[HN Gopher] Nyxt: The Emacs-like web browser
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Nyxt: The Emacs-like web browser
Author : signa11
Score : 118 points
Date : 2025-08-11 01:46 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| groceryheist wrote:
| This is so cool! I'm someone for whom emacs has steadily expanded
| its role in my computing life, but who will never adopt a text-
| based browser as a daily driver. Looking forward to the stable
| 4.0 release when I'll be prepared to use Nyxt and hope it can
| replace Firefox / Chromium as much as possible for me.
| smartmic wrote:
| I also tried Nyxt, but I never stuck with it. I believe there
| are different UI contexts depending on the goal. For example,
| browsing the web is a different task and experience than
| editing text. That's why it comes naturally to me to use a
| mouse- and keyboard-driven application, Firefox in my case, for
| browsing and Emacs for anything text-related.
|
| In other words, using the purely text-driven Emacs interface to
| browse multimedia web pages does not feel natural to me.
| ijidak wrote:
| Plug for vimium. I find it hits the keyboard sweet spot for
| me while browsing.
| groceryheist wrote:
| I use vimium now, but I think with an emacs-based browser I
| would be better at using the advanced features.
| iLemming wrote:
| Does it finally work on Macs without weird rituals? I love the
| idea of using only Linux, but I'm too stupid to deserve an
| employer who'd let me live my dreams. I'm just happy I'm not
| forced to use Windows.
| izhak wrote:
| The guys behind have decent lisp and hacking skills and zero to
| none product thinking. The project is around for a while but the
| complete lack of ability to think about users or from the users
| perpective makes it a dead end
| bowsamic wrote:
| Can you elaborate? In what ways have they failed their users?
| tremon wrote:
| By not having any form of content blocking for a long time (I
| lost track of the project, don't know what the current status
| is). The current web is too user-hostile to launch a browser
| without even basic stalking protection.
| jnpnj wrote:
| I think there's a lack of understanding. If Nyxt is trying to
| be the emacs of web browsers, it's very much removed from the
| "product mindset", it's more about somehow coherent
| capabilities than a product with market and users. Kinda like
| linux.
| mickael-kerjean wrote:
| This kind of articles / project is exactly why I love HN. I am
| not much a marketing person but have enough basics to
| understand that if something does not appeal to me, that's
| because I'm not the target and as a emacs fanboy this kind of
| tools 100% appeal to me.
| anthk wrote:
| These are not the target for Nyxt. Think about Emacs. Or, for
| vi/nvi/vim people, Luakit/Vimb.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| Note that while it suffered from featuritis at some point, the
| main guy reverted some of it after the last other contributor
| left:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/1m3kzv8/nyxt_400_prer...
|
| Personally, I'll use and donate to it once it can run uBlock,
| not before.
| skeezyboy wrote:
| i agree but it hasnt stopped emacs or linux for that matter
| deadlypointer wrote:
| How does it stack up in terms of security? To me the idea of
| hackability is a bit conflicting with all the security features
| of modern browsers. The web is basically the main attack surface
| today, so I wouldn't use a niche browser engine.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's a good question to ask.
|
| In terms of the browser itself, it's not niche browser engine.
| The engine is Chromium (via Electron) by default, though WebKit
| is also supported as a compile time option.
|
| So that should bring the same safeguards in terms of sandboxing
| from drive-by attacks.
|
| Then risk here is code that has execution permissions outside
| of that sandbox. But here, that's no different to running any
| kind of untrusted code (eg shell script, ELF, etc) on your
| local machine.
| drob518 wrote:
| Exactly my thought when I read the post. While I love the
| hackability of Emacs, it's one thing if it's just your editor
| with a security hole and another thing entirely if you're
| downloading and interpreting pages (and JavaScript?) from the
| Internet cesspool with a browser with a security hole.
| ironmagma wrote:
| So now we have Next, Nuxt, and Nyxt. What's noxt?
| smartmic wrote:
| Nzxt.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > So now we have Next, Nuxt, and Nyxt. What's noxt?
|
| Well there's still two more vowels[1], so at a guess ... Naxt
| and Nixt?
|
| --------------------------------
|
| [1] I've never understood why 'Y' is not a vowel.
| benchly wrote:
| We were taught in grade school that the vowels were "A, E, I,
| O, U....and sometimes Y" without any real explanation. I
| count that as our first lesson about the convoluted
| complexities of the English language.
| skeezyboy wrote:
| >I count that as our first lesson about the convoluted
| complexities of the English language.
|
| I dare say its made up as it goes along
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| Y is used as a vowel when it's between two consonants, and
| a consonant when it's not. A word like "Synchronize" uses y
| as a vowel, but a word like "Yellow" uses it as a
| consonant. Honestly, it's more vowel-like then consonant-
| like in every case I can think of, so maybe that rule is
| kind of weak, and it _should_ be counted as a vowel all of
| the time...
| pritambaral wrote:
| > a vowel when it's between two consonants, and a
| consonant when it's not.
|
| Not a hard rule, honestly.
|
| Some Indian languages exhibit a blurring of sorts with
| Ye- sounds. E.g., in Telugu, the word for 'How' is
| 'yela', which is often also pronounced as 'ela'. TBF,
| Telugu also blurs Ve-/We- sounds similarly.
| drdec wrote:
| Vowels are sounds, not letters. [1]
|
| Some letters always represent vowel sounds.
|
| Some letters never represent vowel sounds.
|
| Some letters are the letter Y
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel
| tetris11 wrote:
| I would use it if it supported ublock origin
| camdroidw wrote:
| And umatrix
| anthk wrote:
| Ironically the Guix build it's broken.
| yapyap wrote:
| neat blogpost but the otherwise uninvasive ad breaks the page
| width on iOS at least
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