Browsh
Shares rank 6 of 8 text browsers by recommenders
Runs headless Firefox and renders pages as ASCII in the terminal, a long-running, well-liked option. Caveat: doesn't map things one to one.
Runs headless Firefox and renders pages as ASCII in the terminal, a long-running, well-liked option. Caveat: doesn't map things one to one.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs real Firefox headless in terminal
“it runs firefox headless, and renders everything to ascii in the terminal”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase” “It's a similar project but based on Firefox and it's been around for quite some time now.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Brow6el: A full-featured web browser for the terminal using Chromium” Recommended alongside Carbonyl
“browsh and carbonyl are such lifesavers on airplane wifi”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Text-Based Web Browsers” “Or try carbonyl or browsh.”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Firefox 157” Described as cool and worth trying
“That one is also really cool.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Text-Based Web Browsers” “which is still quite cool”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Text-Based Web Browsers”
Other text browsers people recommend
The four most recommended other text browsers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lynx web browser | 42 | 10 | 81% | 12 | — | Approved |
| w3m | 19 | 1 | 95% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Links web browser | 18 | 4 | 82% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Chawan terminal web browser | 12 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
| BrowshThis page | 7 | 1 | 88% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Or try carbonyl or browsh.”
“browsh can also play YouTube videos if you'd like”
“It's a similar project but based on Firefox and it's been around for quite some time now.”
“browsh and carbonyl are such lifesavers on airplane wifi”
“browsh doesnt map things 1 to 1 and there are still some issues”
“That one is also really cool.”
“which is still quite cool”
“it runs firefox headless, and renders everything to ascii in the terminal”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.