This document contains a list of frequently asked questions. If your question is not listed, you can find support here:
- Github - Github discussions can be used for any question
- Matrix - #vieb is hosted on matrix.org
- Telegram - Chat with other users on Telegram
- Or make a Github issue if you think it might be a bug
Most general usage information can be found in the help page.
You can open it with the F1 key or the :help command inside Vieb.
There is also help related to startup arguments found by running vieb --help.
Below are questions that are either not explicitly covered in the help page,
or are asked a lot regardless of their existing documentation/explanation.
On Windows you would download releases ending in .exe or win.zip.
On Linux you download either the AppImage or your distribution's native format (e.g. deb for Debian/Ubuntu and so on).
For Mac, there are two zipped Apps, one for x64 and one for ARM64.
Vieb releases are offered in two different architectures:
- ARM64, for Silicon macs, Raspberry Pi's, micro-computers etc. (suffixed aarch64 for rpm and pacman builds)
- x64, for pretty much all other regular devices (also suffixed with amd64, x86_64 or no suffix at all)
It's important to make sure that you download the right architecture for your system.
If it's a zip/tar.gz archive that you downloaded, you can extract it and double-click the executable. On Windows, you can simply double-click on the ".exe" file to run the program, though you might need to mark the SmartScreen warning as trusted, more on that on Wikipedia. If you are using Linux, you can download the AppImage to have the same single executable experience. For most other download options, you need to use your distribution's package manager, usage should be similar to other packages of the same type.
The mac apps are not signed, you can sign them yourself with sudo codesign --force --deep --sign - /Applications/Vieb.app.
This step has become a required step in recent versions.
If not sufficient to self-sign it, you could try these instructions for opening the app as is,
which comes down to disabling app store requirements with sudo spctl --master-disable.
If none of these work, you can build the app from source with the README build instructions.
If these instructions do not seem to be followed at all, your issue might be closed,
as it's not Vieb's responsibility to fix your operating system quirks for you.
Vieb is Chromium/Electron based and implements a wide range of features aimed to FEEL like Vim.
For a list of features, see the homepage.
See this issue for my motivation of starting Vieb.
Proper comparisons and migration guides haven't been made yet,
but there are example viebrc files for popular desktop browsers and Vim browser extensions.
If you already have Vieb, you can view and save the examples to disk from the offline help page: :h examples.
The answer is probably no.
This is because strictly speaking some pages aren't actually scrollable at all,
even though they have a scrollbar on the right side.
There is usually a part of that page that can be scrolled, but not the page itself.
If that scrollable section is large enough, it's fairly easy to confuse the two.
If the page isn't scrollable, Vieb will not be able to scroll it using the global scroll options,
but you will have to use pointer mode to execute a scroll action at a specific position.
This is because the global scroll actions wouldn't know which of the scrollable sections to scroll,
and the page itself isn't actually scrollable, so you have to be explicit about it using the pointer.
You can even map the pointer scroll actions to normal mode if you want to,
but you will still execute the scrolling at the pointer position.
This distinction and other differences between the two types of scrolling are explained in :h scrolling.
By default you will switch to the new tab when using the mouse to open it.
This can be changed with the mousenewtabswitch setting, see :help mousenewtabswitch for details.
In short, if you want to stay in the same tab when opening a link in a new tab with the mouse, run :set nomousenewtabswitch.
The same behavior is by default enabled in follow mode, please see :help follownewtabswitch for details.
Google block a lot of software that isn't Chrome from accessing their services. Just a simple DDG search reveals that most programs experience this. Google own your data and they are the ones to decide who may view it and when, for now they chose to only allow mostly Chrome and sometimes Firefox. Below is a list of known workarounds to circumvent this blocking policy, use them at your own risk.
- You can temporarily use
:set useragent=%firefoxwithin Vieb to mimic Firefox, which Google allow more often. - Add "Electron" to the useragent setting to make Google aware that you are using a custom Electron browser, which Google condone for now.
- Try again after building up some cookies and tracking data, as Google are more likely to allow the login once they know who you are.
There are no other known workarounds to allow the sign-in at this point of time. You are encouraged to open PRs to improve this list of workarounds. However, opening issues just to announce that you cannot login to your account will be closed, as it's not something Vieb or any other smaller browser can fix, only Google can. You, and only you, need to consider if it's worth using services that can block you any moment for any reason. For more info about moving away from Google and why, see r/degoogle.
Google own Widevine, the one and only DRM solution for Chromium-based browsers.
They are in control of approving and verifying the inclusion of Widevine into a (software) project.
The process is far from straightforward and is blocked for open-source software.
For a few years this was also listed on the criticism paragraph on Wikipedia, but they removed it as unreliably sourced.
Issues relating to this topic will be closed, as it's not something Vieb or any other smaller browser can fix, only Google can.
You, and only you, need to consider if it's worth using services that require DRM and thus Google approved proprietary software.
For more info on why DRM usually isn't a good idea, see the GNU website on DRM or Defective by Design.
The Vieb build script does have the option to at least make builds with Widevine included,
though I will not build these by default, as you need proprietary keys for Widevine to be accepted.
If you want to make your own Vieb build with Widevine included you can do node build.js --drm,
though keep in mind you still need to go through these Castlabs EVS instructions to play anything but development demos.
Blocking video ads on Youtube is extremely tricky, and requires continuous updates to keep working.
Even well respected adblocker plugins such as uBlock Origin do sometimes let ads through.
