Built, not bolted together

Protection

The ad blocker is part of the program

Filter lists run in the main process and take effect before a request leaves the device. Nothing to install afterwards, no store, no third-party code with access to every page you open.

The most common way to take over a browser today runs through a bought or hijacked extension. For the blocker, that route doesn't exist here.

Security

Warns about scam sites without watching you

Known phishing and malware sites are on two free lists, fed by OpenPhish, PhishTank and URLhaus. Aszendra downloads them twice a day and checks every address on your computer — no address, and no part of one, is sent anywhere for it.

Two optional switches go further: HTTPS-only mode upgrades every unencrypted page to HTTPS and asks instead of quietly loading it unencrypted when that fails. Secure DNS sends your DNS queries encrypted to Cloudflare, Quad9, Mullvad or Google instead of your network provider.

The lists name the hosts where the scams live, not the big platforms. That is why checking on your own computer is enough — and if you're sure, “open anyway” gets you past the warning.

Passwords

The vault is a program of its own

Not a matter of taste: everything running in the main process shares memory with every bundled package — with an Electron program, that is quickly several hundred. So the vault is a separate Rust program. They talk in lines of JSON; there is no more contact surface than that.

The master password does not encrypt the data. Through Argon2id it encrypts only a random vault key. Changing the password therefore costs a re-wrapping rather than a re-encryption.

New passwords are rolled by the vault itself: in the key menu, with the length and kinds of characters you choose, or with a right-click straight into a password field. Every character is equally likely, and copied passwords disappear from the clipboard after 45 seconds.

The password check shows at the press of a button which saved passwords appear in known data breaches, are reused or are too short. Only the first five characters of a hash leave your computer for the breach check. And if you'd rather stay with Bitwarden or another password manager: their extensions work, and with your permission they may talk to their desktop app.

Every entry is encrypted individually, with its own identifier as additional data — so no entry can be swapped for another.

Memory

Forty tabs don't cost forty processes

A background tab that has done nothing for twenty minutes gives its renderer process back. The tab's navigation history stays, the memory is freed.

The other way round, a restored tab only gets a process on first click: a session with forty tabs starts as fast as one with a single tab. Adjustable through suspendAfterMinutes; 0 turns it off.

Overview

The Constellation

⌘K or Ctrl+Tab opens a star map of every open tab. What belongs together forms a named constellation: an article and everything you opened from it, or several pages of the same website. Lines connect tabs that opened one another.

Brighter stars were used more recently, hollow rings are unloaded tabs. On the right is a preview of the selected star, including where it was opened from. Typing dims what doesn't match, the arrow keys move in the direction you press, and Ctrl+Tab followed by Enter takes you back to the previous tab.

Every website has a fixed place in the sky, today and after a restart. The map doesn't turn around the active tab, and that is exactly what lets you remember where things are.

Nachlese

Find again what you've read

History knows titles and addresses. That's enough as long as you remember the title, but not for “there was something about the Ring Nebula somewhere”. Nachlese therefore searches the text of the pages you've read and shows the passage where the word appeared.

⌘⇧F or Ctrl+Shift+F opens it. It searches as you type, matches the beginnings of words, and accents don't have to be right.

A full-text index of everything you read is a different thing from a list of addresses. That's why Nachlese stays off until you switch it on. It lives only on your machine, private windows are always left out, and individual sites can be excluded.

Address bar

Nothing jumps

At rest the bar shows the page as text: host emphasised, path dimmed, and a “Not secure” note on plain HTTP. On ⌘L or a click, a text field appears in exactly the same place — same height, same border, same spacing.

You can choose DuckDuckGo (the default), Startpage, Brave Search, Ecosia, Qwant, Google and Bing — in that order, and that is not a ranking but a stance: the ones that don't take notes come first.

The suggestion names the chosen engine. Where an input goes belongs where you send it — otherwise you find out from the results.

Private windows

What is never written doesn't need deleting

A private window gets a session of its own without persistent storage. Cookies, cache and local data never reach the disk in the first place.

And in ordinary windows nothing stays longer than you want: cookies and site data can be viewed and deleted per site, or removed entirely on quit, with exceptions for the sites where you want to stay signed in.

The ad blocker and filling in from the vault still apply. Deliberately not the offer to save a new password — a new entry would be exactly the trace that is not supposed to appear here.

The start page also says what a private window cannot do: to the sites you visit, your network and your employer, you remain visible.

Appearance

Violet, Dark Cherry or your own colour

You pick the accent in the settings: the familiar violet, Dark Cherry in wine red, or a colour of your own.

For your own colour, a single hue is enough. Aszendra derives every shade from it — a bright accent for dark backgrounds, a deeper one for light ones, and tinted surfaces if you like. Brightness stays within limits, so text and outlines remain readable whatever colour you choose.

The colour applies throughout Aszendra: tab strip, new tab, settings, history, passwords. Other people's websites stay as they are.