qutebrowser

qutebrowser is a lightweight keyboard-driven, vim-like browser based on PyQt5 and QtWebKit.

Warning: qutebrowser is based on a WebKit port that is considered insecure and outdated. qutebrowser is in the process of switching to the more secure qt5-webengine (Blink). More info here. Also see #Use experimental webengine backend.

Installation

Install either the qutebrowser or the qutebrowser-gitAUR package.

Basic usage

Use : to access the command prompt. You can use Tab to auto-complete.

On first usage of qutebrowser, a Quickstart page appears. It is later accessible via :help. See the cheatsheet for keyboard shortcuts.

User Configuration

You will find the configuration files of qutebrowser under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/qutebrowser/. The main configuration happens in the file qutebrowser.conf, which is organized in sections like an ini-file. For example, under [searchengines] you can configure your search engines as described by the comment. To add a shortcut for searching the the arch wiki, add these two lines:

archwiki = https://wiki.archlinux.org/?search={}
aw = ${archwiki}

Now, in qutebrowser you can search the arch wiki for an article about qutebrowser via :open aw qutebrowser which will bring you to this page. As per the standard configuration the key mapping o will subsitute :open, so typing o aw your_search_term will henceforth allow you to quickly search the arch wiki. Notice that the arguments required to perform a search vary across search engines, for example, to set up Google use:

google = https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q={}
g = ${google}

Keybindings

Keybindings reside in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/qutebrowser/keys.conf).

You can edit the keybindings directly from the browser with the command :bind key command or you can edit them directly from the file. Notice that there are many, many keybinds already in place. If you notice a lag on one of your keybind it is because some other keybind is also starting with the same key.

Video playback

See Browser plugins#Multimedia playback.

Tips and tricks

Use experimental webengine backend

To use the more secure webengine backend, use the --backend flag:

 $ qutebrowser --backend webengine
Note: The qutebrowser implementation of webengine is experimental and may be missing features.