4 ms·

I just don't understand...what is the use case of this? I thought it would be something that cleverly renders text without style in a minimalist-browser sort of

I just don't understand...what is the use case of this? I thought it would be something that cleverly renders text without style in a minimalist-browser sort of way. But this just literally...shows you the web page...in the CLI? I'm confused.

jadbox 3mo ago
You could terminal into a remote machine terminal and use a web browser in the tty without needing an X11 windowing support.
- angeldimitrov94 2mo ago
  Struggling to see the reasoning behind why you would need to do this if you are remoting into a machine, meaning you have a real machine that you can just open a browser in. Seems more like a solution looking for a problem to me. There's never been a situation in which I wished I had a browser like this in the CLI. There have been situations in which I wish I could just get a simplified text version of any site without the styling, but I never once wished I could see the actual full site in all its glory in the CLI.
  - reddit_clone 2mo ago
    Unless you have x-forwarding (and an X server running locally) or VNC you can't really use a graphical browser remotely yes? This lets you use it from plain SSH connection?
    - jpc0 2mo ago
      In what situation do you need to do that is what the previous commenter qas getting at. If you want a graphical browser just open it locally...
      - janantos 2mo ago
        The primary idea was just can it be done. But it then went crazy, being mentioned on big portals such as hackaday, makeuseof, etc… I have also received messages people using this to access internal Grafana stack without need to be on VPN, so people found the reason for its existence by themselves. Also I am big fan of terminal apps, so why not.
westurner 3mo ago
I don't think any of these text-based web browsers are actively maintained; "Show HN: Browsh – A modern, text-based browser" (2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487552 browsh-org/browsh: A fully-modern text-based browser, rendering to TTY and browsers https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh "Forking Chrome to render in a terminal" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34547259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34547259 fathyb/carbonyl: Chromium running inside your terminal https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl chawan: TUI Web Browser https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/ https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/ Ladybird browser may be easier to build a TUI terminal user interface for than other brothers because of Lagom FWIU (LibWeb and LibJs are already decoupled from the UI and rendering)
- shiomiru 2mo ago
  I can't speak for the other projects you listed, but at least chawan is actively maintained by yours truly.
  - westurner 2mo ago
    My mistake! Lynx and elinks still work but don't exec JS or WASM. Cloudflare Browser Isolation runs part of the browser in the cloud, which might work for TUIs .. Research open source solutions for self-hosting remote browser isolation; Like these browser isolation Chrome extensions: https://www.legba.app/blog/best-browser-isolation-extensions-chrome-2026 https://www.legba.app/blog/best-browser-isolation-extensions... And these: RBI: remote-browser-isolation · GitHub Topics https://github.com/topics/remote-browser-isolation?o=asc&s=updated https://github.com/topics/remote-browser-isolation?o=asc&s=u... Cloudflare Browser Rendering REST API https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api... says 10/min day free (which is probably enough for an open source project that needs to run screenshots at various resolutions on a few builds per day) But then there's this, which currently only execs partial js: elinks -dump -no-references -dump-width 79

jadbox 3mo ago

You could terminal into a remote machine terminal and use a web browser in the tty without needing an X11 windowing support.

angeldimitrov94 2mo ago
Struggling to see the reasoning behind why you would need to do this if you are remoting into a machine, meaning you have a real machine that you can just open a browser in. Seems more like a solution looking for a problem to me. There's never been a situation in which I wished I had a browser like this in the CLI. There have been situations in which I wish I could just get a simplified text version of any site without the styling, but I never once wished I could see the actual full site in all its glory in the CLI.
- reddit_clone 2mo ago
  Unless you have x-forwarding (and an X server running locally) or VNC you can't really use a graphical browser remotely yes? This lets you use it from plain SSH connection?
  - jpc0 2mo ago
    In what situation do you need to do that is what the previous commenter qas getting at. If you want a graphical browser just open it locally...
    - janantos 2mo ago
      The primary idea was just can it be done. But it then went crazy, being mentioned on big portals such as hackaday, makeuseof, etc… I have also received messages people using this to access internal Grafana stack without need to be on VPN, so people found the reason for its existence by themselves. Also I am big fan of terminal apps, so why not.

westurner 3mo ago

I don't think any of these text-based web browsers are actively maintained; "Show HN: Browsh – A modern, text-based browser" (2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17487552 browsh-org/browsh: A fully-modern text-based browser, rendering to TTY and browsers https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh "Forking Chrome to render in a terminal" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34547259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34547259 fathyb/carbonyl: Chromium running inside your terminal https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl chawan: TUI Web Browser https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/ https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/ Ladybird browser may be easier to build a TUI terminal user interface for than other brothers because of Lagom FWIU (LibWeb and LibJs are already decoupled from the UI and rendering)

shiomiru 2mo ago
I can't speak for the other projects you listed, but at least chawan is actively maintained by yours truly.
- westurner 2mo ago
  My mistake! Lynx and elinks still work but don't exec JS or WASM. Cloudflare Browser Isolation runs part of the browser in the cloud, which might work for TUIs .. Research open source solutions for self-hosting remote browser isolation; Like these browser isolation Chrome extensions: https://www.legba.app/blog/best-browser-isolation-extensions-chrome-2026 https://www.legba.app/blog/best-browser-isolation-extensions... And these: RBI: remote-browser-isolation · GitHub Topics https://github.com/topics/remote-browser-isolation?o=asc&s=updated https://github.com/topics/remote-browser-isolation?o=asc&s=u... Cloudflare Browser Rendering REST API https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/browser-rendering/rest-api... says 10/min day free (which is probably enough for an open source project that needs to run screenshots at various resolutions on a few builds per day) But then there's this, which currently only execs partial js: elinks -dump -no-references -dump-width 79