Lilo

Your internet, in bloom.

Light on your Mac, quick on the web. Free and open source.

Website · Discord · Install · Build from source · Documentation · Contributing

Lilo is a macOS browser built on WebKit, for people who live in a sidebar, and for the AI agents that work beside them: Spaces with their own sign-ins, the Chrome extensions you rely on, terminal tabs beside your pages, a built-in MCP server, and a battery that lasts the day. If you are leaving Arc, it imports your Spaces, pinned tabs and folders in a few clicks.

Status: public beta. Lilo is usable every day, but it is still a beta: expect rough edges and an interface that still moves, and please report what breaks. ROADMAP.md lists priorities and non-goals.

Join the Discord community to share feedback and get help with Lilo.

Why Lilo

• Built on WebKit. Swift, AppKit and the WebKit engine already on your Mac, with the sidebar and settings in Svelte. No bundled Chromium, no Electron: lower memory use, longer battery life, and Apple's security updates with every macOS release.
• Organized. A vertical sidebar with Spaces, pinned tabs and folders. Each Space can have its own profile, so work and personal sign-ins live side by side in one window.
• Compatible. Chrome Web Store extensions install with one click on "Add to Lilo".
• Private. No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no server: nothing you do is sent to the project. Ads and trackers are blocked out of the box.
• Yours. MIT licensed. The whole interface is a Svelte layer over WebKit that you can change and rebuild in seconds.

Features

Browsing

• Spaces and profiles: Spaces with an emoji and a color, each signed in as its own profile; swipe between them. Private Spaces forget everything when they close.
• Sidebar: pinned tabs, favorites, folders nested up to five levels (lockable), drag to reorder, audio and now-playing controls.
• Command bar (Cmd+T): tabs, history, bookmarks, Spaces and every action in one field, ranked by what you use.
• Recent tabs (Ctrl+Tab): switch through your last tabs, from every Space, in the order you used them.
• Peek: a link from a pinned tab to another site, or any Shift-clicked link, opens over the page.
• Little window (Cmd+Option+N, from any app): a small window for one link or search, sent to a Space when it turns into something.
• Tabs that tidy themselves: unpinned tabs you stop using are archived after a delay you choose per Space; Cmd+Shift+K clears them, and the archive is one keystroke away.
• Link rules: links opened from other apps go to the Space or the Little window a rule picks.
• Split view: up to four tabs side by side, restored on relaunch.
• Shortcuts: every shortcut can be remapped, starting from the Lilo or Arc preset.
• Import: bookmarks, open tabs and Spaces, history, cookies and extensions from Safari, Firefox, Zen and Chromium browsers (Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Dia, Comet, Chromium), read straight from your Mac.

Extensions and the web

• Chrome extensions: Manifest V3 through WebKit's native extension runtime, plus small Swift handlers for the APIs WebKit lacks (COMPATIBILITY.md).
• Password managers: setup offers the one you use (1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, KeePassXC, NordPass, Proton Pass).
• Streaming: protected video and music through FairPlay; YouTube in 4K HDR.
• Content blocking: EasyList, EasyPrivacy and uBlock Origin lists, kept up to date, with cosmetic filtering and scriptlets.
• Screenshots: a capture floats as a card over the page, ready to edit with markup, save or dismiss.
• And more: reader mode, Picture-in-Picture (calls float in an always-on-top panel), page translation, Web Serial, AppleScript, Shortcuts actions and a Focus filter.

For people who build

• Terminal tabs: libghostty-vt terminals on a Metal renderer, beside your pages (Cmd+D beside, Cmd+Shift+D below), with the branch and pending changes in the sidebar.
• Changes view: every diff of the repository, images included.
• Stays awake while it works: a long command keeps the Mac awake, even with the lid closed, then lets it sleep.
• Agents over MCP: the built-in MCP server, see For AI agents.

For AI agents

Lilo has a built-in MCP server. Turn it on, and the agents you already run (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client) drive a real WebKit browser beside you. Lilo ships no AI of its own.

• Their own Space. Agents open their tabs in a folder of the Agents Space, in a throwaway profile wiped after each session. They never take your keyboard, your mouse or your tabs, and never see a private Space. An agent can borrow one of your profiles once you allow it.
• You say yes first. Lilo asks before an agent sends, pays, deletes or publishes (Allow Once, Always Allow on the site, or Deny), and before it hands a page one of your files. Each client is approved once, tied to the program behind it rather than the name it gives.
• One click to connect. In Settings > AI agents, turn on "Let AI agents use Lilo", then press Connect next to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex or Cursor: Lilo adds itself to that client's MCP servers. Any other client copies the configuration from "Other agents".

Then ask your agent something like:

Open localhost:3000/checkout in Lilo, pay with the test card and find out why the order fails.
Check the console and the network.

The tools cover:

• Tabs and navigation in the agent's folder, and isolated tabs that share no cookie or sign-in.
• Input: click, type, keys, scroll, drag, form filling, file and image uploads.
• Page reading: the accessibility tree with element refs, text search, the page text.
• Screenshots of a full page or one element, and GIF recordings.
• Console and network: messages, requests with their full responses, HAR export, cookies.
• Network mocks and emulation: mocked, failed or delayed requests; user agent, color scheme, reduced motion, print media, extra headers, init scripts; viewport size.
• Performance: load and paint metrics, memory, and timeline profiles.
• Web Inspector: WebKit's own inspector protocol, commands and events.
• Scripting: JavaScript in the page, fetch from a tab with its cookies, and run or browser_batch to chain many calls in one round trip.
• Profiles: list them, borrow one after you allow it, or reset the throwaway one.

docs/AI-AGENTS.md has the details: what is asked, what is not, and the errors that need you.

Install

Either:

• download the DMG from Releases, or

• install with Homebrew:

  brew install --cask alexays/tap/lilo

Lilo updates itself through signed Sparkle updates.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later. Global Privacy Control needs macOS 27.

Build from source

With Xcode 27 and Node.js 22.6+ installed (full prerequisites):

git clone https://github.com/Alexays/Lilo.git && cd Lilo
make bootstrap                  # checks the prerequisites and fetches or builds what the app needs
make install                    # Release build into /Applications, replacing an installed copy
open /Applications/Lilo.app

make bootstrap names anything missing and how to install it. To work on the interface alone, Node.js is enough: make ui-preview opens it in your browser with hot reload (CONTRIBUTING.md).

No Apple Developer account is needed. Source builds are ad-hoc signed by default; CONTRIBUTING.md explains the trade-offs and how to sign with a free Apple ID.

Documentation

• docs/: architecture, debugging, localization, releasing, AI agents
• COMPATIBILITY.md: what still differs from Chrome for extensions and sites
• PRIVACY.md: every request Lilo makes on its own
• ROADMAP.md: what is shipped, what is next, and the non-goals

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md covers setup, the development workflow and the pull request checklist. Questions go to Discussions (SUPPORT.md), and vulnerabilities are reported privately (SECURITY.md). Everyone taking part follows the Code of Conduct.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Bundled third-party components are listed in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.