Frequently asked questions

Nyxt is a browser with deeply integrated AI and semantic document tools that work as a second brain to help you process and understand more, more quickly.

Nyxt is keyboard-driven (inspired by Emacs and Vim), infinitely extensible (via Lisp), and designed for power users.

As a researcher, scientist, student, etc: Nyxt is everything you need to extract knowledge and solutions from the Internet.

In legends it is told that Athena had a powerful headache from using Internet Explorer. For months, the pressure built in her head, until one day, with a loud explosion, Nyxt sprang directly from her forehead. All of Athena's wisdom and cunning was imbued into the vessel known as Nyxt.

Stolen from Mount Olympus by Prometheus himself, Nyxt is the titan's gift to humanity! Use it wisely, the power of the Internet is yours!

Nyxt differs fundamentally in its philosophy- rather than exposing a set of parameters for customization, Nyxt allows you to customize all functionality. Every single class, method, and function is overwritable and reconfigurable. You'll find that you are able to engineer Nyxt's behavior to suit almost any workflow.

Nyxt is web engine agnostic. We utilize a minimal API to interface to any web engine. This makes us flexible and resilient to changes in the web landscape. Currently, we support WebKit and WebEngine (experimental (Blink)).

• Linux
• BSD (unofficial)
• macOS (experimental)
• Windows (unofficial (via WSL))

Nyxt comes with a built-in ad blocker. Please see the built-in documentation of blocker-mode for more details.

Nyxt supports extensions written in Common Lisp. These extensions can change any behavior within Nyxt. WebExtensions (as implemented by Firefox, Chrome, and others), are not yet available, they are however on the roadmap!

Nyxt supports vi bindings.

Nyxt is fully introspectable. Any variable, function, or class can be inspected at runtime. For how to change and set these objects, please refer to the manual/tutorial for more details.

Nyxt would not be possible as a plug-in. It would not be able to utilize Lisp as a powerful and modern language (a source of many of Nyxt's powerful features). Additionally, many of Nyxt's features are simply not possible due to restrictions in plugin-architecture. This article describes why Nyxt is different from browser plug-ins such as Vimium. And this article describes why Nyxt is not an Emacs extension.

Nyxt runs the default WebKitGTK renderer (engine) with sandboxing enabled. Other engines may also be sandboxed per availability. You may also utilize your operating system or package manager to containerize Nyxt.

Not yet, hopefully soon! :-)

We have some recommended resources here.

Nyxt is graciously funded by grants from the European Union Next Generation Internet Initiative. Specifically via the sub-grant providers NLNet and FundingBox.

Additionally, Nyxt is trying to become a sustainable project, you can read more about our efforts here: Towards Open Source Sustainability.