Privoo
Privoo Desktop: FAQ and troubleshooting
From the Privoo reference. This article covers version 5.0.5.
Main article: Privoo Desktop
Common questions about the project and its privacy claims, followed by fixes for problems that arise in practice.
About the project
How is Privoo funded, if it collects nothing?
It is not funded. Privoo is an independent MIT-licensed project rather than a company with revenue targets. This is the structural reason its privacy defaults can be what they are: there is no advertising business inside the browser that enabling them would damage. The corresponding implication is that it carries the support and continuity characteristics of an independent project, with no support contract and no guarantee of maintenance.
Is it genuinely free of telemetry?
Yes, and the claim is verifiable rather than a promise. There is no analytics endpoint, no usage counter and no crash reporter transmitting data. The privacy statistics displayed by the shield are computed and stored locally.
Privoo makes two categories of routine outbound request on its own behalf: update checks against the GitHub release feed, and filter-list refreshes. Neither carries a user identifier. The project states these explicitly rather than claiming zero network activity, which would be false.
Is it just Chrome with a different theme?
It is built on Chromium, which is the source of its web compatibility. The layer
above the engine differs: the blocking engine, the privacy defaults, the interface,
the built-in tools, the internal privoo:// pages and features such as
.mariana are the project's own work. See
Architecture.
Why should I trust it?
Preferably, do not: verify it. The source is MIT-licensed and public, and the claims made in this reference correspond to code that can be read. This is the only form of answer to that question with any weight, from any browser.
Does it synchronise between devices?
No, by design. There is no account and no synchronisation server, so there is no store of user data to breach, subpoena or monetise. The cost is real and is stated plainly: bookmarks and passwords remain on the machine that created them, and moving them requires copying the profile directory. See Installation: data storage.
Privacy questions
If I disable a protection in Settings, does it actually stop?
Yes. The setting is consulted per request, so it stops on the next request rather than at the next restart, and it is not concealed from the shield panel while continuing to run. This was not true before version 5.0.4; see Privacy and security: Behaviour when disabled.
The shield reports zero on a site with visible advertising.
Three common explanations. The site may carry a per-site exception, visible in the shield panel as Ads blocked on this site. The counter resets on each page load, so a figure from before a refresh is gone. Or the advertising is served first-party from the site's own domain, which no network-layer blocker can remove without breaking the page itself.
Does incognito make me anonymous?
No. It prevents local retention after the window closes. The sites visited and the network still observe the connection exactly as usual. This is true of incognito in every browser. For network-level privacy see Tor, proxies and alternative naming.
Is .mariana untraceable?
Tor hidden services are a strong and well-studied anonymity mechanism, and the post-quantum layer is a genuine addition on top of Tor's own encryption. Neither confers invulnerability, and neither helps if identifying information appears on the published page. See .mariana hosting: Scope and limitations.
Do the ENS and IPFS features leak?
They resolve through public gateways, and those gateways observe the request. This is a convenience trade-off and is weaker than running a local resolver or IPFS node. It is documented rather than concealed.
Troubleshooting
Blocking
Ad blocking does not appear to work
Filter lists are compiled at launch, so restart Privoo first, particularly after
changing which lists are enabled. Confirm blocking is enabled at
privoo://extensions, then open the shield on the page to check for a
per-site exception. If a third-party content blocker is also installed, the two can
compete over the same requests.
A site is broken and I suspect blocking
Open the shield and disable Ads blocked on this site to test. If that resolves it, the site is worth reporting so a compatibility rule can be considered.
Video and DRM
Video will not play, or the first video is a black frame
Try disabling hardware acceleration in Settings → Performance. Privoo already works around the common GPU cold-start case in which the first video of a session renders black until refreshed, but a particular driver may still misbehave.
Spotify or Netflix will not play
These require Widevine DRM, which official builds include and sign. A source build without a completed Widevine VMP signing step will run but will not obtain a licence. Use an official release, or check the build output. See Installation: building from source.
Site behaviour
A site keeps signing me out
Some services rotate sessions frequently and are sensitive to cookie handling. To test, temporarily disable Block third-party cookies. Historical defects in this area have been fixed, including a main-frame misclassification that stripped first-party login cookies during navigation, and a cookie-flush issue on quit. Persisting cases are treated as genuine bugs and are worth reporting.
A site refuses to load or claims my browser is unsupported
Privoo reports a common Chrome identity precisely to avoid this. If a site still refuses, report it; the User-Agent handling has several layers and a gap in one of them is a bug.
.mariana sites
A .mariana link will not open
The most common cause is that the host is not running Privoo, since the site is available only while the host's browser is open. Tor also requires several seconds to bootstrap after a cold start. If a short name was typed that this browser has not seen before, open the full share link once first.
Publishing fails immediately after launching Privoo
Tor's control port is not ready until Tor has bootstrapped. Privoo retries for roughly thirty seconds; if it still fails, confirm Tor is available on the system.
Other
Downloads are not appearing
Check the download directory in Settings and that Privoo has permission to write to
it. privoo://downloads shows live status for transfers in progress.
An extension does not work
Privoo implements a subset of Chrome's extension APIs. Extensions relying on advanced APIs may be inert. See Built-in tools: Third-party extensions.
I want to reset everything
Delete all data in Settings clears all stored state and returns the browser to a fresh install. It cannot be undone and there is no remote copy to restore from.
If any .mariana sites are hosted, deleting all data destroys their
private keys. Those addresses cannot be recovered, and links already shared will
never resolve again.
Getting help
| Channel | Use for |
|---|---|
| GitHub Issues | Bugs and feature requests. |
| GitHub Discussions | Questions and general discussion. |
| Discord | Community conversation. |
| Repository | Reading or contributing code. |
Pull requests are welcome. Fork the repository, branch from main, and
describe what changed and why.