[HN Gopher] Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers
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Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers
Author : ulrischa
Score : 165 points
Date : 2025-03-23 09:07 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (polypane.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (polypane.app)
| edoceo wrote:
| Shut up and take my money!
| tonijn wrote:
| Any free alternative?
| hooverd wrote:
| Chromium
| mdaniel wrote:
| The top comment from the last time this was submitted pointed
| to an open source (AGPLv3) implementation
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29340887> but I don't
| know how they compare feature-wise
| herpdyderp wrote:
| Wow this is great!
|
| > Responsively App is built on top of Electron and uses
| Chromium as its rendering engine.
|
| Now I want an app that shows Firefox, Chrome, and Safari
| side-by-side (besides manually opening them all side-by-side
| of course).
| edoceo wrote:
| How could one make an app that could host those multiple
| engines? I've heard that Firefox doesn't embed well, maybe
| WebKit would be easier? What about Servo or the engine from
| LadyBird? Is it even possible?
| CharlesW wrote:
| To save other readers a click: https://responsively.app/
| tjallingt wrote:
| Seems quite similar to https://sizzy.co/
| herrherrmann wrote:
| True! I'd love to hear from someone who tried out both and
| settled on one.
| hollin wrote:
| Sizzy seems to have been abandoned. The developer has been
| unresponsive and the last update was botched with no way to
| actually get it. It's a shame because I preferred Sizzy's
| experience over the alternatives. It just felt more polished
| to me.
| kilian wrote:
| Hey, I'm Kilian, the creator and solo developer of Polypane.
| Exciting to see this on the homepage again.
|
| Happy to answer any questions folks have!
| tdhz77 wrote:
| I like your pricing model.
| johnisgood wrote:
| You have to sign up, and then this welcomes me:
|
| The password has to have:
|
| - At least one lowercase letter
|
| - At least one number
|
| - At least one uppercase letter
|
| - At least 8 characters
|
| I do not like it when websites (or applications, w/e) do
| this. I am somewhat OK with "at least 8 characters long" and
| I even understand its significance (from a security
| perspective) but not the rest.
| dschiffner wrote:
| zero relevance to the pricing.
| amelius wrote:
| Just use the browser's built in password suggestion.
| johnisgood wrote:
| For something not-so-serious I probably should, but my
| browser does not have one. :D
| dventimi wrote:
| I don't. Nine dollars per month for an individual? No thanks.
| Charge what you like. It's your right to do that, but as a
| hobbyist there's no chance I'm buying.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Its a great tool and for a front end developer its
| reasonable.
| pietmichal wrote:
| Quick feedback: The "Polypane Portal" page hangs after opening
| it in Chrome on M1 Pro Macbook.
| kilian wrote:
| Can't seem to replicate that here (m4 macbook), but I'll keep
| it open for a bit and see what happens. Thanks for letting me
| know!
| katsura wrote:
| M1 Pro here too, the page doesn't hang, but it's extremely
| slow to scroll on my end.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| M1 Max MacBook Pro and no issues, fwiw. Just to help
| provide data.
| Xorakios wrote:
| M1 Mac mini here and instant loading in Brave.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Scrolling is unusable on that page for me:
|
| Computer: Apple M3 Max
|
| macOS: 14.7.3 (23H417)
|
| Google Chrome 134.0.6998.118
|
| I also tried in my "clean" chrome profile (to rule out
| extensions) and it's still got really bad scroll lag. This
| happens as soon as I open the page.
|
| Here is a video though I understand it's hard to convey
| since you can't see when/how much I'm scrolling. I can tell
| you I scrolled slowly down and back up consistently through
| this video.
