Luakit

Luakit is an extremely fast, lightweight and flexible web browser using the webkit engine. It is customizable through lua scripts and fully usable with keyboard shortcuts. It uses GTK 3 and WebKit2GTK.

Warning: This page has been updated, but Luakit is in rapid development nowadays, and discrepancies may occur. Also, there is much more to document than found here.

Installation

Install the luakit package or luakit-git^AUR for the development version as the official website recommends.

Basic usage

Note: Shortcuts are listed in a special page accessible with the :binds command.

Press : to access the command prompt. You can do nearly everything from there. Use Tab to autocomplete commands.

Use the :help command to get information on the available keyboard shortcuts and what they do. (To see how the action for a particular keyboard shortcut is implemented in Lua, click anywhere in its help text.)

To quit, use the :quit command, or press Shift+z followed by Shift+q. You can also close the browser while remembering the session (i.e. restoring the tabs) by using the command instead, or pressing Shift+z twice.

Browsing

• Press to open a prompt with the command and enter the URI you want. Press to edit the current URI.
• If it is not a recognized URI, Luakit will use the default search engine. See #Custom search engines.
• Specify which search engine to use by prefixing the entry with the appropriate keywork (e.g. :open google foobar will search foobar on Google).
• Use common shortcuts to navigate. For emacs and vim aficionados, some of their regular shortcuts are provided. You can use the mouse as well.
• Use to display the index of all visible links. Enter the appropriate number or a part of the string to open the link.
• Use Shift+f instead to open link in a new tab.
• Press to open a new tab, to close it. Press to prompt for an URI to be opened in a new tab, and to edit the current URI in a new tab.
• Press to prompt for an URI to be opened in a new window, and to edit the current URI in a new window.
• Switch from one tab to another by pressing followed by or , or use and Ctrl+PageDown.
• You can switch to a specific tab with .
• Use to go back in the browser history.
• Use to go forward in the browser history.
• Reorder the tabs with and .
• Reload the page with , stop the loading with .
• Re-open last closed tab with u.
• Open downloads page by pressing followed by (or for a new tab).
• Copy URI to primary selection with y.
• View page source code with . Return to normal view with .
• View image source by pressing followed by (or for new tab).
• Inspect elements with . Repeat to open in a new window. Disable inspector with .

Input fields

Many webpages have editable elements like dropdown lists, checkboxes, text fields and so on. While they work perfectly with the mouse, you may encounter some troubles using the follow commands. In such a case, pressing the arrow keys may help. Alternatively, the shortcut can be used to focus input.

Bookmarks

If enabled (default configuration), bookmarks can be used from within Luakit.

• The :bookmarks command opens the bookmarks page. (Shortcut: followed by , or for a new tab).
• The command adds the URI specified (or the current tab's URI, if omitted) to the bookmarks by specified tags. Starting from version 2012-09-13-r1, bookmarks page will be opened (new tab) in new bookmark editing mode before saving. (Shortcut: ).

Configuration

Configuration is done in ~/.config/luakit/userconf.lua. It is not necessary anymore to copy and modify . Some settings can also be modified with the command, unless you set them in with:

Key bindings

Most bindings will require some knowledge of Luakit, but you can at least do simple things rebinding:

To bind keys to commands, you can use the following template:

~/.config/luakit/userconf.lua

modes.add_binds("normal", {
-- {"<key>",
--  "<description>",
--  function (w) w:enter_cmd("<command>") end}
  {"O", "Open URL in a new tab.",
   function (w) w:enter_cmd(":tabopen ") end},
   ...
})

For inspiration, see , where the default bindings are defined.

Homepage

Set your homepage as follows:

Custom search engines

To search with the default search engine, press and type the phrases. To search with a different engine, type its name after and then the phrases.

You can virtually add any search engine you want. Make a search on the website you want and copy paste the URI to the Luakit configuration by replacing the searched terms with an . Example:

~/.config/luakit/userconf.lua

local engines = settings.window.search_engines
engines.aur          = "https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?K=%s"
engines.aw           = "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Special:Search?fulltext=Search&search=%s"
engines.googleseceng = "https://www.google.com/search?name=f&hl=en&q=%s"

The variable is used as a keyword for the command in Luakit.

Set the defaut search engine by using this same keyword:

Instead of strings, you can defined search engines as functions that return a string. For instance, here is a Wikipedia search engine that lets you specify a language (defaulting to English):

If called as , this will open the Arch Linux page on the English Wikipedia; with , this will use the French Wikipedia instead.

Download location

To specify download location:

~/.config/luakit/userconf.lua

require "downloads"
downloads.default_dir = os.getenv("HOME") .. "/mydir"

Default location is if it exists, otherwise.

