Light Theme | Dark Theme |
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Zidimi Browser is a fast, modern, and privacy-respecting desktop web browser built for Windows with WPF and the Chromium engine (via CefSharp). It pairs a sleek, minimalist interface with genuinely useful productivity features — multi-profile support, guest mode, built-in autofill, a downloads manager, and instant UI localization — so you get a seamless, distraction-free browsing experience.
- Built on Chromium for full modern-web compatibility
- Multi-language UI that switches instantly, no restart needed
- Privacy-first defaults: Do Not Track, third-party cookie blocking, safe-browsing warnings
- 100% local data: settings, bookmarks, autofill and browsing data stay on your machine
- Sleek interface — clean, pill-shaped design language with smooth animations and custom popups/toasts built from scratch (no third-party UI kit).
- Themes — Light, Dark, or follow your system. The whole UI swaps live via resource dictionaries.
- Zoom & font size — set a default page zoom (25% → 200%) and UI font size (12–18) that apply across tabs.
- Chromium engine via CEF — fast page loads and full web standards support.
- Security indicators — the address bar shows a clear lock/warning for HTTPS, HTTP, and internal pages, with a site-info popup showing connection and permission details.
- Privacy controls — block third-party cookies, send Do Not Track requests, enable Safe Browsing, and warn before visiting sites with invalid certificates.
- Multi-profile — create and switch between independent profiles; each profile keeps its own history, bookmarks and autofill under
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\Browser\User Data\<profile>, while the browser cache is shared atUser Data\Cache. (CocCoc-style layout.) - Guest mode — one click for a temporary, fully in-memory session. No history, cookies, or site data are ever written to disk.
- Intelligent address bar — type a URL or search, and get live suggestions from your history, bookmarks, and search engine.
- Multiple search engines — DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, and Brave Search.
- Find in page — press
Ctrl + Fto search within the current page.
- Instant localization — switch UI language from Settings and it applies immediately.
- Supported languages: English, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Russian.
- Auto-translate — optionally route non-Vietnamese pages through Google Translate.
- Tabs — open, close, reorder by drag-and-drop, pin (mini icon tabs at the front), duplicate, mute, and reload. Audio-playing tabs show a speaker indicator.
- Internal App Tabs — built-in pages like Settings, History, Bookmarks, and Downloads open seamlessly as regular browser tabs for a unified experience.
- Bookmarks — save pages with the star button (
Ctrl + D) or manage them in the Bookmarks view; persisted to JSON. - History — every visited page is grouped intuitively by date and listed in the History view with search filtering. Built-in confirmation dialogues prevent accidental deletions.
- Download manager — track progress, open files, and reveal them in Explorer from the Downloads view. Choose a custom download folder or be asked before each save.
- Data Manager (autofill) — store and manage passwords, payment cards, and addresses for auto-filling forms.
- Startup behavior — start on a fresh tab, restore your last session, or open a fixed set of pages.
- Run in background — closing the window keeps Zidimi running quietly in the system tray (with an icon and menu) until you exit it explicitly.
- DevTools — press
F12to open Chromium's full developer tools. - View source, Print, and a fully customized right-click context menu (open link in new tab, copy link/image, save link/image as…).
- Title bar — custom
ZidimiWindowframe with the brand name and a tab strip below it. - Tab strip — one tab per open page; internal pages (Settings, History, Bookmarks, Downloads) open as their own tabs too. Right-click a tab for pin/mute/duplicate/close actions. Click the chevrons or scroll to browse many tabs, and use the tab-list button to jump anywhere.
- Toolbar — Back / Forward / Reload (which turns into Stop while loading), a security icon (site info), the omnibox with autocomplete, a star (bookmark), a zoom indicator, and the menu (≡) for History, Bookmarks, Find in page, DevTools, and Preferences.
- Avatar / profile menu — toggle Guest Mode or jump to Profile settings.
- Status area — a slim loading progress bar under the toolbar while pages load.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl + T |
New tab |
Ctrl + W |
Close current tab |
Ctrl + Tab / Ctrl + Shift + Tab |
Next / previous tab |
Ctrl + 1 … Ctrl + 8 |
Jump to tab 1–8 |
Ctrl + 9 |
Jump to last tab |
Ctrl + L |
Focus the address bar |
Ctrl + F |
Find in page |
Ctrl + D |
Bookmark / unbookmark current page |
Ctrl + H |
Open History |
Ctrl + J |
Open Downloads |
F5 / Ctrl + R |
Reload page |
Ctrl + + / Ctrl + - / Ctrl + 0 |
Zoom in / out / reset |
Alt + ← / Alt + → |
Back / forward |
F11 |
Toggle fullscreen (maximize) |
F12 |
Developer tools |
Esc |
Close find bar / menu |
- Do Not Track — sends a
DNT: 1header with every request when enabled. - Third-party cookie blocking — enforced at the Chromium level.