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/m71YtZdk
|
| Even worse, I just found that having that tab open (and
| visible) makes Chrome (no other app) laggy everywhere.
| Something is definitely wrong with that page. Also that
| page was open in a different chrome profile and it still
| made my main chrome profile lag when just trying to click
| around the text area for this comment on HN.
|
| Edit: Some extra details for my setup, I have external
| monitors (4) and the Macbook Pro is closed in clamshell
| mode. Not sure why either of those things would matter but
| I figure both those cases are more common for people on HN
| (external monitors/closed laptop) than the general public
| so I wanted to mention it.
|
| Edit2: And here is a video of me doing the same scrolling
| on the homepage just to show the difference:
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/GWLr0Qwl
| akshaybhalotia wrote:
| Can confirm, M1 Air 16 GB, Brave and macOS are up-to-date
| janderson215 wrote:
| Have any extensions installed that may be blocking requests?
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| same
| parentheses wrote:
| I recall using your product years ago and it was fantastic. It
| helped me work solo on a web app with ease. Not having CSS and
| JS skills like a lot of front end devs, it was nice knowing all
| viewports were handled.
| ulrischa wrote:
| I brought it to the hn frontpage again. Is this worth getting
| some free month? ;-)
| kilian wrote:
| Haha, email me and we'll see
| spicybright wrote:
| I love the idea of the product, I could have definitely used it
| in the past. And I really love your responses to questions
| asked here. You're very honest and friendly. If I get into
| webdev again, I'll definitely give Polypane a shot!
| bsimpson wrote:
| I built a prototype of something similar with iframes for a gig
| at eBay a decade ago. Ended up showing it off at the first
| React conf. Definitely useful to have as much immediate
| feedback as possible when you're developing.
|
| Glad to see a productized version! Most of my work these days
| is for internal tools with fixed browser expectations,
| otherwise I'd probably be downloading a trial right now.
|
| Congrats!
| mattlondon wrote:
| You have the Google logo on your landing page above the fold -
| what's the connection?
| bitpush wrote:
| That was the first thing I noticed as well. OP can you
| answer?
| kilian wrote:
| Those are customers. Just like for example on netlify.com.
|
| I had a title stating that for the longest time, then I
| noticed nearly all other landing pages simply have it without
| title and just a clean list of logos, so I changed it to that
| as well.
| ashryan wrote:
| Congrats Kilian!
|
| Polypane made a massive difference in getting our startup's
| website shipped a few months ago. I highly recommend it for
| entrepreneur-devs.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| I wish such a browser could accurately emulate a mobile device's
| browser, not just change screen size, but even Apple's iOS
| simulator fails at this.
| Y_Y wrote:
| No need, nowadays sites just guess you're on a phone if you
| resize the browser window too narrow and whinge at you to "use
| a desktop device or use our app for the best experience".
| jsheard wrote:
| > "use a desktop device or use our app for the best
| experience".
|
| Plot twist: their "app" is just the same site wrapped in a
| webview, minus the nags to install the app.
| codedokode wrote:
| Plus autostart on boot and daily notifications.
| kilian wrote:
| There's a huge list of things Polypane emulates beyond the
| screen size.
|
| For devices: - user agent - reported
| platform - device pixel ratio - rendering mode
| (mobile rendering and desktop rendering respond differently
| depending on your viewport meta tag) - default input
| device - orientation APIs
|
| Beyond that it can also emulate reading direction, page
| language, browser locale, user-configured default font-size,
| different network settings and a whole range of different media
| queries like color-scheme, reduced-motion reduced-data,
| reduced-transparency, prefers-contrast, forced-colors (windows
| high contrast mode) and color gamut. I'll be adding even more
| device browser-specific emulations later this year.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Can it emulate email rendering?
| kilian wrote:
| no I'm not touching that can of worms with a ten foot pole.
| Someone braver than me can build that!
| avel wrote:
| You need a farm of machines that run the actual mail
| clients, to do that reliably. https://www.emailonacid.com/
| is such a service.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| Oh I wasn't even thinking about those things, but that's
| really cool! I was thinking more about different CSS
| implementation behavior, though that's less of a mobile-
| specific issue and more of a "every browser is different"
| issue.
