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Naked Browser for Google Android – Lightweight web browser with nice features

Naked Browser for Google Android

Naked Browser for Google Android is now my favorite free Google Android web browser because it is extremely lightweight, and still has all the features which I want like the option to set its address bar search engine to almost any custom search engine by pasting the search engine keyword link like http://example.com/?q= into the search URL Link settings in Naked Browser settings.  The option to change the search engine for the address bar is useful if you use a less popular search engine like dogpile.com or Lycos.com, a privacy focused search engine like Duckduckgo, Startpage, and IXquick, or a rewards based search engine like Swagbuck’s Search, Mypoints, and Perk which gives you reward points which you can redeem for prizes or money for searching  on their search engine when you are also logged into your user account for their search engine.

Naked Browser also have many other useful features like tabs, adjustable tab line height, address bar, bookmarks, speed dial bookmarks, bookmarks export/backup, history, undo closed tab, Crash restore, infinite tabs, user agent changer, support for flash, JavaScript, mobile video on YouTube, and other video sites. Naked Browser is free, and also has no advertisement, or app recommendations.

There are also touch gestures to make using Naked Browser easier with one hand. Sliding your finger from the left to right shows the bookmarks manager, tapping on the current tab once will closes the tab.

Other Touch Gestures

• One finger zoom: Double-tap and hold screen, then swipe left/right to zoom.
• Undo close tab: Long press new tab “+” button on Naked Browser’s screen.
• Access tab history: long press current tab button on screen.
• Choose a search engine for URL bar search: Long press “go” arrow on screen.

Tapping on the menu button on the Android bottom system bar will bring up the pop-up menu where you can find the forward button, bookmarks links, desktop/mobile user agent, changer, fillscreen, sharing, settings, go to top of page, go to end of page, undo tab close, select text, find text search engine, tab settings,  tab history, downloads manager, and more.

You use the Back button on the Bottom System bar in Google Android to go back a website.

The Ability to share web pages on Naked Browser will make it possible for you to share websites to social networking apps, instant messaging, sharing apps like Wi-Fi/Bluetooth sharing apps, and offline reader apps like Pocket, and Instapaper.

Naked Browser is very stable, and never crashes or freezes a lot when I use it on my older Asus Nexus 7 2012 tablet with a 1.3 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-core CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GB Storage, Wi-Fi connection, and Google Android 5.1 Lollipop as its operating system. Naked Browser also runs better than the regular Android web browser, and other third-party web browsers which I tried on my very old 2011 Kobo Vox 8GB wifi eReader tablet with Google Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread Operating System, 800 MHz Single Core CPU, 512MB RAM, and 8GB of storage. Naked Browser runs pretty quickly even when multiple website tabs are opened at once. Mobile websites, and large desktop versions of big websites like YouTube, and Yahoo only take a few seconds to fully load when I am connected to my home wifi internet connection from my cheaper wireless N router which is connected to my 10-15 Mbps cable internet connection. Vertically scrolling up and down both mobile and desktop websites is also pretty smooth with very little or no lag. Online video streaming from sites like YouTube is fast, and I don’t experience much buffering, and lag problems. Fullscreen videos also play smoothly without slowdown problems. I also have Fast Page Rendering turned on in Naked Browser’s settings. Fast Page Rendering seem to make Naked Browser load pages quicker, and I don’t experience any crashes and freezes even when it is turned on. I also set the Tab Caching Threshold to 2 in Naked Browser settings, so I use less RAM. I also don’t really use tabs, so I don’t need a high number for Tab Caching.

Naked Browser also does not use any extra data when you are not using it to load websites because it is ad-free, and does not load app recommendations in the background, or homepage. There are also no pre-loading features which can use a lot of background data by preloading links in the background. It also does not send data back to the developers website like other web browser makers which send Anonymous usage data which can make your web browser use more data, slower, and use up more battery life.

Naked Browser does not drain my tablet’s battery very quickly because I can use it for many hours until the battery runs out.

Most websites like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, etc look good on Naked Browser. Naked Browser also has a Wide viewport which makes websites easier to view. It is possible to change the text size of websites in Naked Browser Text Size Settings, and also disable images, JavaScript, cookies, etc in Naked Browser to make websites run faster, use less RAM, and have a more private web experience.

The flat minimalistic, black, and customizable user interface of Naked Browser looks pretty good. The Tabs, address bar, and buttons don’t take up a lot of screen space, and there is also a fillscreen mode in the menu which hide the status bar to browse websites in fullscreen mode. There is also a home button in the address bar. The home button will bring me back to my homepage, and I can set the homepage to any website in the homepage settings. I set my homepage to about:blank mainly because I don’t use my homepage, and a blank page loads the quickest because there is nothing to load. There is also a Go/enter button on the right of the address bar. The Go button is useful if your keyboard is minimize, and you need to press Go to load a website. The Go button can also be used as a refresh, and stop button when a website is loaded.

I like that I can set the tab bar vertical height to 2 and more lines of text in Naked Browser settings. I set the tab bar size to 3 lines of text because I use Naked Browser in Portrait/vertical mode on my 7 inch tablet, so 3 line on tabs are easier to tap on after I set the tab height to 3 lines. I can also see more of the website title on the tab text section. The tabs also show me the percentage of the website which is loaded which is more useful than an animated loading icon. I like that there is also an exit button in the menu to fully exit Naked Browser, so it is not running in the background when I am not using it, and to close all open tabs by tapping on the exit button on Naked Browser’s bottom menu.

There are no ads, spyware, and app recommendations in Naked Browser.  It also only have a few permissions needed to browse the web like the permission to access the internet, so you do not have to worry about Naked Browser reading your text messages, and e-mails like other apps which has tons of unwanted permissions to read your information.

It is also simple to clear my history, cache, cookies, and HTML5 browsing data in the Data settings for Naked Browser. I can set Naked Browser to automatically delete my cookies, cache, history, and HTML5 data after I press the exit button in Naked Browser’s bottom menu. Clearing all your browsing data protects your privacy on your device, and sometimes makes your device run faster, and more stable because your device has more free space after you deleted all your private browsing data.

It is also possible to change the default search engine to a private search engine in the Search engine settings for Naked Browser.

Naked Browser also uses the Google Android WebView (WebKit) engine which is on Google Android stock web browser. All data requests & retrievals, cookies, passwords, etc. are handled by the WebView and Naked Browser does not interfere with the default behavior.

Naked Browser is a fast, lightweight, simple, and stable mobile web browser for browsing the web faster from your Google Android smartphone, and tablet.

Naked Browser is only 115K in size, and works with Google Android 2.1, and up.

Download Naked Browser at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fevdev.nakedbrowser

2 comments… add one
  • Dipti June 15, 2016, 10:01 pm

    Very good writeup about the browser!!

    • Johnson Yip June 16, 2016, 3:07 pm

      Thanks for the nice compliment about my Article on Naked Browser.

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