Everyday browsing
Read with fewer distractions.
The ordinary tools, done carefully. Reader view for articles, tabs that step aside when you forget them, themes and profiles that make the browser yours, and quieter pages when you want them.
Reader view
How to set the first row of tiles straight
An eligible article, opened in the reader
Start from the centre of the room, not the wall. Walls are rarely square, and a row that follows one will drift by the time it reaches the other side. Snap a chalk line through the middle and set the first tile against it…
Articles
The article, without the rest.
When a page has a readable article, OwnWeb offers a reader view: the text and images, set in a comfortable measure, in your theme. Not every page is an article, so the reader appears only when the page qualifies.
Tabs
Keep tabs under control.
A tab you have not looked at for thirty minutes goes to sleep: it keeps its place and its history, and releases what it was holding. Click it and it comes back where you left it. Turn tab sleep off in Settings if you prefer.
- Supplier quotesActive
- Tile layout videoPlaying
- Council permitsSleeping
- Recipe — dahlSleeping
The tab you are using, a tab playing in fullscreen and the tab the browser started with never sleep. No memory-saving figures are claimed; the saving depends on the page.
The basics
Everything you expect, where you expect it.
A new browser should not make you relearn browsing. The familiar tools and shortcuts are all here.
- The tab is the address bar
- One row holds navigation and tabs, so the page gets the screen. Click the tab you are on to type an address or a search.
- Suggestions from your own things
- As you type, OwnWeb offers your bookmarks, history and open tabs first. Type @ to open an installed app.
- Find on page
- Ctrl+F shows “3 of 12” with next and previous. It works inside PDFs too.
- PDF viewer
- PDFs open in the browser with page numbers, zoom, search and copy.
- Bookmarks
- Ctrl+D saves a page. Up to eight show as tiles on your Home page.
- History
- Listed by day and searchable, with one-click removal of an entry, an hour, a day or everything.
- Zoom that remembers
- Make one site bigger and it stays bigger next time. A small pill shows when a page is not at its normal size.
- Spelling
- Right-click a misspelt word for suggestions, or add it to your dictionary.
- Keyboard shortcuts
- The usual ones work, and Help lists them all on one page.
- Reopen what you closed
- Bring back a closed tab, or start each day where you left off.
- Your search engine
- Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, changed in Settings.
- Updates
- OwnWeb tells you when a new version is ready. “Not now” means not now, for three days.
Yours
Your preferences, your browser.
Eight themes, four light and four dark. Separate profiles with their own bookmarks, history, Library and apps. The browser follows your system’s light or dark setting until you choose.
- daylightlight
- graphitedark
- halationlight
- emberdark
- seaglasslight
- nocturnedark
- paperlight
- canopydark
- Profiles
- Each profile is its own space: bookmarks, history, Library, installed apps and settings. Open two at once in separate windows.
- Bookmarks and history
- Kept on your device, searchable from the address bar, cleared when you say so.
- Passwords
- A built-in password manager, encrypted with your system keychain, that never hands credentials to the agent or to apps.
Site controls
Choose a quieter web.
Turn on blocking in Settings, Standard or Strict, and most ads and known trackers are stopped. Allow a site you want to support and it is left alone. Blocking is off until you choose it.
Ads and known trackers are blocked on every site except the ones you allow.
- localnewspaper.example — allowed
- recipes.example — allowed
Blocking uses published filter lists and does not catch everything. It is a control you choose, not a promise that nothing tracks you.
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