dumber

Dumber, fully unfeatured unbloated browser for tiling WMs

Dumber is a minimalist browser and launcher companion focused on speed and simplicity. It ships a built‑in WebKitGTK (GTK4) window for navigation and a CLI with dmenu‑style launcher integration (rofi, fuzzel).

• Native GUI via WebKitGTK 6 (GTK4, CGO) with an embedded homepage UI.
• CLI that parses URLs, supports search shortcuts (e.g., g:query), and integrates with rofi/dmenu.
• Persistent history and per‑domain zoom levels (SQLite, XDG locations).
• Configurable via config.json and environment variables, with live reload.

Wayland‑First

• Dumb on purpose, designed for Wayland window managers (Sway, Hyprland, River, Niri, etc..) it's a tiny companion that interact nicely with your launcher.
• Uses a native Wayland WebKitGTK-6.0 window; no external browser required and no X11/XWayland dependency.
• Optimized for dmenu‑style launchers (rofi, fuzzel, wofi) and keyboard‑driven workflows.

Status

• Early development stage with regular releases. The workspace management system is fully functional and the browser works well for daily use. Expect some rough edges but core features are stable.

Features

• Complete workspace management: Zellij-inspired pane splitting with binary tree layout, stacked panes with title bars, focus tracking, and modal keyboard controls
• Multi-pane WebView architecture: Independent browsing sessions per pane with proper lifecycle management
• Advanced popup handling: Intelligent popup management for tiling WMs - OAuth flows, window.open(), and popup deduplication
• Window-level global shortcuts: Centralized shortcut handling to prevent conflicts between multiple WebView instances
• GPU rendering and hardware video acceleration: Automatic GPU detection with VA-API/VDPAU support
• Built-in ad blocker: UBlock-based content filtering (network blocking functional, cosmetic filtering in progress)
• Configurable color palettes: Customizable light and dark themes with semantic color tokens injected as CSS custom properties
• Terminal-style UI design: Monospace fonts, sharp corners, dashed borders with configurable appearance settings
• dmenu‑style launcher integration: rofi, fuzzel integration with favicon display, history and search shortcut suggestions
• Comprehensive keyboard controls: Complete keyboard-driven workflow with shortcuts and gestures
• Persistent history and zoom: SQLite-based history with configurable default zoom and per‑domain zoom persistence
• Fully configurable: Single config file with live reload and environment variable overrides

Controls & Shortcuts

Keyboard Shortcuts

Browser Controls

Zellij-Inspired Pane Management

Mouse Controls

Omnibox/Find Mode (when active)

All zoom changes are automatically persisted per-domain and restored on next visit.

Quick Start

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.25+
• Node.js 20+ and npm (for building the embedded TypeScript frontend)
• For GUI build: WebKitGTK 6 and GTK4 dev packages (examples)
  • Debian/Ubuntu: libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev libgtk-4-dev build-essential
  • Arch: webkitgtk-6.0 gtk4 base-devel

Build options:

• GUI (default, recommended):
  • make build # builds frontend + Go with -tags=webkit_cgo
  • Run: ./dist/dumber # opens the embedded homepage
• CLI‑only (no GUI, CGO disabled):
  • make build-no-gui
  • Run: ./dist/dumber-no-gui version

Development:

• make dev runs go run . (non‑CGO; GUI stubs log to console)
• make test runs tests; make lint runs golangci‑lint

Install

Note: go install will not work for this project because the frontend assets must be built first and embedded into the binary. Use the build commands instead:

• GUI build (default, recommended):
  • Ensure WebKit2GTK/GTK dev packages are installed (see prerequisites)
  • Clone the repo and run make build (builds frontend first, then Go with GUI support)
  • The resulting ./dist/dumber binary includes the native GUI window
• CLI‑only (no native window):
  • Clone the repo and run make build-no-gui
  • The resulting ./dist/dumber-no-gui binary runs CLI flows with GUI code stubbed

