Nordstjernen Browser 1.0.21 released!

Today, 28 July 2026, we are pleased to announce the release of Nordstjernen 1.0.21. This release brings a full Media Queries Level 4 evaluator, in-engine SVG rendering, HLS and DASH streaming through Media Source Extensions, a redesigned about:start splash, and client hints that identify Nordstjernen as itself instead of impersonating Chrome. Nordstjernen is a web browser, written from scratch in C, focused on supporting the HTML and CSS standards. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with builds for Android, iOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and the JVM. Nordstjernen is built in Norway.

Nordstjernen Browser version 1.0.21 is available now! Read the full release notes here, or jump straight to the downloads.

It ships alongside Northstar 1.0.5, the GPL-licensed single-process edition of the same engine.

« Back to nordstjernen.org

what’s new in 1.0.21

• CSS and rendering. A full Media Queries Level 4 evaluator, live CSSOM media lists and rule mutation, stricter declaration parsing, container-query fixes, vertical text, corrected flex and grid sizing and margin coordinates, and real scrollable-overflow measurement.
• Adaptive streaming. HLS and DASH sources now feed Media Source Extensions when the optional libav backend is present — master and media playlists, EXT-X-MAP and byte-range segments, live playlists, and DASH SegmentTemplate with timelines or fixed durations. MSE type detection, buffering and eviction were all made more robust, so long-running playback stays inside its byte quota.
• Images and graphics. SVG is rendered in-engine with masks, markers and CSS presentation properties. APNG, GIF and animated WebP now play through the shared image path instead of freezing on frame one.
• Web platform. Iframe scripts, events and performance objects stay in their own document realm. DOM reflection, text-control selection, mutation observers, Shadow DOM, XMLHttpRequest and platform-interface semantics were all brought closer to their specifications.
• Networking and speed. Speculative loads are reused instead of refetched, HTTP cache variants respect Vary, the nghttp2 and HTTP/3 backends got correctness and lifecycle fixes, and container-query and nested-flex layout avoid major repeated work.
• Safety. A reachable over-read in the vendored MPEG-1 decoder — found by fuzzing under AddressSanitizer, and reachable from page content through an MPEG-1 <video> — was contained. No bound was tightened, so video that decoded before still decodes.
• Privacy. Sec-CH-UA and navigator.userAgentData report "Nordstjernen" instead of impersonating Chromium and Google Chrome, and a new --private flag starts the browser in private-browsing mode.
• A redesigned about:start. The splash is now a daytime scene whose ground is a procedurally generated planet surface sampled through a real pinhole projection, with an ocean-to-snow terrain ramp, clouds, a specular sun column and atmospheric haze into the limb. The loading bar is gone and the animation is 322 KB, down from 1.8 MB.
• Documentation. A new whole-system architecture guide maps the process tree, IPC boundaries, engine pipeline and information flows.

about Nordstjernen

HTML Standard. Behaviour is measured against the spec text, section by section, not against another browser — 140 spec rows fully implemented, 31 partial, 0 absent across WHATWG HTML sections 1–16 as of July 2026. Against the Web Platform Tests, the full wpt-fast tree passes 88.4% of subtests overall — 91.7% of the HTML suite. See docs/HTML-compatibility.md.

Secure. Process-per-tab design — each tab's engine runs in its own sandboxed process (seccomp + Landlock on Linux), talking to the UI over IPC and shared-memory framebuffers · no JIT.

Minimalism. The whole engine is about 160,000 lines of project C and headers (plus a thin GTK 4 shell), excluding the vendored libraries and generated assets — small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end.

Private. Nordstjernen has no JIT so it is much more secure, and can still be fast enough. It ships no telemetry of any kind, and deliberately includes no AI assistant and no AI-style web APIs.

news

28 JUL 2026 · Nordstjernen 1.0.21 released — Media Queries Level 4, in-engine SVG, HLS and DASH streaming, a redesigned about:start, and honest client hints. Release notes »

28 JUL 2026 · Northstar 1.0.5 released — in-engine SVG, WebP/APNG, and MPEG-1 video playback. Announcement » · Release notes »

23 JUL 2026 · Northstar 1.0.4 released — a maintenance release. Release notes »

22 JUL 2026 · Nordstjernen 1.0.20 released — WebGL on by default, a blinking caret, site-compatibility and memory-safety work. Announcement » · Release notes »

22 JUL 2026 · Northstar 1.0.3 released — the GPL-licensed single-process edition. Announcement » · Release notes »

17 JUL 2026 · Nordstjernen 1.0.19 released — web-standards conformance, a new animated splash, and an iOS port. Announcement » · Release notes »

6 JUL 2026 · Nordstjernen 1.0.18 released — a maintenance release. Announcement » · Release notes »

5 JUN 2026 · Nordstjernen 1.0.0 released — the first stable release. Announcement » · Release notes »

download

Latest tagged release: Nordstjernen 1.0.21 — released 28 July 2026. full release notes »

Nordstjernen is also available on the Microsoft Store and Google Play.

Windows	nordstjernen-windows-x86_64.zip · Microsoft Store
macOS	nordstjernen-macos.dmg
Debian	nordstjernen-debian-amd64.deb
Ubuntu	nordstjernen-ubuntu-amd64.deb
openSUSE	nordstjernen-opensuse-x86_64.rpm
Linux (portable)	nordstjernen-linux-x86_64.zip
Alpine (musl)	nordstjernen-alpine-x86_64.apk
FreeBSD (portable)	nordstjernen-freebsd-x86_64.zip
NetBSD (portable)	nordstjernen-netbsd-x86_64.zip
Android	Google Play
Java API (JDK 21)	nordstjernen-java.jar · API docs
Source	1.0.21.tar.gz · 1.0.21.zip
All releases	github.com/nordstjernen-web/nordstjernen/releases

Nightly builds are rebuilt from main each night and point at the latest code — bleeding edge, expect rough edges. See all nightly files and their checksums.