Adblock

Adblock is loaded by default, but you need to:

• Fetch an adblock-compatible list, like Easylist, and save it to .
• Restart Luakit to load the extension.
• Use command within Luakit to turn Adblock's list(s) you downloaded on Adblock itself becomes enabled on startup.

Full info on enabled lists and AdBlock state can be found using :adblock or at internal page, if the module is enabled, which is not a mandatory part.

Sync

Starting from version 2012.09.13, Luakit bookmarks are stored in an SQLite database: ~/.local/share/luakit/bookmarks.db.

You can put a symbolic link in place of the default file to store your bookmarks anywhere on your machine. This way if your are using a cloud sync application like Dropbox, you can keep your bookmarks synchronized between your different computers.

Converting plain text bookmarks to SQLite format

Bookmarks were stored in a simple plain text file: . Each line is a bookmark. It is composed of 2 fields, the link and the group which are separated by a tab character.

To use bookmarks with the latest Luakit release, the file must be converted. A sample Lua script will do that:

As stated at beginning of the script, it must be ran with Luakit:

$ luakit -c bookmarks_plain_to_sqlite.lua path/to/plaintext/bookmark path/to/db

The old plaintext bookmarks will be left unchanged. If the DB bookmarks do not exist, the file will be created. If it exists, do not worry, none of the previous bookmarks will be touched. However, this behaviour implies that you might get some doubles.

Import from Firefox

To import bookmarks from Firefox, first they must be exported to an HTML file using its bookmarks manager. After that the XML file can be converted to a Luakit format.

The following one-line awk command will do that:

The more readable version of the script:

ff2lk.awk

# Notes: 'folders' for Firefox bookmarks mean 'groups' for Luakit.

# Put spaces where it is needed to delimit words properly.
{gsub(/\"/," ")}

# Since the folder name may have spaces, delimiter must be ">" here.
/<\/H3>/ {
    FS=">"
    gsub(/</,">")
    oldgroup=group
    group=$(NF-2)
    FS=" "
}

# Each time a <DL> is encountered, it means we step into a subfolder.
# 'count' is the depth level.
# Base level starts at 2 (Firefox fault).
# 'groupline' is an array of all parent folders.
/<DL>/ {
    count++
    if ( count >= 3 )
        groupline[count-3]=group
}

# On </DL>, we step out.
# If if return to the base level (i.e. not in a folder), then we give 'group' a fake name different
# from 'oldgroup' to make sure a line will be skipped (see below).
/<\/DL>/ {
    count--
    if( count == 2 )
        group=oldgroup"ROOT"
}

# The bookmark name.
# If oldgroup is different than group, (i.e. folder changed) then we skip a line.
# If we are in a folder, then we print the group name, i.e. all parents plus the current folder
# separated by an hyphen.
/HREF/ {
    gsub(/</," ")
    gsub(/>/," ")
    if (group != "")
    {
        if(oldgroup != group)
        {
            printf "\n"
            oldgroup=group
        }
        printf "%s\t",$4
        if ( count >= 3 )
        {
            for ( i=0 ; i <= count-4 ; i++ )
            {printf "%s-" , groupline[i]}
            printf "%s" , groupline[count-3]
        }
        printf "\n"
    }
}

Run it with

$ awk -f ff2lk.awk bookmarks.html >> bookmarks

Export bookmarks

The following script let you export Luakit bookmarks from its SQLite format to a plain text file. The resulting file may be suitable for other web browsers, or may be easily parsed by import scripts.

As stated at beginning of the script, it must be ran with Luakit:

$ luakit -c bookmarks_plain_to_sqlite.lua path/to/plaintext/bookmarks path/to/database

Tor

Once Tor has been setup, simply run:

$ torsocks luakit --nounique

Custom CSS

Locate the sub-directory within luakit's data storage directory. Normally, this is located at ~/.local/share/luakit/styles/. Create the directory if it does not already exist. Move any CSS rules to a new file within that directory. The filename must end in . Make sure you specify which sites your stylesheet should apply to. The way to do this is to use rules. The Stylish wiki page Applying styles to specific sites may be helpful. Run to detect new stylesheet files and reload any changes to existing stylesheet files; it is not necessary to restart luakit.

To open the styles menu, run the command . Here you can enable/disable stylesheets, open stylesheets in your text editor, and view which stylesheets are active.

If a stylesheet is disabled for all pages, its state will be listed as "Disabled". If a stylesheet is enabled for all pages, but does not apply to the current page, its state will be listed as "Enabled". If a stylesheet is enbaled for all pages _and_ it applies to the current page, its state will be listed as "Active".

See also

• Home page
• Cheatsheet