Usage

• Open a URL or search:
  • dumber browse https://example.com
  • dumber browse example.com # scheme auto‑added
  • dumber browse g:golang # Google search via shortcut
• Launch the GUI directly:
  • dumber # no args → opens GUI homepage
• Show version information:
  • dumber version # display version, commit, and build date
• Launcher integration (dmenu‑style examples):
  • rofi: dumber dmenu | rofi -dmenu -p "Browse: " | dumber dmenu --select
  • fuzzel: dumber dmenu | fuzzel --dmenu -p "Browse: " | dumber dmenu --select
• Manage browsing history:
  • dumber history # list recent history (default: 20 entries)
  • dumber history list -n 50 # list 50 recent entries
  • dumber history search golang # search history for "golang"
  • dumber history stats # show history statistics
  • dumber history clear # clear all history (with confirmation)
  • dumber history clear --force # clear all history (no confirmation)
• Clean up data and cache:
  • dumber purge # purge all data (with confirmation)
  • dumber purge --force # purge all data (no confirmation)
  • dumber purge -d -H -c # purge database and both caches
  • dumber purge --browser-data # purge WebKit data (cookies, etc.)
• Manage logs:
  • dumber logs list # list available log files
  • dumber logs tail # tail current log file
  • dumber logs clean # clean up old log files

Dmenu mode invocation

You can invoke dmenu mode in two ways:

• Subcommand (recommended): dumber dmenu … and dumber dmenu --select
• Root flag (generate options only): dumber --dmenu

Note: The root flag path only generates options; for processing a selection (--select), use the dmenu subcommand as the receiving command.

In GUI mode the app serves an embedded homepage via dumb://homepage, and frontend assets under dumb://app/....

Pane Management (Zellij-Inspired)

Dumber features a Zellij-inspired pane management system that allows you to split your browser window into multiple panes, each running independent web sessions.

How it Works

1. Enter Pane Mode: Press Ctrl+P to enter pane mode (modal interface with timeout)
2. Split or Stack Panes: Use arrow keys or letter shortcuts:
   • → or R - Split right
   • ← or L - Split left
   • ↑ or U - Split up
   • ↓ or D - Split down
   • S - Stack panes (Zellij-style, shows title bars for collapsed panes)
3. Navigate: Use Alt+Arrow Keys to move focus between split panes, or Alt+Up/Down to navigate within stacked panes
4. Close: Press X in pane mode to close the current pane

Configuration

The pane system is fully configurable via config.json:

"workspace": {
  "enable_zellij_controls": true,
  "pane_mode": {
    "activation_shortcut": "cmdorctrl+p",
    "timeout_ms": 3000,
    "action_bindings": {
      "arrowright": "split-right",
      "r": "split-right",
      "x": "close-pane",
      // ... full key mappings
    }
  },
  "popups": {
    "placement": "right",
    "open_in_new_pane": true
  },
  "styling": {
    "border_width": 2,
    "border_color": "@theme_selected_bg_color",
    "transition_duration": 120
  }
}

Configuration

Dumber follows the XDG Base Directory spec:

• Config: ~/.config/dumber/config.json
• Data: ~/.local/share/dumber
• State: ~/.local/state/dumber (default DB lives here)

A default config.json is created on first run. Config changes are watched and applied at runtime when possible.

Complete Configuration Reference

Database Configuration

"database": {
  "path": "~/.local/state/dumber/history.db",
  "max_connections": 1,
  "max_idle_time": "5m0s",
  "query_timeout": "30s"
}

History Management

"history": {
  "max_entries": 10000,
  "retention_period_days": 365,
  "cleanup_interval_days": 1
}

Search Shortcuts

"search_shortcuts": {
  "g":   { "url": "https://www.google.com/search?q=%s", "description": "Google search" },
  "gh":  { "url": "https://github.com/search?q=%s", "description": "GitHub search" },
  "yt":  { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s", "description": "YouTube search" },
  "w":   { "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s", "description": "Wikipedia search" },
  "ddg": { "url": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s", "description": "DuckDuckGo search" },
  "so":  { "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%s", "description": "Stack Overflow search" },
  "r":   { "url": "https://www.reddit.com/search?q=%s", "description": "Reddit search" },
  "npm": { "url": "https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=%s", "description": "npm package search" },
  "go":  { "url": "https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=%s", "description": "Go package search" },
  "mdn": { "url": "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=%s", "description": "MDN Web Docs search" }
}

Dmenu Integration

"dmenu": {
  "max_history_items": 20,
  "show_visit_count": true,
  "show_last_visited": true,
  "history_prefix": "🕒",
  "shortcut_prefix": "🔍",
  "url_prefix": "🌐",
  "date_format": "2006-01-02 15:04",
  "sort_by_visit_count": true
}

