CyanogenMod's Gello browser launches after a year in the making

CyanogenMod is finally ready to roll out version 1.0 of its custom built Gello Android browser. Joey Rizzoli, the developer who originally teased development of the browser almost a year ago, has announced that Gello will be heading out to a range of CyanogenMod 13 builds. However, it will depend on each device maintainer to incorportate Gello into their builds, so there are no guarantees that it will arrive for any particular devices.

Gello is based on the Chromium code, so it shares much of the same source code and features as Google’s Chrome browser. However, the developers have packed in a selection of extra features, some of which may be familiar to users of other Android web browsers. There’s an interesting Edge navigation feature that lets users swipe left and right to go back through their history. Gello also features an inverted colors night mode, status bar colors based on the website you’re visiting, a Powersave mode, a LookLock to prevent other apps from reading web content, and plenty more. The “save for offline” function will also likely be very useful to a number of users, and there are customizable privacy settings available for every website.

The team hasn’t released an up to date video of the browser’s features just yet, but you can check out this older footage for a rough look at what some of these features are like. Although they will likely have changed a bit since then.

Unfortunately Gello is only officially supported with CyanogenMod 13 (Android 6.0), if a developer chooses to incorporate it into their build. However, you can always grab the APK yourself and see if it works on your device, although installation seems to have been hit an miss on a couple of my devices. Let us know what you think about the browser in the comments below.