config.source('C:\\Users\\username\\Sync\\qb\\config2.py')config.source2021-January-2 In this article, created a section titled 5.1 Environment variables.
2020-December-4 qutebrowser v1.14.1 released. To keep up with qutebrowser releases, see github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/releases, lists.schokokeks.org/pipermail/qutebrowser/, or old.reddit.com/r/qutebrowser/.
2020-June qutebrowser started using GitHub Discussions Beta — check out this discussion group at github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/discussions.
This article assumes that you know the basics about the qutebrowser web browser. Some basics are discussed in Infinite Ink’s Getting Started with qutebrowser.
To get the most flexibility configuring qutebrowser, I recommend
that you use a config.py file.
To learn about this file
and view
a list of
almost[1]
all possible qutebrowser settings,
see Infinite Ink’s
qutebrowser’s Template config.py.
You can edit config.py by doing
the following
within qutebrowser.
Run the colon command :config-edit, which will open config.py
in the editor specified by the c.editor.command configuration setting.
Edit the file,
save your edits, and quit the editor. qutebrowser will automatically source
the newly edited config.py.
ℹ | Examples of |
Alternatively, you can do the following.
In a plain text editor, open config.py.[2]
Edit the file.
Save your edits.
Within qutebrowser run the colon command :config-source.
config.sourceIf you want to use multiple configuration files
or put
some of
your
configuration
settings somewhere other
than qutebrowser’s
config
directory,[2]
you can put a line like the following in your config.py.
config.source('C:\\Users\\username\\Sync\\qb\\config2.py')This setting works on my Windows devices
(with username replaced with my user name).
ℹ | In
a qutebrowser config file,
backslash (\)
is a
metacharacter
and its normal meaning is to
escape the next character from its
normal
meaning.
To specify
an actual
backslash, use \\. |
If you create a key binding, you may want to start it with
a comma (,) because
@The-Compiler (Florian Bruhin),
qutebrowser’s main developer, has said
that no default key binding will ever start with a comma.
To view all key bindings, run the following from within qutebrowser.
:bind
This lists both built-in and user-defined key bindings.
💡 | If you start all your user-defined key bindings with comma (,),
then
typing , in normal mode (also known as command mode) will pop up a list of your
user-defined bindings.
This is useful if you don’t remember all your
|
Here are
some of my
config.py settings.
Note that a line that begins with a hash (#) is a comment and is ignored by qutebrowser.
The highlighted
lines below are useful for
editing config.py, which is discussed
in
1. Editing config.py
above.
c.content.default_encoding = 'utf-8'
c.content.geolocation = False
c.scrolling.bar = 'always'
c.tabs.background = True
c.zoom.default = '150%'
config.bind('<Ctrl-=>', 'zoom-in')
config.bind('<Ctrl-->', 'zoom-out')
## Next works on my Windows devices
c.editor.command = ['code.cmd', '-n', '{file}', '-w']
## Next works on my Windows devices (but is commented out for now)
# c.editor.command = ['gvim.bat', '-f', '{file}', '-c', 'normal {line}G{column0}l']
## I like my start page(s) and default page to be blank
c.url.start_pages = ["about:blank"]
c.url.default_page = "about:blank"
## I like to save web pages in MHTML format
## Thanks to the next key binding, I can use ,sm to do that
config.bind(',sm', 'set-cmd-text :download --mhtml')
## Next works on Windows
c.downloads.location.directory = '%USERPROFILE%\\Downloads-2021-q1\\'
## Next works on Windows if %YEARQUARTER% environment variable exists
# c.downloads.location.directory = '%USERPROFILE%\\Downloads-%YEARQUARTER%\\'
c.downloads.location.suggestion = 'both'
## ,ya is my shortcut to “yank asciidoc-formatted link”
config.bind(',ya', 'yank inline {url:pretty}[{title}]')
## ,ym is my shortcut to “yank markdown-formatted link”
## ym (without a leading comma) also works because it is built-in
config.bind(',ym', 'yank inline [{title}]({url:pretty})')
## next is a note to self about how to bind JavaScript code to a key shortcut
# config.bind(',hw', "jseval alert('Hello World')")
‼ | When specifying
commands in config.py — such as
in
the
highlighted
c.editor.command
lines
above — you
must specify the full executable name, including
any
.cmd,
.bat,
or
.whatever
file extension. |
Sometimes
environment variables work in a config.py file. For example,
the following settings, which are mentioned in the previous section,
both work.
c.downloads.location.directory = '%USERPROFILE%\\Downloads-2021-q1\\' c.downloads.location.directory = '%USERPROFILE%\\Downloads-%YEARQUARTER%\\'
But sometimes they do not. For example, I have not been able
to figure out how to use an environment variable in
either of the following
config.py settings.
