Files
omarchycn/manual/23-browsers.md
T
David Heinemeier HanssonandClaude Fable 5 e7ea031f98 Host the manual's images in the repo under manual/images (#6861)
* Host the manual's images in the repo under manual/images

Replaces all learn.omacom.io/manual.omakub.org hotlinks with local webp
files capped at 1600px wide (~20MB total), so the manual is fully
self-contained. Theme and unlock previews are converted from the
canonical themes/*/preview.png files. A handful of illustration shots
are interim conversions of the current images, pending retakes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Retake the illustration screenshots fresh at 3x scaling

Navigation, clipboard history, notices, tmux layouts, prompt, and About
reshot on a clean workspace at 3.13x (1920x1080 logical on 6K) across
ten themes: Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Kanagawa, Everforest,
Nord, Osaka Jade, Rose Pine, Matte Black, and Ristretto.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Drop the extra themes chapter from the manual

The community theme gallery will live elsewhere. Removes the chapter
and its 114 gallery images, renumbers the following chapters, and
repoints the two references (theme installs still work via
Install > Style > Theme in the menu).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Reference the shipped theme previews instead of copying them

The themes chapter now points straight at themes/*/preview.png and
preview-unlock.png, so previews can never drift from the source and
manual/images drops from 6.3MB to 3.5MB.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-14 12:47:38 +02:00

3.1 KiB

Browsers

Omarchy ships with Chromium as the default browser. It's the plain open-source build, themed to match the rest of your system, and it's what Super + Shift + Return opens and what every web app runs inside.

If Chromium isn't your taste, you're not stuck with it. Under Install > Browser in the Omarchy menu you'll find Chrome, Edge, Brave, Brave Origin, Firefox, and Zen. Pick one and Omarchy installs it, sets up its policy directory, and applies your current theme to it.

Making one the default

Installing a browser doesn't promote it. Once it's on the machine, go to Setup > Defaults > Browser and pick it — the menu only lists browsers you actually have installed, and marks the current default with a check.

From the terminal it's:

omarchy default browser firefox

Run it with no argument and it tells you the current default. This sets the XDG handler, so it's not just Omarchy's hotkeys that follow along — anything that opens a link, from a chat app to a terminal command, goes to the browser you picked.

Copy URL and Download Video

The Chromium-family browsers (Chromium itself, Chrome, Edge, and Brave) come with two Omarchy extensions that reach out of the browser and into the rest of your system.

Copy URL puts the current tab's address on your clipboard with Alt + Shift + L. That's faster than clicking into the address bar and copying, and because it goes through the system clipboard rather than the browser's, you get an Omarchy notification confirming it and the URL is immediately available in clipboard history and every other app. There's a toolbar button too, if you prefer clicking.

Download Video grabs the video playing on the page you're looking at with Alt + Shift + D. It hands the URL to yt-dlp, so it works on far more than YouTube, and the download lands in ~/Videos. Progress shows up in the same on-screen display that volume and brightness use, updating in place rather than stacking up notifications. Set OMARCHY_YTDLP_DIR if you'd rather the files went somewhere else — see the FAQ for where to put environment variables.

Both extensions talk to Omarchy through a small native messaging host, which gets installed for you along with the browser. That's the piece that lets a web page's video end up in your home directory and a URL end up in your clipboard manager, which a normal extension can't do on its own.

These are Chromium-family only. Firefox and Zen don't get them.

Firefox and Zen

Firefox and Zen are a different family, so they get different treatment: Omarchy installs a policies file for sensible defaults and switches them into native Wayland mode, which you want for fractional scaling and smooth trackpad scrolling.

They don't get the Chromium extensions above, and they're not themed by Omarchy, so those parts of the experience are yours to set up.

Removing one again

Anything you installed here can be taken back off under Remove > Browser. Chromium isn't in that list — it's part of the base system.