browser-gopher

Browser Gopher

Search, aggregate, backup your browsing history from the command line.

Features

• Search your entire browsing history across all browsers
• Data stored locally in SQLite, query it however you like

Installation

For now, install from source:

# Install go if you don't have it: https://go.dev/doc/install
# If on a mac, install through brew:
#brew install go
# debian based:
#apt install golang

# Build browser-gopher
git clone https://github.com/iansinnott/browser-gopher
cd browser-gopher
make build

# Check the version
./browser-gopher --version

# Populate the database
./browser-gopher populate --latest

# Search
./browser-gopher search

Project status

Just started. Currently it extracts and stores all your browsing history in SQLite. You can search over all your browsing history, but full-text is not yet extracted.

Supported browsers

For now see the list of extractors here: https://github.com/iansinnott/browser-gopher/blob/master/pkg/extractors/extractors.go#L25

I should probably add a command to print it to stdout though.

Why?

I created BrowserParrot to have GUI access to all my browsing history with a quick fuzzy search. This worked out well, but the stack chosen at the time (Clojure/JVM) turned out not to be ideal for the problem.

In this iteration if switched to Go, which can provide:

• Lower memory usage
• Quick startup time
• Smaller binary
• More consistent deployments

Is this a rewrite of BrowserParrot?

Not currently. For now the focus is on acheiving desired UX from the command line. To be a real BrowserParrot alternative we'd need a GUI. However, I've been investigating Wails for a separate project and quite like it. Since this repo uses Go we'd be in a good position to wrap the functionality in a UI using Wails.

Importing from BrowserParrot

Import URLs from BrowserParrot:

browser-gopher browserparrot

Same as above, but with a custom DB path:

browser-gopher browserparrot --db-path ~/.config/uncloud/persistory.db

(This may be useful if you tried out Uncloud and have a browserparrot-like database somewhere else on your system)

Todo / Wishlist

• search (yeah, need to add this)
  • action: open
  • action: copy
• a TUI for searching and filtering for a more GUI-like experience
• full text indexing
  • ideally with more sophisticated extraction mechanisms than previous
• import history from History Trends Unlimited
  • It's already in sqlite so should be quick
• favicons
  • Update: Tried https://github.com/trashhalo/imgcat/blob/master/component/load.go#L121. Cannot effectively render at such small sizes in the terminal.
  • If anyone has suggestions for how to render 32x32 pngs in the terminal please let me know.