config.source('C:\\Users\\username\\Sync\\qb\\config2.py')
config.bind(',t', 'spawn --userscript "C:\\Users\\username\\Sync\\qb\\tumblelog.cmd"')
qutebrowser variables can be used in the arguments of a qutebrowser command. Here is an excerpt from qutebrowser.org/doc/help/commands.html:
{url} expands to the URL of the current page
{url:pretty} expands to the URL in decoded format
{url:host}, {url:domain}, {url:auth}, {url:scheme}, {url:username},
{url:password}, {url:host}, {url:port}, {url:path} and {url:query}
expand to the respective parts of the current URL
{title} expands to the current page’s title
{clipboard} expands to the clipboard contents
{primary} expands to the primary selection contents
💡 | To see the difference between
To view what was yanked
by
|
qutebrowser’s default is:
c.content.javascript.enabled = True
If you want to surf the web without JavaScript, put the following in your config.py:
c.content.javascript.enabled = False
If you go to a website that you trust and want to turn on JavaScript, run the following command in qutebrowser:
tsh
This means toggle scripting for the current host during the current qutebrowser session. If you want to make this permanent for this host, use capital letter S, i.e.:
tSh
If you want to include subdomains of the current host, use capital letter H, i.e., one of the following.
tsH tSH
ℹ | t means toggle so if JavaScript is True, a
t[Ss][Hh]
command will change it to False. |
If you use tSh or tSH
to
permanently allow JavaScript on a host, this
permanence is stored in
a file named
autoconfig.yml
in your qutebrowser config directory.
The next qutebrowser session will not know
about
autoconfig.yml
settings unless the following line is in your config.py.
config.load_autoconfig()
I’d rather write a bash
shell script
than a
Windows
batch file
and, thanks to
WSL (Windows’ Subsystem for Linux),[3]
most of my Windows qutebrowser scripting
is
actually
bash scripting.
In this section,
I briefly describe my
tumblelog.cmd
batch file
userscript
and
my
tumblelog.sh
bash script
that
it calls.
To learn about qutebrowser userscripts, see:
I put the following line in my config.py.
config.bind(',t', 'spawn --userscript tumblelog.cmd')This makes it possible to use ,t to
launch my tumblelog.cmd batch file userscript, which
will
add qutebrowser’s current web page to
Infinite Ink’s
#tumblelog Portal.
💡 | When the argument to config.bind(',t', 'spawn --userscript "C:\\Users\\username\\Sync\\qb\\tumblelog.cmd"') |
In the Windows file system, my
qutebrowser data directory[2]
contains
userscripts\tumblelog.cmd, which comprises the following
five lines.
@REM change code page so UTF-8 characters work
chcp 65001
@REM pass six QUTE_ variables to the bash script
wsl.exe /home/wslusername/Scripts/tumblelog.sh "%QUTE_URL%" "%QUTE_TITLE%" "%QUTE_SELECTED_TEXT%" "%QUTE_COMMANDLINE_TEXT%" "%QUTE_HTML%" "%QUTE_TEXT%"
ℹ |
|
In the
WSL
file system,
my ~/Scripts/tumblelog.sh starts out like this:
#!/bin/bash QURL=$1 QTITLE=$2 QSELECTED=$3 QCOMMANDLINE=$4 QHTMLPATH=`wslpath $5` QTEXTPATH=`wslpath $6` # below here, I use a heredoc to create a Hugo leaf bundle
Someday I will publish the rest of my tumblelog.sh script,
but for now I hope this is enough to get you started
using WSL bash scripts with qutebrowser.
I am using WSL 1 (not WSL 2).
It’s likely that there is a better way to use bash scripts with qutebrowser on Windows, for example…
instead of WSL, use Git Bash, which I wrote about in Git Bash Is My Preferred Windows Shell,
or, in WSL,
maybe use
the
WSLENV
environment variable
or the WSL
commands mentioned in
How can I access WIN system variables in WSL.
Within qutebrowser, you can display all your
non-default
config.py
and
autoconfig.yml
settings with
any of the following equivalent commands.
:config-diff :open qute://configdiff o qute://configdiff
Starting with v1.9.0, sometimes — although rarely — qutebrowser on Windows crashes. Unfortunately, once a single crash happens, more crashes regularly happen until I do the following.
Quit qutebrowser.
Rename
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\qutebrowser\data\webengine\Service Worker\
to
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\qutebrowser\data\webengine\Service Worker-2021-01-02-CRASH\
(with username and 2021-01-02 replaced with my user name and the
Service Worker
directory’s date stamp).
Restart qutebrowser.
Information about this is in:
Also see these related
Infinite Ink portals: #
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config.py does not include the config.source configuration setting, which is discussed above in 2. Compartmentalizing your config.py.:version command from within qutebrowser.