Browser Gopher

Search, aggregate, backup your browsing history from the command line.

Features

• Search your entire browsing history across all browsers
• Data stored locally in SQLite, query it however you like

Installation

Option 1: Download pre-built binary

Grab a binary from the releases page and put it somewhere in your path.

Option 2: install from source:

# Install go if you don't have it: https://go.dev/doc/install
# If on a mac, install through brew:
#brew install go
# debian based:
#apt install golang

# Build browser-gopher
git clone https://github.com/iansinnott/browser-gopher
cd browser-gopher
make build

# Check the version
./browser-gopher --version

# Populate the database
./browser-gopher populate --latest

# Search
./browser-gopher search

Contributing

Would be great! Send a PR.

Project status

Started recently, but should be roughly stable. Currently it extracts and stores all your browsing history in SQLite and indexes it with Bleve. You can search over all your browsing history, including full-text. However, full-text extraction requires use of the --fulltext flag (turned off by default).

Supported browsers

For now see the list of extractors here: https://github.com/iansinnott/browser-gopher/blob/master/pkg/extractors/extractors.go#L25

I should probably add a command to print it to stdout though.

Why?

I created BrowserParrot to have GUI access to all my browsing history with a quick fuzzy search. This worked out well, but the stack chosen at the time (Clojure/JVM) turned out not to be ideal for the problem.

In this iteration if switched to Go, which can provide:

• Lower memory usage
• Quick startup time
• Smaller binary
• More consistent deployments

Is this a rewrite of BrowserParrot?

Not currently. For now the focus is on acheiving desired UX from the command line. To be a real BrowserParrot alternative we'd need a GUI. However, I've been investigating Wails for a separate project and quite like it. Since this repo uses Go we'd be in a good position to wrap the functionality in a UI using Wails.

Importing from BrowserParrot

Import URLs from BrowserParrot:

browser-gopher browserparrot

Same as above, but with a custom DB path:

browser-gopher browserparrot --db-path ~/.config/uncloud/persistory.db

(This may be useful if you tried out Uncloud and have a browserparrot-like database somewhere else on your system)

Todo / Wishlist

• search (yeah, need to add this)
  • action: open
  • action: copy
• a TUI for searching and filtering for a more GUI-like experience
• full text indexing
  • ideally with more sophisticated extraction mechanisms than previous
• import history from History Trends Unlimited
  • It's already in sqlite so should be quick
• favicons
  • Update: Tried https://github.com/trashhalo/imgcat/blob/master/component/load.go#L121. Cannot effectively render at such small sizes in the terminal.
  • If anyone has suggestions for how to render 32x32 pngs in the terminal please let me know.
  • Will just use the GUI for this