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 WebKitGTKdo i window; no external browser required and no X11/XWayland dependency.
• Optimized for dmenu‑style launchers (rofi, fuzzel, wofi) and keyboard‑driven workflows.

Status

• Very early stage, expect sharp edges and breaking changes, but it works well enough to browse and play with the launcher flows.

Features

• Built‑in browser window (no external browser needed)
• Custom dumb:// scheme serving embedded frontend assets
• Keyboard shortcuts: DevTools (F12), Omnibox toggle (Ctrl/Cmd+L), Zoom In/Out/Reset
• Persistent history with search and stats
• Per‑domain zoom persistence
• dmenu‑style launcher integration (rofi, fuzzel) with history and shortcut suggestions

Quick Start

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.25+
• Node.js 20+ (for building the embedded 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 (recommended):
  • make build-gui # builds with -tags=webkit_cgo
  • Run: ./dist/dumber # opens the embedded homepage
• CLI‑only (no GUI, CGO disabled):
  • make build-static
  • Run: ./dist/dumber-static version
• Full build pipeline (frontend + Go):
  • make build

Development:

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

Install

• CLI‑only (no native window):
  • go install github.com/bnema/dumber@latest
  • Useful everywhere; runs the CLI and non‑CGO flows. In this mode the GUI code is stubbed (no native window shown).
• GUI build (Wayland + WebKit2GTK via CGO):
  • Ensure WebKit2GTK/GTK dev packages are installed (see prerequisites) and CGO is enabled in your environment.
  • go install -tags webkit_cgo github.com/bnema/dumber@latest
  • If pkg‑config can’t find headers, set PKG_CONFIG_PATH appropriately or prefer make build-gui.

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
• 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

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/....

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. Key fields:

• database.path: SQLite database path (defaults to XDG state dir history.db)
• search_shortcuts: map of search shortcuts, e.g.

  {
    "g":  { "url": "https://www.google.com/search?q=%s", "description": "Google" },
    "gh": { "url": "https://github.com/search?q=%s",    "description": "GitHub" }
  }
  

• appearance: default fonts and base font size for pages without specified fonts
• dmenu: options for launcher integration (history count, prefixes, etc.)

Environment variables use the DUMB_BROWSER_ prefix (managed by Viper). Examples:

• DUMB_BROWSER_DATABASE_PATH=...
• DUMB_BROWSER_DMENU_MAX_HISTORY_ITEMS=50

Config changes are watched and applied at runtime when possible.

Data Model

SQLite tables (created automatically):

• history(id, url, title, visit_count, last_visited, created_at)
• shortcuts(shortcut, url_template, description, created_at)
• zoom_levels(domain PRIMARY KEY, zoom_factor, updated_at)

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) Requirements

WebKitGTK uses GStreamer for media playback. Install the following packages to ensure audio/video work correctly.

• 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
  • Optional hardware accel: gstreamer-vaapi
• 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
  • Optional hardware accel: gstreamer1.0-vaapi

Theme and Runtime Updates

• The homepage and pages respect your system’s light/dark preference.
• The app updates color‑scheme live when your GTK theme changes (no relaunch needed).

Project Structure

• main.go: CLI/GUI entrypoint, dumb:// scheme, service wiring
• internal/cli: Cobra commands (browse, dmenu, version)
• internal/config: Viper‑backed config, XDG helpers, defaults
• internal/db: SQLite schema init and sqlc‑generated queries
• services: app services (parser/history/config/browser)
• pkg/webkit: WebKit2GTK bindings (CGO and stub implementations)
• frontend: TypeScript homepage UI bundled into the binary

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 — almost complete (GPU/Vulkan path landed).
• GPU rendering (Vulkan via GTK4 renderer) with graceful CPU fallback.
• Full Vim-style motion and keyboard navigation across pages and UI.
• Performance work: faster startup, lower memory, snappier UI.
• Basic ad-block extension — because fuck ads.
• Other shiny things I’m not yet aware of.

License

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