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Installing and Updating qutebrowser on Windows
Updated  2021-July-17 📅️

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News

Ongoing  According to Repology, the newest packaged qutebrowser is version latest packaged version of qutebrowser. To keep up with qutebrowser releases, see github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/releases, listi.jpberlin.de/pipermail/qutebrowser/, or old.reddit.com/r/qutebrowser/.

2022-June-6  As of today, this evolving⁠[1] article has been on the web for 1 year.🎂

Overview

To learn about the qutebrowser web browser, see…

There are a lot of ways to install qutebrowser on Windows, some of which are described at qutebrowser.org/doc/install.html#_on_windows. In this article, I describe the three ways that I’ve used.

 

‼
qutebrowser versions 2.0.0 and newer require Windows 8.1+. On Windows 8.0 and older, you need to use qutebrowser v1.14.1 or older.

 

Using the installer

To use the qutebrowser Windows installer, download and run the newest installer on github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/releases.[2]

👎 There is no simple way to update qutebrowser when you use the installer.

👍 The installer gives you the option to register qutebrowser with Windows and then optionally set qutebrowser as your default web browser.

 

Using scoop

Alternatively, you can run the following two scoop commands at a Windows PowerShell prompt.

scoop bucket add extras
scoop install qutebrowser

To learn about installing and using scoop, see Infinite Ink’s Scoop: A Windows Package Manager.

👎 If you use scoop to install and update qutebrowser, it is not simple to set qutebrowser as your default web browser.

👍 With scoop, it is simple to update qutebrowser — just run scoop update qutebrowser at a PowerShell prompt.

 

💡

If a scoop-updated qutebrowser produces a Failed to execute script_main_ message, you can use the following “nuclear option”⁠💥 to update qutebrowser:

scoop uninstall -p qutebrowser
scoop install qutebrowser

Before you do this, you may want to backup your scoop\persist\qutebrowser directory.

 

Using winget

Starting in June 2021, another option is to use Microsoft’s Windows Package Manager CLI (also known as winget). Here are the steps that worked for me:

  1. Launch PowerShell as an administrator.

  2. To see what qutebrowser version is available, run winget search qutebrowser

  3. To install qutebrowser, run winget install qutebrowser

  4. To launch qutebrowser, press the Win key and choose qutebrowser, which should be at the top of the “Recently added” list.

To update a winget-installed qutebrowser, run:

  1. winget upgrade qutebrowser.

 

Thanks to mtoohey31 (Matthew Toohey) for creating this manifest. Some details are in the qutebrowser GitHub discussion about "winget package".

 

See also

For more about qutebrowser, see Infinite Ink’s…

 

Endnotes

1. Many Infinite Ink articles, including this one, are evergreen and regularly updated.
2. If you are using 64-⁠bit Windows, use the 64-⁠bit qutebrowser installer. Otherwise use the 32-⁠bit qutebrowser installer.

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