Vieb is no different in this case, and relies on blocklists and resource files to be kept up to date.
You can automatically update these on startup by running :set adblocker=update,
but even then these lists need to be up to date with the changes Youtube makes to work in the first place.
This means there are a lot of layers that need updating before blocking works again after a Youtube update.
Since version 8.0.0 the blocking resources and methods are identical to plugins like uBlock Origin,
and any issues with blocking content you have in Vieb are therefor caused by one of two things:
- Different blocklists and/or different versions of the lists, either update them or add extra ones.
- Issues in the adblocking module that Vieb uses, please report your issues not related to the above in the relevant repo.
In both cases, Vieb is not directly involved or the reason that you see ads,
please consider testing various blocklists or opening an issue in the adblocker repo,
unless you are really sure that it's a Vieb specific issue by testing it with this example usage of their package.
Finally, it's worth noting that most blocklists work suboptimal if you block autoplay,
which is blocked by default in Vieb, though you can change that using --autoplay-media=always on startup.
Most screensharing will work if you allow permissionmediadevices fully and set permissiondisplaycapture to ask.
Some sites also require permissionmicrophone and permissioncamera in addition to that.
You can see the history of blocked and allowed permissions in the notification page (see :notifications).
Google Meet however does not use the open standard of the screenshare API,
but instead uses their own proprietary hangouts extension to share the screen.
This means that it will not work if you don't have the extension installed,
which only Chrome and Firefox have by default.
In case you are looking for info on this,
see StackOverflow or the extension's source code.
Issues relating to this topic will be closed, as it's not something Vieb or any other smaller browser can fix, only Google can.
Yes, there is a command for that named :makedefault.
For details, see the help page using :h makedefault and the defaultapp script directory.
Same as Vim, there is a strong mode separation. Basically, it allows you to use the keyboard more efficiently, by making keys available that are otherwise reserved for typing. It achieves this by separating functionality into different modes, which is exactly what Vim does, and was a big reason for starting Vieb. See also: my answer to remove this separation and this thread for my lengthy motivation for creating Vieb.
This is because mouse simulations are not send correctly to subframes in Electron, so Vieb has some workarounds to attempt to execute the event manually. These are less reliable, and as such can't hover most menus inside iframes, along with some other weird mouse action related quirks. This can all be properly implemented once this Electron issue is fixed.
In most browsers, these type of dialogs can appear whenever a page wants to. In Vieb, these are blocked and instead you are notified when a page tries to use them, as this is less annoying and doesn't interrupt you whenever a page wants your attention. You can change this behavior using the "dialog" settings: "dialogprompt", "dialogconfirm" and "dialogalert". If you want them to show like on other browsers, just set their value to "show". It's worth mentioning that the prompt dialog is custom, as Electron by default doesn't support it, but Vieb does.
Electron has no support for dynamically allowing or blocking popup windows.
You either enable them globally, or block all of them.
Even if globally allowed, the popup windows can not be interacted with like the regular Vieb window.
No custom code can be ran in them, and you would need to use the mouse to interact with it.
All new windows are opened in a new tab when using Vieb for these reasons.
Finally, popups are bad for usability and should no longer be relied upon.
Also see MDN for a list of reasons against using popups (or window.open in general, which is the JavaScript api for opening custom windows).
I encourage users who run into sites still using popups today to get in touch with the site authors about this.
Contrary to what people think this is fundamentally unsupported by Chromium, it's not a use case that is actually supported, due to the nature of storing browsing data. Some resources remain locked as long as Chromium runs and as such can't be used by multiple processes at the same time, while others are not locked and therefor are prone to race conditions from multiple processes. It's highly discouraged by Electron to run multiple windows in the same datafolder. While Chromium has a bunch of workarounds and tricks in place to fake multiple windows, Electron and thus Vieb do not support multiple windows this same way, that is if you care about keeping your browsing data.
You could use --unsafe-multiwin=true or VIEB_UNSAFE_MULTIWIN to override this safety feature,
but this WILL result in corrupt cache, localstorage, cookies, duplicated tabs and worse.
In short, multiple windows in the same datafolder are a very bad idea,
and as such I will not offer support when you use this, hence the naming.
Alternatively, you can start as many instances of Vieb as you want, in separate datafolders,
for which you can find more info in :help datafolder.
Using multiple windows by running them in separate datafolders is the recommended solution,
is supported perfectly by Vieb and is also what powers Erwic mode.
No, Vieb does not automatically update, nor does it check for any of that in the background.
Vieb will ONLY make requests when opened pages fetch new resources,
OR when you specifically ask it to (either via navigation or with custom settings).
Checking for updates can be done by opening the :version page and specifically clicking "Check for updates".
Alternatively, you can watch the Github repository,
check out the official Matrix space and its announcements chat,
or visit the Telegram announcements and the general chat on Telegram.
If you are using Fedora, you can also use my custom Fedora repo, see the main readme for details.
Lastly, if your system has a third-party package, you could use that as well.
These packages might be customized or updated at a later date, but they get updates the same way you are used to from your operating system.
Highly unlikely, as this has been attempted numerous times in the past, without success. The results of this were tracked in this issue. The current approach is to implement common extensions and their features into Vieb directly, for which the progress can be tracked in this issue. If you miss a feature in Vieb that you currently use an extension for, please make a new Github issue. If you think you have what it takes to give Vieb extension support, feel free to make a PR for it.