Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
109 lines (78 loc) · 4.28 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

109 lines (78 loc) · 4.28 KB
Raw

WebApp

WebApp

Run any website as standalone desktop application

Installation

This is regular Python package and is also hosted on PyPi so you can install it as usual. But because this one is supposed to rather act as the application, I strongly recommend to use pipx to install this tool in isolated environment:

$ pipx install website-as-app

You can also use plain pip:

$ pip install website-as-app

But that might be a problem on some distributions no longer allowing such installations, therefore use of pipx is strongly recommended as the all-in-one solution.

Once installed webapp executable (and its alias runasapp) should be available in your system. Please use --help to see all available options, as i.e. custom icons, window title etc.

Usage

When app is installed system-wide, you can run it from anywhere:

$ webapp "https://github.com"

If you are using virtual environment, there's handy Bash script in extras/ directory which takes care of initializing virtual environment and running the app using that environment. You simply use extras/webapp.sh script instead of webapp directly:

$ extras/webapp.sh "https://github.com"

Configuration

Available options:

webapp -h
usage: webapp [--profile PROFILE] [--name NAME] [--icon ICON] [--zoom ZOOM] [--no-tray] url

usage: webapp [--profile PROFILE] [--name NAME] [--icon ICON] [--geometry GEOMETRY]
              [--zoom ZOOM] [--no-tray] [--minimized] [--allow-multiple]
              [--no-custom-webengine] [--search-top] [--version] [--debug] url

Open any website in standalone window (like it's an app)

positional arguments:
url                   The URL to open

options:
--profile PROFILE, -p PROFILE     Profile name (for cookies isolation etc). Default: "default"
--name NAME, -n NAME              Application name (shown as window title)
--icon ICON, -i ICON              Full path to PNG image file to be used as app icon
--geometry GEOMETRY, -g GEOMETRY  Initial window ("WIDTHxHEIGHT+X+Y"). Default: "450x600+0+0"
--zoom ZOOM, -z ZOOM              WebView scale. Default: 1.0 (no scale change).
--no-tray, -t                     Disables docking app in system tray (closing window quits app)
--minimized, -m                   Starts app minimized to system tray.
--allow-multiple, -a              Allows multiple instances of the app to run on the same profile
--no-custom-webengine             Uses built-in QWebEngineView instead of the custom one we use.
--search-top                      Puts search bar on top of window when activated
--debug, -d                       Makes app print more debug messages during execution

The most important option is --profile which allows you to isolate cookies and app settings per instance. Any instance using the same profile will have access to the same cookies and settings. This is useful if you want to run multiple instances of the same app, but with different accounts. By default default profile is used and it's recommended to use different profile per each app instance.

By default only one instance per profile is allowed to run (attempt to run second instance will bring the first one to the front). If you want to allow multiple instances of the app to run on the same profile, use --allow-multiple switch.

NOTE: --zoom accepts fractional values, so you can use i.e. --zoom 1.25 to scale content up by 25% or --zoom 0.75 to scale down to 75% of the original size.

Keyboard shortcuts

  • CTRL + F - opens search bar (close with ESC or toolbar's button).

Notes

This tool doesn't really transforms websites into offline applications. Rather, it focuses on separating your key websites from each other and from the multitude of browser tabs you might typically have open. While this approach offers improved organization and workflow, it's crucial to understand that an internet connection is still required for these "apps" (websites) to function as they normally would in a traditional browser environment.

License

  • Written and copyrighted ©2023-2024 by Marcin Orlowski <mail (#) marcinorlowski (.) com>
  • ResponseBuilder is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license