|
| I don't have a list of differences off the top of my head,
| but I regularly find big enough differences that I don't rely
| on "responsive mode" or even (as mentioned) Apple's iOS
| simulator (because it does not accurately replicate the real
| on-iPhone browser rendering, which has bitten me before).
| kilian wrote:
| Using Polypane doesn't mean you can skip out on testing
| other rendering engines. That's such an important point
| that I even mention it on the homepage!
|
| So yeah, you should be testing (mobile) Safari and Firefox
| too. Chrome on android has some different APIs compared to
| Chrome on desktop, but rendering is identical.
|
| When developing your site, you can use Polypane Portal[1]
| to tunnel your local site to real devices while keeping
| them fully in sync with what you do in Polypane, so you can
| scroll, interact, inspect and even edit across real devices
| from inside Polypane, saving you a ton of time.
|
| [1] https://polypane.app/portal/
| paradox460 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those all things chromium
| gives you for free? I open the inspector right here, click
| the devices button, and I can set all those
| rckt wrote:
| A browser with a subscription. I have no words. People try to
| make money out of anything. And they succeed in this. The world
| is an insane place, really.
| haukilup wrote:
| Do browsers not make money though? Through leveraging their
| market share they generate revenue.
|
| This is just a different approach. Provide a product (a
| browser), charge people that want that product.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Looks more like a browser-centred IDE to supplement (not
| replace) the regular codebase-centred IDE to improve front-end
| development productivity. That productivity increase is what's
| very valuable if it actually materializes. The goal obviously
| isn't to improve your Youtube-viewing experience or whatever,
| so it's not really comparable to Chrome or Firefox.
| bogwog wrote:
| I see this more of an IDE/dev tool than a web browser. I'm not
| a web developer, but I could see why someone would pay for this
| to get more features than what you get in
| Chrome/Firefox/Safari.
| Ataraxic wrote:
| I don't feel that you have a measured take on what is basically
| browser tooling. It's a customized browser built around web
| development. Is that _so_ insane?
|
| Imagine someone came out with a browser that synced and allowed
| you to view/test your app in the days of ie6/7/8/9 across all
| those browsers. Would charging money per month for that be so
| weird?
|
| This isn't for anyone to use as their normal browser.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| > People try to make money out of anything.
|
| So...software developers who mimic the real world. If I walk by
| a fruit stand, a grocery store, or a booth at a fair selling
| homemade crafts; I don't expect anything to be free. It is the
| exception when they are handing out free samples.
|
| In the software world, too many expect everything in the store
| to be free (as in beer). Each software product represents real
| effort on someone's part, so it is not insane to expect them to
| want some compensation for that.
| Xelynega wrote:
| If I walk by a stand, it cost them something to give me their
| homemade crafts for free(they have less to give away)
|
| With software development the only thing lost with giving it
| away for free is the opportunity cost that someone might have
| paid for it.
|
| So I don't think physical products and software can be
| compared like that
| tigroferoce wrote:
| Do you think that software comes out of thin air? It takes
| time and effort to develop and maintain software. The fact
| that it doesn't cost to reproduce it doesn't mean it
| doesn't cost to create it in the first place.
| tigroferoce wrote:
| Absolutely incredible indeed! People asking money in change of
| their work, how dare they? /s
|
| All these years where megacorps gave people stuff for free have
| tainted the minds of many.
|
| If you questioned the subscription model over the perpetual
| license, that would be somehow acceptable, but assuming
| everything must be free is just non sense.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > People try
|
| They are making lots of money with a very useful and nice-
| looking tool.
|
| What's your excuse?
| sam_goody wrote:
| I totally get why you do subscription. I totally get why I don't
| do subscription.
|
| Is there some sort of middle ground? Say, minimum purchase cost
| is the same price as six months, but it keeps on working
| afterwards sans updates. When the dev realizes that such a tool
| is only 80% effective unless it is totally updated, they can
| subscribe.
