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An Anti Browser alternative for Android

If you have arrived here after reading about Anti Browser and discovering it is iPhone-only, this post is the answer to your question, including the part of the answer you will not like.

Everything below was checked in August 2026. This category is about a year old and moves quickly, so verify anything that matters before acting on it.

What the category is

A link-only browser is a web browser built with two things deliberately removed: the address bar and the search box. Anti Browser is the best-known one, which is why the category often gets searched for under its name.

What remains is a renderer. It opens web addresses that reach it from outside (a link tapped in Messages, a QR code you scan), displays the page, and offers no way whatsoever to go somewhere else. There are no tabs, no history, no bookmarks, no start page.

The point is not to block the web. It is to remove the open-ended entrance to it, while leaving the errands intact: parcel tracking, magic-link sign-ins, QR menus, the article a friend sent. Those all still work. What is gone is the text field that will take you anywhere at all.

This is a different mechanism to every screen-time app, and the difference is the whole argument. A blocker stops you at the moment of temptation and asks you to decide. A link-only browser removes the thing you would have decided about. There is no unlock, so no unlock can become a habit.

Anti Browser, described fairly

Anti Browser is the app that established the category, and it is good. Its own line, "the browser that prevents browsing", is a better summary than anything we would write for it.

What it does:

That last line is why you are here.

The reference tools deserve a note, because they look like a compromise and are probably something more interesting. Apple grants default-browser status through a managed entitlement, and its stated criteria require the app to offer, at launch, one of: a field for entering a URL, search tools for finding links on the internet, or curated bookmark lists. A link-only browser removes all three on purpose. Read against those criteria, a built-in Wikipedia-and-AI lookup starts to look less like a feature and more like the thing that makes the entitlement grantable at all.

We cannot confirm that from outside, and it is inference rather than fact. But it explains something otherwise strange, namely why an app whose whole idea is no search ships a way to search, and it is the reason the equivalent product is structurally easier to build on Android.

What runs on Android today

Honest inventory. There is less here than you would hope.

Not A Browser, ours. An Android browser with no address bar, no search, no tabs, no history and no home screen. It takes Android's default browser role, so links from any app land in it, and it scans QR codes on the device. It collects nothing.

No Browser: Zero Distraction, the nearest neighbour. Worth being precise about the difference: it is a minimal browser with an ad blocker, built around browsing without clutter. It is not built around not browsing. Different goal, adjacent shelf.

Firefox Focus, the app most often recommended when people search for this, and the wrong recommendation for this purpose. Focus is a privacy browser: it blocks trackers and erases your history on a single tap. It opens with the search bar focused and the keyboard already up. It is a browser that forgets what you did, not a browser that stops you doing it. Excellent app; solves an unrelated problem.

Full-screen and minimal browsers generally: Fullmode, Browsy, Cloudy and similar. These are aesthetic minimalism: hide the toolbars, give the page the whole screen. The address bar is usually one swipe away, and search still works. If you like a clean interface they are lovely. They will not stop you browsing.

The bit Android does better

There is one place where Android is straightforwardly better for this than iOS, and it is worth knowing if you are choosing a phone with this in mind.

Android's ROLE_BROWSER needs nobody's approval. Any app can ask to be the default browser, and Android shows the user a standard system dialogue. There is no review board, no stated feature criteria, and no requirement to include a search box you do not want. An app can be a real default browser on Android with no address bar at all.

Apple has no equivalent. The Default Browser Entitlement is requested from Apple, granted at Apple's discretion, and its published criteria require the three affordances this category exists to remove. There is a second route on iOS, universal links, but it only lets an app claim domains it owns and can prove it owns, which is useless for an app whose purpose is opening links to sites it has no relationship with.

So on iOS the honest options are: include some form of search and ask Apple nicely, or ship a share-sheet extension and accept that opening a link becomes long-press → Share → the app, rather than a plain tap.

On Android, none of that applies. Which is why Not A Browser is an Android app first, and why the iPhone version is an open question rather than a roadmap item.

Which one, in one line each

There is a full head-to-head with the table, the pricing and the verdict at Not A Browser vs Anti Browser, and the rest of the category is at Compare.

What to do if you are on Android right now

Depends how patient you are.

If you want something today: do the settings work, which is most of the benefit and free. Count every browser on the phone, pick one to be default, disable the rest, and strip the home screen. The setup guide has the menu paths. Then try No Browser if a minimal renderer is what you are after.

If the category itself is what you want: Not A Browser is what this site is about, and it is close. There is no mailing list to join, because collecting email addresses would be the first thing this site does that it tells you it does not do. Checking back, or emailing hello@notabrowser.app, are both fine.

If you are on iOS: Anti Browser, genuinely. It is the mature product in the category and there is no reason to wait for us.

The Google sign-in question, tested rather than assumed

Everyone in this category, us included, used to tell you that "Sign in with Google" cannot work in an app-embedded browser. Google's published policy says exactly that, and has since July 2023.

We tested it on a real phone in August 2026 instead of repeating it. Google served the sign-in flow, a third-party authorisation completed, and a restricted Google Doc opened afterwards. Not A Browser had never observed a refusal because it was intercepting Google's sign-in pages before the request could leave the device, which is a good way to never find out you were wrong.

We have not tested Anti Browser, so we make no claim about it either way. What we will say is that a published policy describes what a vendor reserves the right to do, not what they currently do, and it is worth a five-minute test before anyone designs around it.

Email-and-password logins, magic links and banking all work normally. But if a site's only sign-in is Google's, you need a full browser for that one task. Any app in this category that tells you otherwise is misrepresenting itself to Google as a stock browser, and that is a security control being circumvented rather than a feature being delivered.

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