- Safe browsing / certificate warnings — you are asked before visiting a site with an invalid security certificate.
- Native JS dialogs —
alert,confirm, andpromptare rendered with Zidimi's own window, so malicious sites can't spam native dialogs. - Guest mode — an in-memory session that records nothing to disk.
- 1-click data wipe — clear history, cookies, cache, and saved data from Settings → Privacy.
- Local data — everything is stored on your machine (see below). Note: passwords are saved locally in a SQLite
Login Datafile as plaintext (not DPAPI-encrypted like Chrome), so treat it like a regular app password store.
Data follows a CocCoc/Chromium-style layout: a Browser\User Data folder with a Local State metadata file, a shared Cache folder, and one sub-folder per profile. History, autofill and passwords are stored as SQLite databases using Chrome's schema, so they can be inspected with any SQLite browser.
| Data | Location | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Settings | %APPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\settings.json |
JSON |
User Data root (cache + profiles) |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\Browser\User Data\ |
folder |
Profile metadata (Local State) |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\Browser\User Data\Local State |
JSON |
| Shared browser cache & cookies | %LOCALAPPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\Browser\User Data\Cache\ |
CEF |
| Default profile folder | %LOCALAPPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\Browser\User Data\Default\ |
folder |
| Additional profiles | %LOCALAPPDATA%\ZidimiBrowser\Browser\User Data\<ProfileName>\ |
folder |
| Browsing history (per profile) | User Data\<profile>\History |
SQLite (urls/visits) |
| Bookmarks (per profile) | User Data\<profile>\Bookmarks |
JSON |
| Autofill — addresses & cards (per profile) | User Data\<profile>\Web Data |
SQLite (autofill_profiles/credit_cards) |
| Passwords (per profile) | User Data\<profile>\Login Data |
SQLite (logins) |
| Crash log | zidimi-browser-crash.log (next to the exe) |
text |
Note: the cache (including cookies and site data) is shared across profiles — like CocCoc. Passwords are stored in Login Data as plaintext (not DPAPI-encrypted like Chrome), so treat it like a regular app password store.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Language | C# (.NET 8) |
| UI framework | WPF (MVVM pattern) |
| Rendering engine | Chromium via CefSharp.Wpf.NETCore 150 |
| Persistence | SQLite (history/autofill/passwords) + local JSON files |
| Target platform | Windows 10 / 11, x86 (32-bit, for max CefSharp compatibility) |
The app follows MVVM (MainViewModel, ViewModelBase, RelayCommand) with a custom control suite (ZidimiButton, ZidimiWindow, ZidimiMessageBox, ZidimiPopup, ZidimiToast, ZidimiJsDialog, …) and theme switching by swapping merged ResourceDictionarys — everything binds with DynamicResource so the UI re-themes live.
Browser events are wired through dedicated CEF handlers in Infrastructure/Handlers/:
RequestHandler— DNT header injection, certificate error promptsLifeSpanHandler—window.open/target=_blankopen new tabs instead of new windowsContextMenuHandler— fully custom right-click menuDownloadHandler— download tracking + save dialogsJsDialogHandler— native-feeling alert/confirm/prompt windowsKeyboardHandler— browser-level shortcutsDisplayHandler(FaviconHandler) — per-tab faviconsAudioHandler— per-tab audio indicators & muting
- Windows 10 or Windows 11 (32-bit or 64-bit — the app itself builds and runs as x86)
- .NET 8.0 Desktop Runtime (download)
# restore packages and build
dotnet build Zidimi_Browser.slnx
# or open Zidimi_Browser.slnx in Visual Studio 2022+ and press F5The first build downloads the CefSharp NuGet package (~200 MB) and copies the Chromium binaries into the output folder. Run Zidimi.Browser.exe from bin\Debug\net8.0-windows\win-x86\.
- Click the avatar (right of the address bar) to enable Guest Mode or manage profiles.
- Press
Ctrl + ,or the menu (≡) → Preferences to change theme, language, search engine, startup behavior, and more. - Star your favorite pages with
Ctrl + D, then browse them in Bookmarks.
- CefSharp — BSD-3-Clause. Thank you to the CefSharp team and contributors for making a Chromium-powered WPF browser possible.
- Chromium — BSD-style license (Chromium license).
- Microsoft.Xaml.Behaviors.Wpf — MIT.
This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.