Browsh – A Modern Text Browser That Play Videos and Everything

Browsh is an open source, simple and modern text-based browser that renders in TTY terminal environments. It is made up of a minimal Golang CLI front-end and a browser web-extension (headless Firefox) which actually offers most of the functionality to create a purely text-based version of web pages and web apps.

This browser renders anything that a modern browser can; HTML5, CSS3, JS, video as well as WebGL. It is importantly a bandwidth-saver, designed to run on a remote server and accessed via SSH/Mosh or the in-browser HTML service so as to notably reduce bandwidth.

Read Also: Command Line Web Browsing with Lynx and Links Tools

Browsh is useful only when you don’t have good Internet connection. It also helps you to avoid battery-drain of a modern browser from your laptop or low-powered device such as a Raspberry Pi.

Live SSH Demo – Just point your SSH client to ssh brow.sh, no authentication needed and session last 5minutes and are logged.

How to Install Browsh Text-Based Browser in Linux

Browsh’s requirements are a latest version of Firefox and a terminal client with true colour support. Once you have those you can download the suitable binary or package for your Linux distribution using following commands.

Install Browsh on RHEL/CentOS & Fedora

--------- On 64-bit --------- 
# wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.4.12/browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64.rpm
# rpm -Uvh browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64.rpm

--------- On 32-bit ---------
# wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.4.12/browsh_1.4.12_linux_386.rpm
# rpm -Uvh browsh_1.4.12_linux_386.rpm

Install Browsh on Debian/Ubuntu & Linux Mint

--------- On 64-bit --------- 
$ wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.4.12/browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64.deb 

--------- On 32-bit ---------
$ wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.4.12/browsh_1.4.12_linux_386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i browsh_1.4.12_linux_386.deb 

If you don’t want to install .deb and .rpm versions, you can download static binaries and execute it as shown.

--------- On 64-bit --------- 
$ wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.4.12/browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64
$ chmod 755 browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64
$ ./browsh_1.4.12_linux_amd64

--------- On 64-bit --------- 
$ wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.4.12/browsh_1.4.12_linux_386
$ chmod 755 browsh_1.4.12_linux_386
$ ./browsh_1.4.12_linux_386

There are also a Docker image that comes with the latest version of Firefox bundled, all you need to do is just pull and run the TTY client with.

$ docker run -it --rm browsh/browsh

How to Use Browsh Text-Based Browser in Linux

Once you have Browsh installed, you can run browsh on the terminal as shown.

$ browsh

Most keys and mouse gestures should work as you would expect on a desktop browser, the following are the basic ones for you to get started.

• F1 – opens the documentation
• ARROW KEYS, PageUP, PageDown – scrolling
• CTRL+l – focus the URL bar
• CTRL+r – reload page
• CTRL+t – open new tab
• CTRL+w – close a tab
• BACKSPACE – go back in history
• CTRL+q – exit the program

You might also like to read these following related articles.

1. 8 Command Line Tools for Browsing Websites and Downloading Files in Linux
2. Googler: A Command Line Tool to Do ‘Google Search’ from Linux Terminal

1. Cloud Commander – Web File Manager to Control Linux File and Programs via Browser
2. Tig – A Command Line Browser for Git Repositories

For more information, go to: https://www.brow.sh/

That’s all! Browsh is a simple, fully-modern text-based browser that runs in TTY terminal environments and in any browser, and can render anything that a modern browser can. In this guide, we have explained how to install and use Browsh in Linux. Try it out and share your thoughts with us in the comments.

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