Browser Controller

Tracking since Apr 7, 2026.

Changelog

• May 1, 2026
  description

  Provides a way to inspect and control browser windows and tabs from a Rust CLI
  program. It also allows watching an event stream of window and tab events. The
  Event stream and CLI output use JSON for simple scripting with e.g. jq
  
  This is meant to allow a power user to integrate browser window and tab control
  with other parts of their environment, e.g. shell scripts, window manager or
  compositor shortcuts, system services or timed jobs.
  
  For ease of scripting the output can optionally use JSON and the event stream of
  browser events uses newline delimited JSON objects.
  
  Currently, as of 0.1.5 it allows listing, opening and closing windows.
  
  For tabs it allows listing, opening, activating, navigating to a new URL,
  closing, pinning, unpinning, warming discarded tabs up, muting and unmuting tab
  audio, moving the tab to a different position in the window's tab bar and going
  forward and backward in history.
  
  When opening a new tab it can also optionally remove credentials embedded in the
  URL of basic auth pages after they have been cached by the browser so they can't
  be seen over the user's shoulder or accidentally copied.
  
  The event stream includes events for basic window and tab operations like
  opening, closing and activating another tab as well as changes in titles and
  notifications when a page has finished loading.
  
  Note: My primary testing and development platform for this is Linux but I do
  provide binaries for other desktop platforms for the Rust side of this. Bug
  reports from users on those platforms are welcome if I overlooked some minor
  platform-specific issues. This is not really meant for use on mobile platforms
  since CLI use is uncommon there.

  Provides a way to inspect and control browser windows and tabs from a Rust CLI
  program. It also allows watching an event stream of window and tab events. The
  Event stream and CLI output use JSON for simple scripting with e.g. jq
  
  This is meant to allow a power user to integrate browser window and tab control
  with other parts of their environment, e.g. shell scripts, window manager or
  compositor shortcuts, system services or timed jobs.
  
  For ease of scripting the output can optionally use JSON and the event stream of
  browser events uses newline delimited JSON objects.
  
  For windows it allows listing, opening (including incognito windows) and closing
  windows. Window title prefix management is a Firefox-only feature and is not
  available on Chrome.
  
  For tabs it allows listing, opening (with optional wait-for-load timeout),
  activating, navigating to a new URL, closing, reloading (with optional cache
  bypass), pinning, unpinning, discarding tabs to free memory, muting and
  unmuting tab audio, moving the tab to a different position in the window's tab
  bar, going forward and backward in history, and sorting tabs by domain.
  
  For tab groups (Chrome-only) it allows listing all tab groups, getting a
  specific group, updating group properties (title, color, collapsed state),
  moving groups, adding tabs to groups (or creating new groups), and removing
  tabs from groups.
  
  Some tab features are Firefox-only and return an error on Chrome: toggling
  Reader Mode, warming up discarded tabs, and reopening tabs in containers.
  Container management (listing containers) is also Firefox-only.
  
  For downloads it allows listing (with optional state and query
  filters), starting new downloads, cancelling, pausing, resuming,
  retrying interrupted downloads,
  and erasing download history entries.
  
  When opening a new tab it can also optionally provide credentials for HTTP basic
  authentication via the browser's onAuthRequired API, avoiding the need to embed
  credentials in the URL where they would be visible in the address bar, history,
  and logs.
  
  The event stream includes events for window and tab operations (open, close,
  activate, navigate, title change, status change, tab moved, tab
  attached/detached between windows, window focus changed), tab group events
  (created, updated, removed) on Chrome, as well as download events (created,
  changed, erased).
  
  Note: My primary testing and development platform for this is Linux but I do
  provide binaries for other desktop platforms for the Rust side of this. Bug
  reports from users on those platforms are welcome if I overlooked some minor
  platform-specific issues. This is not really meant for use on mobile platforms
  since CLI use is uncommon there.

• May 1, 2026
  permissions

  nativeMessaging, scripting, sessions, tabs, webRequest

  alarms, nativeMessaging, offscreen, scripting, downloads, tabs, tabGroups, webRequest, webRequestAuthProvider

Permissions & access

Permissions

alarmsnativeMessagingoffscreenscriptingdownloadstabstabGroupswebRequestwebRequestAuthProvider

Host access

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Screenshots