| kilian wrote:
| Happy to answer this. Polypane is a browser. If you don't keep
| your browser rendering engine up to date, you're opening
| yourself to a whole host of security issues (not to mention
| just generally diverging from what your end users use). Keeping
| that rendering engine up to date means dealing with a slew of
| potentially breaking changes with each new chromium version.
|
| So there's two reasons:
|
| 1. The only way to do that continuous upkeep of the rendering
| engine that I have found to be sustainable is with a
| subscription.
|
| 2. I _definitely_ don 't want to be responsible for people
| using years-old versions of Chromium.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If my users are using an old version of Chromium, I probably
| want to support that and test on it.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I liked the old "pay for updates" model. Nowadays, that seems
| less viable because security updates are so important[0]. I
| think the middle ground model would be something like security
| updates are free, feature updates cost money. Something like
| pay $x for version n+1 or a discounted rate for a subscription.
|
| Sounds like a bit of a hassle on the logistics/release
| engineering side, though. That would need to be handled with
| some care and planning.
|
| [0] Which I'll admit I don't 100% buy, but I'd love for a
| security expert to weigh in.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| You admit this, but yeah, it's a big headache that has its
| own trade-offs.
|
| By design, you'll have users spread across any number of
| versions. And you have to decide how far back you're going to
| issue updates. And instead of having nice in-app updates and
| a policy of "just upgrade to the latest version", you have a
| system that's complicated for you and your users. And you
| have to decide if you're okay letting users use (by design)
| releases with issues that have long been fixed.
|
| I can see how Adobe and Jetbrains have the manpower to do it,
| but a solo dev or a small team, you should spend your time
| building the dang product rather than appeasing people who
| don't think your product is worth $9/mo.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Yeah, I've seen similar in pro-level software tools, CAD
| applications, MATLAB, etc, but those tend to be large and
| mature organizations with the expertise and manpower to
| e.g. backport bugfixes to released versions.
| IsTom wrote:
| Maybe it could work similar to how Bitwig licenses work - you
| buy a license with a year of updates and it's yours - after the
| year expires you can download binaries for the latest version
| you're entitled to. Later you can buy access to the current
| version with an another year of updates (at a lower price) when
| you've decided that they've added something new you want.
| cy_hauser wrote:
| Interestingly, this didn't work for Jetbrains. They found
| people often skipped a year and decided they wanted the
| "missing" revenue. There answer is to sell the version you
| "own" as of the date they process your order. You're allowed
| a full year of updates. However, if you don't continue the
| subscription then your version automatically rolls back to
| the version as of your purchase. You lose all the fixes and
| updates you've been using during the year.
| buildfocus wrote:
| Why don't you do subscription?
|
| I've heard plenty of arguments on the 'financial tools to
| manage them are bad' (forget about them, hard to cancel) but
| few against 'paying money proportional to how much I use the
| product'. As a general concept that seems reasonable to me - if
| you use a product for 10 years, it's fair to pay more than
| somebody who uses it for a couple of months.
|
| In a world where finance improves (more subs via Apple Pay et
| al, more banks like Revolut that show & allow unilaterally
| blocking any given recurring charge) would you still avoid
| them?
| sam_goody wrote:
| - It's hard to convince my boss to create a subscription.
| - I don't want to become hostage to monthly payments - if I
| don't pay one month my whole workflow is messed over, so I
| have to continue (vs. otherwise I can slowly trade it out of
| my workflow, and/or look for alternatives) - Its hard
| for me to mentally grok how much I am paying monthly on
| subscriptions. - I never cancel, because inertia.
| - I am not sure if this is something that justifies a monthly
| subscription, and two weeks is too little time for me to
| invest in changing my workflow to accommodate it. - I
| hate subscriptions (this is an emotional thing, so you could
| tell me to get a shrink. But I suspect I am not the only
| one).
