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A few days ago, I made the decision to switch my web browser, and for reasons still unclear to me, I concluded that Librewolf, my beloved browser, was consuming too many resources for my liking. While exploring alternatives, I recalled a small project that had caught my attention but seemed immature at the time – qutebrowser. I had never paid much attention to it before, but that afternoon, I decided to give it a try. To my amazement, it turned out to be a lightweight, user-friendly browser that incorporated all the keybindings of Vim. In a word, it was relaxing. Today, I want to describe the step-by-step process of configuring it on my Debian system.

installation

First, I quickly checked for qutebrowser availability:

sudo apt search qutebrowser

Then, I proceeded with the installation:

sudo apt install qutebrowser-qtwebengine qutebrowser-qtwebkit qutebrowser qtwebkit-plugins qtwebkit -y

configuration

After installation, I set qutebrowser as my default browser in my Sway configuration file:

set $browser=qutebrowser

Next, I attempted to read the qutebrowser configuration file, but to my surprise, it was empty:

less /home/jolek78/.config/qutebrowser/autoconfig.yml

Empy autoconfig, no config. I learned that if a config.py file existed, it would be ignored unless explicitly loaded using config.load_autoconfig(). It's important not to edit this file manually, as qutebrowser will overwrite it. Instead, I needed to create a config.py. Could there be an example config.py in the package? I searched for the directory:

sudo find / -d -iname qutebrowser 2>/dev/null

Then, I looked for specific files:

sudo find / -name "config.py" 2>/dev/null | grep qutebrowser

Unfortunately, these files weren't very helpful. So, I opened a tab to

:open qute://help/configuring.html

and, with patience, I got to work. I explored GitHub in search of examples and crafted my configuration:

nvim ~/.config/qutebrowser/config.py

config.load_autoconfig()

c.tabs.show = 'always'

config.set("colors.webpage.darkmode.enabled", True)

c.downloads.location.directory = '~/Downloads'

c.downloads.location.prompt = False

c.downloads.location.remember = False

c.url.start_pages = 'https://searx.envs.net/'

c.url.searchengines = 'https://searx.envs.net/? ♪

c.aliases = 'quit', 'w': 'session-save', 'wq': 'quit --save'

It's a basic configuration, but it suits my current needs. I quickly noticed that the adblock feature wasn't working properly, so I turned to GitHub to find python-adblock:

git clone https://github.com/ArniDagur/python-adblock.git
cd python-adblock/
pip install .

I launched qutebrowser again using my keybinding:

bindsym $mod+Shift+f exec $browser

Then, I executed an adblock update:

:adblock-update

And everything worked perfectly, meeting all my requirements.

bookmarks

I had accumulated a multitude of bookmarks, many of which were useless and repetitive, in my previous browser, Librewolf. It was time for some spring cleaning:

installation

configuration

bookmarks

my two cents