App Review: Browsh

Browsh: Review

Browsh is an app I discovered when doing research for a previous article. When most people think of text-based browsers, they think of w3m or Lynx:

Browsh is a lot different from those browsers. It uses Firefox to load the page, then pixelates the background using UTF-8 half-blocks and converts all of the text to monospaced paragraphs.

It therefore requires Firefox and a true-color terminal (which is a lot for a text browser) but what it does with that is very cool.

Here's my website as seen in Browsh:

Main page	An article

Browsh can, inexplicably, render videos and WebGL, albeit they're pixelated and audio only sometimes works.

The intended use is for people who have low bandwidth, but who have access to a Linux server in a higher-bandwidth area. Browsh provides a great browsing experience at higher speeds by simply sending a pre-rendered page fetched over a faster network.

Personally, I just think it's fun to use. Go get it for Linux or Mac at Brow.sh.