Browsh Browsh
winget install --id=browsh.browsh -e Browsh is a purely text-based browser that can run in most TTY terminal environments and in any browser. The terminal client is currently more advanced than the browser client.
Browsh is a text-based browser designed to render web content as plain text in terminal environments or modern browsers. It uses headless Firefox under the hood to convert web pages into text format, making it ideal for users with limited internet bandwidth or those who prefer a minimalistic browsing experience.
Key Features:
- Supports modern web technologies (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript) via headless Firefox.
- Optimized for low-bandwidth connections, reducing data usage significantly.
- Terminal-only mode provides enhanced functionality and customization.
- Works seamlessly in TTY environments, SSH sessions, or directly in browsers.
- Compatible with MoSH (Mobile Shell), offering improved connectivity stability.
Audience & Benefit: Ideal for users requiring efficient web access on slow or unstable connections. Developers can leverage it to test text-based interfaces, while others may use it to offload resource-intensive browsing tasks to remote servers. Browsh provides reliable, low-resource access to web content in challenging network conditions.
Install via winget for easy setup and start browsing the web efficiently.
README
A fully interactive, real-time, and modern text-based browser rendered to TTYs and browsers
Why use Browsh?
Not all the world has good Internet.
If you only have a 3kbps internet connection tethered from a phone, then it's good to SSH into a server and browse the web through, say, elinks. That way the server downloads the web pages and uses the limited bandwidth of an SSH connection to display the result. However, traditional text-based browsers lack JS and all other modern HTML5 support. Browsh is different in that it's backed by a real browser, namely headless Firefox, to create a purely text-based version of web pages and web apps. These can be easily rendered in a terminal or indeed, ironically, in another browser. Do note that currently the browser client doesn't have feature parity with the terminal client.
Why not VNC? Well VNC is certainly one solution but it doesn't quite have the same ability to deal with extremely bad Internet. Terminal Browsh can also use MoSH to further reduce bandwidth and increase stability of the connection. Mosh offers features like automatic reconnection of dropped or roamed connections and diff-only screen updates. Furthermore, other than SSH or MoSH, terminal Browsh doesn't require a client like VNC.
One final reason to use terminal Browsh could be to offload the battery-drain of a modern browser from your laptop or low-powered device like a Raspberry Pi. If you're a CLI-native, then you could potentially get a few more hours of life if your CPU-hungry browser is running somewhere else on mains electricity.
Installation
Download a binary from the releases (~11MB). You will need to have Firefox already installed.
Or download and run the Docker image (~230MB) with:
docker run --rm -it browsh/browsh
Usage
Most keys and mouse gestures should work as you'd expect on a desktop browser.
For full documentation click here.
Contributing
Note that some of these instructions may be out of date (July 2022)
For generic Linux systems you can follow this guide on how to setup a build environment, that you may be able to adapt for other systems as well.
Windows users can follow this guide in order to set up a build environment.
Mac users may follow this guide that goes through the steps of setting up a build environment.
Communication
Questions about Brow.sh? Stuck trying to resolve a tricky issue? Try:
Tests
For the webextension: in webext/ folder, npm test
For CLI unit tests: in /interfacer run go test src/browsh/*.go
For CLI E2E tests: in /interfacer run go test test/tty/*.go
For HTTP Service tests: in /interfacer run go test test/http-server/*.go
Special Thanks
- @tobimensch For essential early feedback and user testing.
- @arasatasaygin For the Browsh logo.
Donating
Please consider donating: https://www.brow.sh/donate
License
GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1