Chawan is a text-mode web browser. It displays websites in your terminal and allows you to navigate on them. It can be used as a terminal pager, or as a web/(S)FTP/gopher/gemini/file browser.
It understands HTML and CSS, and when enabled by the user, can also execute JavaScript and display images (on terminals supporting Sixel or the Kitty image protocol).
Chawan can also be used to as a general text-based document viewer , or as a hyperlinked man page viewer.
This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
Key Features
- Multi-processing, incremental loading of documents.
- Multi-charset, double-width aware text display.
- HTML5 support, forms, cookies.
- CSS-based layout engine: supports flow layout, table layout, flexbox layout.
- User-programmable keybindings (defaults are vi(m)-like).
- Basic JavaScript support in documents (disabled by default for security reasons).
- Inline image support with sixel/kitty protocols.
- Supports several protocols: HTTP(S), FTP, Gopher, Gemini, Finger, etc.
- User-defined protocols and file formats.
- Markdown viewer, man page viewer.
- Mouse support.
- Syscall filter based sandboxing on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux (through capsicum, pledge and seccomp-bpf).
- Bookmarks.
Website: sr.ht/~bptato/chawan
Support:
Developer:
License: Public domain
Chawan is written in Nim. Learn Nim with our recommended free tutorials.
Related Software
| Console Web Browsers | |
|---|---|
| eww | Emacs Web Wowser. It's integrated into Emacs, the famous text editor |
| Lynx | Legendary web browser that's still maintained |
| ELinks | Advanced and well-established feature-rich browser. Extend with Lua or Guile |
| w3m | Browser and terminal pager |
| Links | Text and graphic web browser with pull-down menu system |
| Offpunk | Offline-first command-line browser |
| Chawan | TUI web (and (S)FTP, Gopher, Gemini, ...) browser with CSS |
| Brow6el | Terminal web browser with graphics support |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Terminal Gemini Clients | |
|---|---|
| Amfora | Written in Go |
| Bombadillo | Written in Go |
| Elpher | Written in Lisp |
| Chawan | Written in Nim |
| ncgopher | Written in Rust |
| tinmop | Written in Lisp |
| Offpunk | Written in Python |
| asuka | Written in Rust |
| astronaut | Written in Go |
| cgmnlm | Written in C |
| gplaces | Written in C |
| ereandel | Written in Shell |
| Vgmi | Written in C |
| telescope | Written in C |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |