What is the best text-mode web browser?

Question

I'm looking for one that is frequently updated and full-featured.

Produced in 1992, stable (Libwww) since 1997 and updated all years including 2016, 2017... lynx, reliable, most cited... the best. — Peter Krauss, Aug 23 '17 at 20:51
there is also new browser browsh that renders images and process JavaScript. — jcubic, Sep 10 '18 at 08:26
// , Would you be willing to post this in https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com ? It looks like no one has asked this yet: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/search?q=What+is+the+best+text-mode+browser%3F — Nathan Basanese, Oct 22 '18 at 19:51
@NathanBasanese I found one there already that might be useful https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/11678/text-based-browser-that-runs-javascript?rq=1 — Zignd, Oct 24 '18 at 13:05

score 69 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 12 '18 at 16:31

There are many text web browsers, as there are many graphical web browsers, so it really depends on what you're looking for. lynx is a common slim choice, Elinks has many features. Both of these support other protocols, such as ftp and gopher (Elinks even supports bittorrent). Elinks may also be built with support for JavaScript, using Mozilla's former JavaScript implementation, Spidermonkey.

There is also w3m, which can also be used through Emacs.

If you want to try one at random, Wikipedia has a list of text based browsers.

How to install these has more to do with how your distribution manages packages than with the browsers themselves. Some of them are probably in the package repositories for your distribution.

score 56 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 10 '18 at 10:29

56

As of November 2015, the actively maintained browsers are links and lynx. Many of the changes in both relate to TLS and security. Here is the current state of progress:

links - 2.12 - 2015. (Changelog)
lynx - unstable 2.8.9dev - 2015, stable 2.8.8 - 2014. (Changelog)
elinks - unstable 0.12pre6 - 2012, stable 0.11.7 - 2009. (Changelog)
w3m - 0.5.3 - 2011, 0.5.2 - 2007

edited Mar 10 '18 at 10:29

llf

103

answered Jun 08 '12 at 21:08

pbm

25,387

I did not find your first line clear, so edited it, trying to improve it. Please verify. – tshepang Jun 10 '12 at 20:44
Elinks had an unstable release shortly after this post was made. Unfortunately for me, that was three years ago! Links seems to have had an update in December 2014, and lynx had a development release in March 2014. My favorite of the three, w3m, is still without any type of release for four years. – dotancohen Mar 20 '15 at 00:30
1

I tried lynx, w3m and elinks. My vote is for elinks. – Joe C Jul 09 '15 at 13:16
1

Well, I am currently running w3m/0.5.3+git2016041. Which has a notably fix for 32-bit true color images support which makes it work better in vte based terminals for instance. – AlMehdi Jun 28 '16 at 04:47
@AlMehdi Where did you get this version from? – koppor Mar 08 '17 at 07:51
In case anyone comes across this later, w3m's original version on Sourceforge was abandoned in 2011, but the version shipped in Debian and Ubuntu is the fork at https://github.com/tats/w3m, which is still patched regularly. – Zac Anger Oct 14 '20 at 02:28

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 08 '12 at 21:11

11

I like links2, but primarily because it has a cool, lightweight 'graphical' mode. It's similar to just plain 'links', but you can invoke it with -g to get a display that renders images. It's very easily X-forwardable, too. But, when you don't want the HTML image rendering, it works just fine in the native ncurses interface as well.

answered Jun 08 '12 at 21:11

Brad Beyenhof

211

Links and Links2 are (at least on Debian) the same program. The difference is that Links was compiled without support for graphical mode. – Matthias Weiler May 30 '18 at 15:56

What is the best text-mode web browser?

3 Answers3