Published web browser release qutebrowser 3.6.0, which offers a minimal graphical interface to enhance content viewing experience, along with a navigation system inspired by the Vim text editor, all operated through keyboard shortcuts. This browser is coded in Python using PyQt and QtWebEngine, distributed under the GPLv3 license. Despite being based on Python, it efficiently handles content rendering and parsing with the Blink engine and Qt library.
Key features of qutebrowser include tab management, download manager, private browsing mode, built-in PDF viewer, host-based ad blocker, and browsing history viewer. Users can configure an external video player for YouTube videos, navigate pages using “hjkl” keys, open new pages with “o” key, and switch tabs with “J” and “K” keys or “Alt-tab number”. The command prompt activated by “:” allows for page search and execution of vim-like commands, such as “:q” and “:w”. The browser also offers a hint system to quickly navigate to page elements like links and images.
In the latest version, qutebrowser has introduced several enhancements:
- Added output of information about the X11 window manager or Wayland composite server and loaded WebExtensions.
- Support for hints for elements within the shadow DOM (Shadow DOM).
- The qutedmenu script facilitates sorting of browsing history by access time.
- Enabling hardware acceleration of 2D canvas rendering by default on systems with Qt 6.8.2+.
- For Wayland-based environments without Qt 6.10+, the EGL_PLATFORM=wayland environment variable is now set by default to address issues with hardware rendering acceleration. More details here