|
| I feel like I am missing even bigger reasons, but /rant
| runekaagaard wrote:
| I've used it a lot. Great product, emulates subtle device issues
| very well that Chrome device view doesn't
| wonger_ wrote:
| Such as?
| runekaagaard wrote:
| https://polypane.app/docs/emulation/
| cluckindan wrote:
| Is it just an Electron app with webviews synced via Browsersync?
| kilian wrote:
| Yeah, just like Dropbox is two curls duct-taped to an SD card.
| rcarmo wrote:
| And a stapler - don't forget their document integration!
| cluckindan wrote:
| My question was legitimate, though.
| neogodless wrote:
| Remove the word "just" from your question, and you'll
| magically get a lot more positive feedback!
|
| Sorry _JUST_ remove the word ;)
| cluckindan wrote:
| How about "simply"?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Be fair, they also harvest your email and store it.
| Ataraxic wrote:
| The question is that it seems to emulate many things, but what
| doesn't it emulate well?
|
| It looks like it's built off chromium, so I'm assuming it
| wouldn't be able to show an issue that only appears in safari or
| maybe Mozilla?
|
| Perhaps this is in the docs.
|
| edit: It's in the FAQ at the bottom. Still, beyond the actual
| browser engine, are there other known limitations?
| kilian wrote:
| This feels like a lay-up, but here you go :)
| https://polypane.app/docs/emulation/#emulation-or-simulation
|
| Polypane doesn't simulate the specific rendering engine of
| other browsers, it just _pretends to be another browser_ (which
| is what emulation is) so you can test that the code you wrote
| for those browsers (for example, a polyfill) responds well. You
| 'll still need to test in those real browsers to check against
| their rendering bugs or support gaps. (but something like
| Polypane portal[1] can make that step much easier)
|
| [1] https://polypane.app/docs/portal/
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| Perhaps there's a way you could remotely render a page in
| Firefox, Safari, etc? And then stream into the viewport.
| jamesmkenny wrote:
| I've been using it for a while now. It is an excellent tool in
| the tool belt, making me a much better developer and more
| productive, a lot less messing around.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| * What are a few features you offer over Browserstack? (re:
| x-browser testing).
|
| * Do you offer GenAI integrations? (Copilot, Claude, etc)
|
| (Help me sell this to my manager)
| kilian wrote:
| Polypane is a chromium-based browser that you install on your
| own device and use while building applications that lets you
| develop at different (emulated) devices and
| screensizes/variation in one overview, with a bunch of
| development, accessibility and quality tools built right in.
|
| Browserstack is an online device testing tool where you check
| if your site works on different real devices one-by-one. That
| is to say, they don't really compete: if you don't have real
| devices to test with then Browserstack is an excellent option.
|
| What users mostly find is that by using Polypane (fast, local)
| they have far less use of Browserstack (slow, online) and the
| entire process speeds up. There will always be a need for real
| device testing.
|
| There's no gen AI integrations, and I don't have any planned.
| You can happily use Claude or CoPilot in the browse panel
| though (which is a little browser that lives inside Polypane,
| so you can browse without losing the context of your project)
| mattl wrote:
| Thank you for not adding AI slop to this.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I don't understand the many comments here complaining that the
| browser has a subscription. Finally! I want more paid browsers,
| not less. I want to get back to a world where we paid for
| products with money, instead of being datamined and have ads
| pushed down my throat.
|
| People here, out of all places, should be aware of what it means
| when a product is free.
| elashri wrote:
| I guess that when people usually talk about paid browsers, they
| talk about separate web engines not chromium forks. If this
| will help with the battle against Google's dominance.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Dominance comes from owning the product (the browser), it
| didn't come from the browser engine.
| billiam wrote:
| If dominance wasn't at least enhanced or supported by
| owning the browser engine, Google wouldn't be doing
| Chromium.
