qutebrowser

A keyboard-driven, vim-like browser based on PyQt5 and Qt.

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qutebrowser is a keyboard-focused browser with a minimal GUI. It’s based on Python and PyQt5 and free software, licensed under the GPL.

It was inspired by other browsers/addons like dwb and Vimperator/Pentadactyl.

Screenshots

Downloads

See the github releases page for available downloads and the INSTALL file for detailed instructions on how to get qutebrowser running on various platforms.

Documentation

In addition to the topics mentioned in this README, the following documents are available:

• Key binding cheatsheet:
  

• Quick start guide

• Free training course to remember those key bindings

• Frequently asked questions

• Configuring qutebrowser

• Contributing to qutebrowser

• Installing qutebrowser

• Change Log

• Reporting segfaults

• How to write userscripts

Getting help

You can get help in the IRC channel #qutebrowser on Freenode (webchat), or by writing a message to the mailinglist at qutebrowser@lists.qutebrowser.org.

There’s also an announce-only mailinglist at qutebrowser-announce@lists.qutebrowser.org (the announcements also get sent to the general qutebrowser@ list).

If you’re a reddit user, there’s a /r/qutebrowser subreddit there.

Contributions / Bugs

You want to contribute to qutebrowser? Awesome! Please read the contribution guidelines for details and useful hints.

If you found a bug or have a feature request, you can report it in several ways:

• Use the built-in :report command or the automatic crash dialog.

• Open an issue in the Github issue tracker.

• Write a mail to the mailinglist at qutebrowser@lists.qutebrowser.org.

For security bugs, please contact me directly at mail@qutebrowser.org, GPG ID 0x916eb0c8fd55a072.

Requirements

The following software and libraries are required to run qutebrowser:

• Python 3.5 or newer (3.6 recommended)

• Qt 5.7.1 or newer (5.12 recommended, support for < 5.9 will be dropped soon) with the following modules:

  • QtCore / qtbase

  • QtQuick (part of qtbase in some distributions)

  • QtSQL (part of qtbase in some distributions)

  • QtOpenGL

  • QtWebEngine, or

  • alternatively QtWebKit - support for QtWebKit will be dropped soon, and only the updated fork (5.212) is supported

• PyQt 5.7.0 or newer (5.12 recommended, support for < 5.9 will be dropped soon) for Python 3

• pkg_resources/setuptools

• pyPEG2

• jinja2

• pygments

• PyYAML

• attrs

The following libraries are optional:

• cssutils (for an improved :download --mhtml with QtWebKit).

• On Windows, colorama for colored log output.

• asciidoc to generate the documentation for the :help command, when using the git repository (rather than a release).

See the documentation for directions on how to install qutebrowser and its dependencies.

Donating

Working on qutebrowser is a very rewarding hobby, but like (nearly) all hobbies it also costs some money. Namely I have to pay for the server and domain, and do occasional hardware upgrades ^[1].

If you want to give me a beer or a pizza back, I’m trying to make it as easy as possible for you to do so. If some other way would be easier for you, please get in touch!

• SEPA bank transfer inside Europe (no fee): Contact me for details

• PayPal: thecompiler / me@the-compiler.org

• Bitcoin: 1PMzbcetAHfpxoXww8Bj5XqquHtVvMjJtE

Sponsors

Thanks a lot to MacStadium for supporting qutebrowser with a free hosted Mac Mini via their Open Source Project.

(They don’t require including this here - I’ve just been very happy with their offer, and without them, no macOS releases or tests would exist)

Thanks to the HSR Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil, which made it possible to work on qutebrowser extensions as a student research project.

Authors

qutebrowser’s primary author is Florian Bruhin (The Compiler), but qutebrowser wouldn’t be what it is without the help of hundreds of contributors!

Additionally, the following people have contributed graphics:

• Jad/yelo (new icon)

• WOFall (original icon)

• regines (key binding cheatsheet)

Also, thanks to everyone who contributed to one of qutebrowser’s crowdfunding campaigns!

Similar projects

Many projects with a similar goal as qutebrowser exist. Most of them were inspirations for qutebrowser in some way, thanks for that!

Active

• vimb (C, GTK+ with WebKit2)

• luakit (C/Lua, GTK+ with WebKit2)

• surf (C, GTK+ with WebKit1/WebKit2)

• next (Lisp, Emacs-like, GTK+ with WebKit)

• webmacs (Python, Emacs-like with QtWebEngine)

• Chrome/Chromium addons: Vimium, Surfingkeys,

• Firefox addons (based on WebExtensions): Vimium-FF (experimental), Vim Vixen, VVimpulation, Tridactyl (working on a better API for keyboard integration in Firefox).

Inactive

• dwb (C, GTK+ with WebKit1, unmaintained - main inspiration for qutebrowser)

• vimprobable (C, GTK+ with WebKit1)

• jumanji (C, GTK+ with WebKit1, original site is gone but Arch Linux has some data)

• conkeror (Javascript, Emacs-like, XULRunner/Gecko)

• uzbl (C, GTK+ with WebKit1/WebKit2)

• Firefox addons (not based on WebExtensions or no recent activity): Vimperator, Pentadactyl, VimFx, Saka Key, QuantumVim,

• Chrome/Chromium addons: ViChrome, Vrome Saka Key, cVim,

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt.

pdf.js

qutebrowser optionally uses pdf.js to display PDF files in the browser. Windows releases come with a bundled pdf.js.

pdf.js is distributed under the terms of the Apache License. You can find a copy of the license in qutebrowser/3rdparty/pdfjs/LICENSE (in the Windows release or after running scripts/dev/update_3rdparty.py), or online here.

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1. It turned out a 160 GB SSD is rather small - the VMs and custom Qt builds I use for testing/developing qutebrowser need about 100 GB of space