Arc's “Little Arc”, rebuilt as a tiny native macOS app.
Hit ⌘⌥N anywhere, search, glance, close. No tabs, no clutter.
When I left Arc, the one thing I really missed was Little Arc: a small throwaway window for a quick lookup that never pollutes your real tabs. Browser extensions can't draw a frameless floating window, so Little Browser is a ~600-line native app instead.
- Press ⌘⌥N from any app. A single search bar drops into the top-right corner of your screen.
- Type: Google suggestions appear as you go. Pick one with ↑ ↓.
- Press ↵: the bar smoothly grows into a 650 × 600 window showing the page.
- Done? Esc and it's gone. Want to keep it? ⌘↵ sends it to your main browser.
URLs work too: github.com, localhost:3000, https://… open directly instead of searching.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘⌥N | Open / close Little Browser (global) |
| ↵ | Search or open the URL |
| ⌘↵ | Open in your default browser |
| ↑ ↓ | Browse suggestions |
| Esc · ⌘W | Close |
| ⌘L | Bring the search bar back to type a new address |
| ⌘R | Reload |
| ⌘[ · ⌘] | Back · Forward (or swipe) |
- Global hotkey that works even when your browser is closed.
- Frameless, floating, rounded window with native blur. No title bar, no URL bar, no tabs.
- Live Google suggestions, keyboard-driven.
- Pre-warmed web engine: the connection to Google is opened while you type, so results show up fast.
- Smooth animations and no white flash in dark mode.
- Invisible: no Dock icon, no menu bar icon. Reopen the app from Spotlight to show the bar, press ⌘Q in it to quit.
- Works with AZERTY and QWERTY keyboards.
- One Swift file, zero dependencies. Read it in ten minutes.
You need macOS 13+ and Xcode or the Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install).
git clone https://github.com/wepee/little-browser.git
cd little-browser
./build.sh installThis builds the app, copies it to /Applications and launches it. Press ⌘⌥N.
Launch at login: System Settings → General → Login Items → + → Little Browser.
The app is ad-hoc signed on your machine, so Gatekeeper won't complain when you build it yourself.
Everything lives at the top of Sources/main.swift:
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Window sizes, margin | BAR_W, FULL_W, FULL_H, MARGIN |
| Browser for ⌘↵ | BROWSER_ID: nil (default browser) or a bundle id, e.g. com.google.Chrome, com.apple.Safari |
| Search engine | toURL() and fetchSuggestions() |
| Hotkey | registerHotKey() (kVK_ANSI_N, cmdKey | optionKey) |
Then run ./build.sh install again.
The icon is drawn in code: tweak scripts/make-icon.swift and run ./scripts/make-icon.sh.
- Pages are rendered by WebKit (Safari's engine), not by your main browser. You'll need to sign in to sites once, and your browser extensions (password manager…) aren't available inside.
- The window always opens on the main display.
- Links that try to open a new tab load in the same window.
Sources/main.swift the whole app
Resources/Info.plist bundle metadata (background app, no Dock icon)
Resources/AppIcon.icns generated icon
scripts/make-icon.* icon generator
build.sh build, sign and optionally install