Logging Configuration

"logging": {
  "level": "info",
  "format": "text",
  "filename": "",
  "max_size": 100,
  "max_backups": 3,
  "max_age": 7,
  "compress": true
}

Appearance Settings

"appearance": {
  "sans_font": "Fira Sans",
  "serif_font": "Fira Sans",
  "monospace_font": "Fira Code",
  "default_font_size": 16,
  "default_zoom": 1.2,
  "color_palette": {
    "light": {
      "background": "#ffffff",
      "surface": "#f5f5f5",
      "text": "#1a1a1a",
      "text_muted": "#6b7280",
      "accent": "#3b82f6",
      "border": "#e5e7eb"
    },
    "dark": {
      "background": "#0a0a0a",
      "surface": "#1a1a1a",
      "text": "#e5e7eb",
      "text_muted": "#9ca3af",
      "accent": "#60a5fa",
      "border": "#374151"
    }
  }
}

Rendering Mode (GPU/CPU)

"rendering_mode": "auto"

• auto: Detect GPU availability and use GPU when available (default)
• gpu: Force GPU acceleration (Vulkan/OpenGL via GTK4)
• cpu: Force software rendering

Environment Variables

All config values can be overridden with environment variables using the DUMB_BROWSER_ prefix:

# Database
DUMB_BROWSER_DATABASE_PATH="./browser.db"
DUMB_BROWSER_DATABASE_MAX_CONNECTIONS=5

# Rendering mode (special variable name)
DUMBER_RENDERING_MODE="gpu"

# Dmenu settings
DUMB_BROWSER_DMENU_MAX_HISTORY_ITEMS=50
DUMB_BROWSER_DMENU_SHOW_VISIT_COUNT=false

# Logging
DUMB_BROWSER_LOGGING_LEVEL="debug"
DUMB_BROWSER_LOGGING_FORMAT="json"

CLI Flags

The browse command supports additional runtime flags:

dumber browse --rendering-mode=gpu https://example.com

Building With WebKitGTK 6 (GTK4)

• The GUI requires building with -tags=webkit_cgo and CGO enabled.
• Ensure WebKitGTK 6 and GTK4 dev headers are installed (see prerequisites).
• Make targets handle both frontend and Go build steps:
  • make build-gui (CGO enabled)
  • make build (CGO enabled by default in the Makefile’s main build)

Without the native tag, a stub backend is used: you can still run CLI flows and see logs, but no native window is displayed.

Media (GStreamer) & Hardware Acceleration

WebKitGTK uses GStreamer for media playback. Dumber includes automatic hardware video acceleration support that detects your GPU and configures the appropriate drivers.

Hardware Acceleration Features:

• Automatic GPU detection (AMD, NVIDIA, Intel)
• VA-API and VDPAU driver configuration
• Support for H.264, HEVC, VP9, and AV1 codecs
• Significantly reduced CPU usage during video streaming

Required packages:

• Arch Linux:
  • sudo pacman -S gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-ugly gst-libav gst-plugin-pipewire pipewire pipewire-pulse
  • Hardware accel: gstreamer-vaapi mesa (AMD), libva-nvidia-driver (NVIDIA), libva-intel-driver intel-media-driver (Intel)
• Debian/Ubuntu:
  • sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-pipewire
  • Hardware accel: gstreamer1.0-vaapi va-driver-all (covers most GPUs)

Contribute

I will gladly accept contributions, especially related to UI/UX enhancements. Feel free to open an issue and let's discuss it!

Security & Privacy

• History and zoom settings are stored locally in SQLite under XDG state.
• The tmp/ directory is ignored by Git and kept out of history.

Roadmap

• ✅ WebKitGTK 6 (GTK4) migration (GPU/Vulkan path complete)
• ✅ GPU rendering (Vulkan via GTK4 renderer) with graceful CPU fallback
• ✅ Zellij-inspired pane management with binary tree layout and keyboard-driven workflow
• 🚧 UBlock-based content filtering (early stage - network blocking works, cosmetic filtering needs work)
• Full Vim-style motion and keyboard navigation across pages and UI
• Tab management system (browser tabs in addition to panes)
• Performance work: faster startup, lower memory, snappier UI
• Other shiny things I'm not yet aware of

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.