Introducing Glide, an extensible, keyboard-focused web browser

30 Sep, 2025

TL;DR: Glide is a Firefox fork with a TypeScript config that lets you build anything.

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Download - Docs - Cookbook - Source

Browsers should be hackable, just like your editor.

glide.keymaps.set("normal", "gC", async () => {
  // extract the owner and repo from a url like 'https://github.com/glide-browser/glide'
  const [owner, repo] = glide.ctx.url.pathname.split("/").slice(1, 3);
  if (!owner || !repo) throw new Error("current URL is not a github repo");

  // * clone the current github repo to ~/github.com/$owner/$repo
  // * start kitty with neovim open at the cloned repo
  const repo_path = glide.path.join(glide.path.home_dir, "github.com", owner, repo);
  await glide.process.execute("gh", ["repo", "clone", glide.ctx.url, repo_path]);
  await glide.process.execute("kitty", ["-d", repo_path, "nvim"], { cwd: repo_path });
}, { description: "open the GitHub repo in the focused tab in Neovim" });

Glide keymapping to clone the GitHub repo in the current tab and open it in kitty + neovim.

For my job, I have to clone many different repos. This keymapping saves me a couple seconds each time, multiple times a day.

Although it probably doesn't save me much time, adding this mapping only took a couple of minutes and using it makes me happy

Why I built Glide

I was using tridactyl within Firefox and generally enjoying it, but occasionally I would run into frustrating issues due to security constraints imposed by Firefox on web extensions. For example, extensions are completely disabled on addons.mozilla.org, so all of my mappings could break depending on the website I had open. Additionally, tridactyl wouldn't work with a custom homepage.

These security constraints imposed on tridactyl, and every other extension, are fundamental to how extensions operate. For example, it would be very bad if an extension could prevent itself from being uninstalled by modifying addons.mozilla.org, so browsers have to protect users from potentially malicious extension writers.

At that point, I realised there was an opportunity to make a browser that's truly customisable at its core, with no restrictions on what you can accomplish. From customising the browser UI itself, to calling out to other tools—anything should be possible.

How Glide is different

Glide holistically solves these usability issues by supporting a TypeScript config that lets you do anything¹.

Glide can support APIs and functionality that will never be supported in web extensions as the security model is fundamentally different. You—the end user—are responsible for the config, so there's no reason to restrict what you can do.

In the Glide config you can define custom key mappings, access the web extensions API, spawn arbitrary processes, define macros, and more.

Here's a small example that adds g+c as a key mapping to switch to the calendar tab:

// ~/.config/glide/glide.ts
glide.keymaps.set("normal", "gc", async () => {
  const tab = await glide.tabs.get_first({ url: "https://calendar.google.com/*" });
  assert(tab && tab.id);
  await browser.tabs.update(tab.id, { active: true });
}, { description: "[g]o to [c]alendar.google.com" });

For more examples, see the cookbook or my own dotfiles.

The cherry on top is that all of this is built on top of Firefox. If you already use Firefox, then your existing extensions and workflows will still work in Glide.

Modes

Glide borrows the concept of modes from (neo)vim; every key mapping you define will be attached to a specific mode.

Glide switches between modes automatically when you interact with the browser. For example, in the default mode, normal, if you click on an <input> element, Glide will switch to insert mode, so that key mappings don't interfere with entering text.

If a website doesn't play well with your key mappings you can switch to ignore mode by pressing Shift+Escape, in this mode the only default key mapping is Shift+Escape to exit ignore mode.

Navigating

Glide supports a hint mode that lets you operate web pages entirely using the keyboard.

Press f to enter hint mode and Glide will overlay text labels over every hintable element, e.g. links and buttons. Typing the label for a hint will then focus and click the element.

Personal favourite features

• gI focuses the largest visible input element on the page and it feels like magic every time I use it.

• <space><space> opens a tab fuzzy finder, which is invaluable for finding that one tab you always lose.

• <c-i> and <c-o> are also invaluable for navigating previously open tabs.

• :repl for quickly testing out config changes.

• hints for when I don't want to reach for my mouse.

• A which-key inspired UI for reminding you of the many key mappings.

I've been daily driving Glide for ~6 months now and while I'm biased, I love it. It's still in a very early alpha stage but if you'd like to try it out, you can download it for macOS / Linux today. I'd recommend checking out the tutorial with :tutor to get your bearings, although it's far from complete yet.

p.s. sorry Linux folks, Glide isn't in any package repositories yet, so you'll have to untar it and set up Glide manually for now.