Features

For more information how to use these features to their full potential,

check the built-in offline help documentation by pressing F1 while running Vieb.

Modes

• Normal  Plenty of movement and switch options, most of them available by pressing a single key
• Command Access more complex functionality by entering commands with auto-completion
• Explore Enter a search (orange), navigate to websites (cyan) or browse files (yellow) with auto-completion
• Follow  Simulate click events on urls, buttons, input fields and more
• Search  Enter a search string and easily jump to next and previous matches
• Pointer Move a simulated cursor using the keyboard and execute clicks, hovers, image downloads and more
• Visual  Select (and optionally copy) any text on the page using familiar Vim bindings
• Insert  Regular interaction with the webpage, mostly used for typing text

Free

• Free and open source code, fork and contribute on github
• Discuss or suggest features on github or reddit
• Make your own builds using clear instructions included in the readme

Local first

• Automatically suggests previously visited websites from your local history
• Also suggests command names and arguments from memory
• Configure how many suggestions should be shown
• Fast and completely offline adblocking
• AMP protection using local custom redirects setting
• Offline help documentation available with F1

Privacy

• Strict permission system with custom permission allowlist and blocklists
• Hide privacy sensitive navigator fields from websites
• Firefox mode to override the navigator properties and the useragent to mimic Firefox
• Hide and block local WebRTC addresses but allow the protocol to be used with external addresses
• Vieb never sends data outside of website requests and opt-in user-enabled features
• Optionally switch adblocker to update or check for updates on the version page
• Not ever-green by design: update Vieb when you want to and how you want to

Accessible

• Dark theme everywhere: all UI elements and built-in pages have a dark background, also while loading
• Unified and consistent font and interface scaling using the fontsize setting
• Remembers your zoom level per site, which can also be reset at anytime with Ctrl-0
• Vieb is keyboard focussed, not limited, you can enable the mouse outside of Insert mode with :set mouse

Security settings

• Detailed permission settings, for notifications, fullscreen, microphone, openExternal and many more
• Secure default permissions for more security and less distractions
• Configure how to cache websites: clear on quit, or disabled entirely
• Download and show favicons, with a custom cache expiration duration (or disable)
• Optionally clear cookies and/or localstorage automatically on quit
• View individual cookies and delete them at will

Window splitting

• Display multiple websites in vertical and horizontal splits
• Navigate between open webpages with the buffer command
• Open new vertical splits with Vexplore or vsplit
• Open new horizontal splits with Sexplore or split
• Navigate between splits with Ctrl-w bindings, such as Ctrl-w and then hjkl
• Resize and re-order splits with Ctrl-w and then -, +, <, > or r
• Reset the custom split sizes with Ctrl-w and then =

Map commands

• Define custom keybindings using familiar map, nmap, nnoremap commands
• Map sets for all modes, while nmap, vmap, cmap and the others are mode-specific
• Use mapclear to remove all custom mappings for all modes
• Also clear built-in mappings with mapclear!
• Map keystrokes recursively to other keystrokes, using characters or the <>-notation
• Keybindings that require multiple keys use the showcmd, timeout and timeoutlen settings
• Recursive mappings will be limited to the maximum recursion depth set with maxmapdepth

Viebrc

• Store custom settings in a viebrc configuration file
• Loaded from the Vieb data folder and from ~/.viebrc
• Execute Vieb commands, such as map, set, command or call
• Can also be created based on the current settings by the mkviebrc command

Set command

• Read, append, update or unset any setting/option using the set command
• Auto-completion for setting names and common values
• Support for all of Vim's operators, such as +=, -=, ^=, & and ?
• Add multiple arguments to the set command to read/write multiple settings at once
• Reset individual settings or "all" to the Vieb default with the & suffix
• Reload all settings from your Viebrc with the reload command

Vim-compatible options

• Many compatible options with Vim, including:
• ignorecase
• maxmapdepth
• mouse
• showcmd
• spell
• spelllang
• splitbelow
• splitright
• timeout
• timeoutlen
• Open input fields in your favorite editor by setting the vimcommand option

History management

• Automatically save visited websites to a local history file
• Optionally clear history on quit or disable history browsing completely
• View and delete entries from your browsing history
• Enable container tabs to separate browsing data from other tabs
• List downloaded files, including download progress
• Optionally clear downloads on complete or on quit
• Remembers your previous browsing session, including opened tabs

Ad-blocker

• Integrated ad-blocker with easylist and easyprivacy
• Works fast and completely offline
• Optionally auto-update the lists or add custom ones

Tabs

• Set the minimum tab width, this differs a lot between other browsers
• Visible tabs are displayed more brightly in the tab bar
• When viewing multiple pages simultaneously, an orange indicator is present for the focussed tab
• Shows a blue indicator for tabs that are currently producing sound, such as music or videos
• Container tabs which don't share data with other tabs (text color in yellow)
• Tabs can be wrapped over multiple rows, this mode will always show all opened tabs in the bar
• Tabs can be pinned with ":pin", which keeps them neatly aligned and always restores them on restart
• When loading new pages, Vieb will default to loading HTTPS and can block redirects to HTTP

Want to try Vieb? Visit the downloads page

Remember that you can view the help documentation inside Vieb with F1