CLI Web Browser

Or just cliweb.

Actual Chromium being rendered in your favorite terminal that supports the Kitty terminal graphics protocol.

cliweb works best in Kitty v0.31 or newer

Why?

• Display documentation from DevDocs
• Watch the changes from Vite come to life
• Tiled layout without a tiling window manager using Kitty's layouts
• Add fancy UI using web technologies, so NeoVim can pretend it is Emacs instead of the other way around

Installation

Install the published command globally with npm:

npm install --global @atomashevic/cliweb

The npm package contains prebuilt application and toolbar assets. It does not build the TypeScript application on first launch.

See npm packaging for the package layout and release workflow.

Usage

cliweb [url]

# if url is not provided, it will go to the cliweb homepage (this is temporary, promise)
# the URL protocol can be http:, https:, or data:
# if the URL protocol is not included, https: is used by default

For more options look at the help:

cliweb --help

tmux

cliweb can render in a local tmux pane when passthrough is enabled:

set -g allow-passthrough on

tmux 3.3 or newer is required for configurable passthrough, and tmux 3.6 or newer is recommended for reliable pane pixel dimensions. The tmux server and terminal emulator must run on the same machine because cliweb transfers frames through POSIX shared memory; tmux over SSH is not yet supported.

Configuration

cliweb can be configured through $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/cliweb/config.js, or ~/.config/cliweb/config.js when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set. The default configuration is copied there on first launch. Changes update any running cliweb process.

Currently it only supports custom keybindings and changing the homepage that displays when no URL is provided.

For more details on keybinding syntax and available actions, see the comments in config.js.

Contributing

See Contributing to Cliweb.

Development

Clone the repository and run the local setup script:

git clone https://github.com/atomashevic/cliweb.git
cd cliweb
./setup.sh

You can update your checkout to use another fork by changing the origin:

# note: you'll have to change the username some-kind-contributor to your GitHub username
git remote set-url origin [email protected]:some-kind-contributor/cliweb.git
# also track the upstream electron branch
git remote add upstream -f -t electron [email protected]:atomashevic/cliweb.git

You can make a branch (ex: my-feature-branch) off the latest changes by doing:

git fetch upstream electron
git checkout upstream/electron
git switch -c 'my-feature-branch'

Read Your First Code Contribution for more information on making a PR.