| machine_ghost wrote:
| I read the website, but I still don't get what value it's
| offering over Chrome? Better viewport sizing?
| perdomon wrote:
| Here's a comment from the creator with a host of things that
| are mostly not available in Chrome:
|
| There's a huge list of things Polypane emulates beyond the
| screen size.
|
| For devices: - user agent - reported
| platform - device pixel ratio - rendering mode
| (mobile rendering and desktop rendering respond differently
| depending on your viewport meta tag) - default input
| device - orientation APIs
|
| Beyond that it can also emulate reading direction, page
| language, browser locale, user-configured default font-size,
| different network settings and a whole range of different media
| queries like color-scheme, reduced-motion reduced-data,
| reduced-transparency, prefers-contrast, forced-colors (windows
| high contrast mode) and color gamut. I'll be adding even more
| device browser-specific emulations later this year.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| But chrome already supports all of that?
| perdomon wrote:
| I don't know chrome devtools enough to say whether or not
| it already has all of these features. I will say that you
| can place a nail with a hammer, but if you're building
| houses for a living, it might be best to invest in a nail
| gun.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Super cool! Is there the possibility to get a students discount?
| Will try the free trial for now :)
| kilian wrote:
| Its free for students through the GitHub Student Developer Pack
| :)
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| I understand the subscription model, but the cost doesn't sit
| right for me.
|
| My all products JetBrains subscription is PS137 a year, for every
| single product they create (and perpetual fallback licences).
| This is PS91 a year, which is about 66% of the cost of my JB sub
| and if I stop paying, I assume PolyPane stops working.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| I really wish the pricing model offered some sort of lifetime
| purchase. This seems great but I don't think I could justify the
| monthly/yearly cost.
| tempodox wrote:
| I would be OK with payed upgrades but a subscription is a big
| no-no.
| kilian wrote:
| I explain my reasoning elsewhere in the thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43472234
| masto wrote:
| I just spent several long days implementing my first modern CSS
| responsive web design, learning flexboxes and grids and what-can-
| I-use along the way. I currently have three different browser
| windows and two device emulators open across two monitors. So
| what I'm saying is, I have an appreciation for how this app could
| probably have saved me a lot of trouble if I'd known about it
| last week.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| You basically reproduced the product by opening a couple of
| browser instances, right? What would polypane do for you?
|
| Maybe I am not getting it. I am probably not getting it.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| polypane lets you see everything happen simultaneously, which
| is way less tedious than just like refreshing and changing
| your viewport and whotnot for however many permutations
| you're testing, is my understanding. as a general example if
| you make an inline CSS change in a browser tab that generally
| only affects the one you're currently in.
| masto wrote:
| As a purpose-built tool, it improves on the experience of
| having multiple windows open. While the headline feature is
| keeping them all in sync, for my particular app, that's not
| as big a deal (though it's pretty cool that it will even do
| that for stuff like tweaking CSS styles in the inspector).
|
| I've been playing around with it for a few minutes and I
| think what I'm really appreciating is that it's filled with
| dev tools of all kinds and it's really optimized for working
| on web sites rather than browsing. It can automatically open
| panes based on CSS breakpoints, and it has presets for many
| devices. Some of it is things I had in Chrome, but better,
| like rulers and guides and grids. Even the way screenshots
| are implemented shows they put thought into saving time and
| hassle over a thing you could of course do before with a few
| more steps. And it's not all related to layout: it shows meta
| tags and icons and previews for social media sharing.
|
| Anyway, it's pretty cool IMO and I'll probably end up buying
| it if I keep working on web apps. The only downside I've
| noticed is that it feels a little sluggish, even when not
| heavily loaded down (e.g. just 3 panes). I'm using this
| monster M2 Ultra Mac Studio so it's a bit unusual for a
| browser to lag.
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(page generated 2025-03-25 23:01 UTC)