Pearl: Private Web Browser

Pearl is a web browser that blocks ads and trackers before they load, deals with cookie banners for you, and keeps your bookmarks, tabs and saved logins on every device you sign in on. Pages are drawn by Android's own web engine, so sites behave as you expect.

THE SHIELD
• Ads and trackers are stopped before the request leaves your phone, so the page is lighter as well as cleaner.
• Rule sets you can switch on and off one at a time, with a count of what was blocked on the page you are on.
• Hide cookie banners, and decline cookies through the site's own consent tool. When a site offers only "accept or pay", Pearl asks you instead of guessing.
• Turn the Shield off for one site and leave it on everywhere else.
• Auto-fix: when a page breaks after blocked requests, Pearl pauses the Shield on that site and reloads once.

BROWSING
• Private tabs, kept in their own section of the tab list.
• Tab overview with swipe to close, search across your tabs, and reopen the last one you closed.
• Bookmarks, history and downloads.
• Find in page, desktop site, text size and layout, print, share, add a page to your Home screen.
• HTTPS-first, and clear browsing data by time range.
• Set Pearl as your default browser and links from mail and chat come straight here.

DOWNLOADS
• A download keeps going when you leave Pearl, with progress in the notification shade.
• "This page" lists the files the page you are on links to, such as images, PDFs, documents and archives, so you can save the ones you want.

PEARL PASS, BUILT IN
• Save a login once and fill it on the next visit.
• Fingerprint unlock, where your phone has it set up.
• The prompt is drawn by Pearl above the page, never inside it, so a website cannot restyle it or fake it.
• It fills and stops. Nothing is clicked or submitted for you.

SYNC, IF YOU WANT IT
Sign in and your bookmarks, history, open tabs, settings, Shield rules and Pearl Pass vault follow you between your phone and your computer, encrypted on the device before they leave it. You can browse forever without signing in; nothing is uploaded until you ask.

ABOUT ADD-ONS, PLAINLY
Pearl's engine has no browser-extension runtime, so a packed extension (.crx) cannot run in it and Pearl will not pretend otherwise. What you get instead is three built-ins (the Shield, Pearl Pass and the download picker), and user scripts and user styles, in the header format such scripts are already written in, which you paste or import yourself. Nothing is ever installed by a page, and a user script runs with that page's own origin, so only add ones you trust.

WHAT IT COSTS
Pearl is free, with a Google AdMob banner on its own screens only: the new-tab page, Settings, Downloads and History. No ad is ever put into or over a web page, and there is no full-screen ad. Nothing to buy, no subscription.

WHY IT ASKS FOR PERMISSIONS
Pearl itself never uses your camera, microphone or location. Android requires the app to hold a permission before a website can be granted it, so Pearl asks only after you have allowed the site that asked, and never before. Notifications and the foreground service exist for one thing: keeping a download alive and showing its progress while you are elsewhere.

PRIVACY
• No account is needed to browse, and sign-in is off until you turn it on.
• Bookmarks, history, site rules and passwords are held on the device.
• Optional usage counts are off unless you turn them on. They record that a feature was used, never what you used it on, and they stay on the device.

There are Linux and Windows desktop versions with the same Shield, vault and sync.

Made in Ireland by Perlicom Systems Limited.
Support: [email protected]
Privacy policy: https://browser.perlicom.com/legal/pearl-privacy
Terms: https://browser.perlicom.com/legal/pearl-terms