● 0.14.6 MIT Rust + CEF + WPE WebKit

Vim-inspired
browser.

Native, GPU-accelerated. Rust on top of CEF or WPE WebKit — your choice, per domain.

Chromium rendering without an Electron-shaped layer above it. Two backends behind one BrowserEngine trait, picked per tab.

view on github → why buffr ↓

buffr

* Hacker News github.com/kryptic-sh/buffr MDN — KeyboardEvent

Hacker News

Modal browsing, hint-mode for links, ex-style command palette.

fshow comments dopen in tab ssave aarchive

HINT ●https://news.ycombinator.com/ 4 matches* upd100%

why

A browser shaped like vim, not chrome.

01 — INPUT

Modal browsing

Normal/insert/visual modes. Real motions, real text objects, real ex commands.

02 — LINKS

Hint mode

Press f, every link gets a label. Type the label, you're there. No mouse needed.

03 — ENGINE

Multiple backends, one trait

buffr-engine defines the BrowserEngine trait; buffr-cef wraps Chromium Embedded Framework, buffr-webkit drives WPE WebKit natively, with WKWebView, WebView2, Blitz, and Ladybird backends alongside. Per-domain rules pick the engine per tab — tab-strip badge shows WK or CE.

04 — GPU

GPU-accelerated

Compositing on the GPU. Smooth scroll, fast paint, low-latency input. Async render thread keeps Wayland resize backpressure honest.

05 — ISOLATION

Per-engine on-disk layout

Each engine instance gets its own ~/.cache/buffr/engines/<id>/ + ~/.local/share/buffr/engines/<id>/profile/. Distinct cookies, cache, IndexedDB. Auto-migrates pre-0.11 profiles on first launch.

06 — PARITY

Permissions · downloads · find · IME · PiP

Non-CEF tabs handle geolocation/notifications/mic/camera prompts, downloads with progress, / find-in-page, context-menu hit-test, IME composition, and HTMLVideoElement.requestPictureInPicture — same status-line UX as CEF.

07 — INTERACTION

Mouse + keyboard

Both, always. Power users get keys. Everyone else gets mice. Neither is second-class.

08 — PRIVACY

Zero telemetry

No analytics. No phone-home. --private mode tears down all engine profiles into a per-pid temp tree on exit.

install

Prebuilt binaries on every tagged release.

Linux (x86_64, aarch64) — .deb / .rpm / .tar.gz / Flatpak / Snap / AUR. macOS (Apple Silicon) — .dmg. Windows (x64, arm64) — .msi. SHA-256 sidecars on every artifact.

latest release → all releases ↗

buffr — Arch Linux (AUR)

$ yay -S buffr-bin
$ paru -S buffr-bin

buffr — macOS (Homebrew)

$ brew install --cask kryptic-sh/tap/buffr

buffr — from source

$ git clone https://github.com/kryptic-sh/buffr
$ cd buffr
$ cargo xtask fetch-cef    # vendor CEF runtime (~500 MB extracted)
$ cargo build --release