Catweb

a purple web browser for Windows, with a cat named Tuft.

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit · one file, no installer needed · all releases

What it is

Catweb is a browser I'm building in Rust while learning Rust. It's early and made by one person, so expect bugs.

Websites in Catweb run on WebView2, the same engine Microsoft Edge uses, so most sites work normally. Catweb draws everything around the page itself: the tabs, address bar, settings, and Tuft.

There's also Catweb Native, my own engine written from scratch. It's an experimental side project. Tabs using it are marked with an "Experimental" label. Please don't sign in to anything in those tabs.

What it does

Blocks ads and trackers with a built-in shield (EasyList filters), with a toggle per site
Tries the secure (HTTPS) version of a site first, and strips common tracking bits from links
Private tabs that forget their cookies and history when you close them
Tabs in the title bar, bookmarks bar, history, downloads panel, find in page, zoom
Imports your Chrome bookmarks and history
Themes, accent colors, and "Silly Settings" (off by default, meow switches included)
Updates itself, and checks every update's signature before installing it
Can install itself to the Start menu and be your default browser

Privacy, honestly

Catweb has no accounts, analytics, or telemetry. On its own it only contacts:

GitHub, once a day, to check for updates (you can turn this off in Settings)
websites you visit, to get their little icons (never in private tabs)
Microsoft SmartScreen, which checks for dangerous sites and downloads (on by default, can be turned off)

Your history and bookmarks are stored on your PC in %APPDATA%\Catweb, not encrypted. Catweb doesn't save passwords. Use the password manager you already trust.

Catweb is new and hasn't had an outside security audit. I wouldn't use it for banking yet.

Screenshots

Catweb's new tab page with Tuft — The new tab page

Catweb showing a website — Browsing with the shield on

Catweb's settings page — Settings and themes

Before you run it

Windows will show a SmartScreen warning. Catweb isn't code-signed (that costs money every year), so Windows doesn't recognize it. To run it anyway, click More info, then Run anyway.

If you'd rather check the file first, here's how:

VirusTotal: report link coming soon
Checksum: every release has a catweb.exe.sha256 file next to the download. In PowerShell, run this in your Downloads folder and compare the result with that file:

Get-FileHash .\catweb.exe -Algorithm SHA256

v0.0.9 catweb.exe SHA-256:
e4bc2daae84765f95b0ea8824e82e9d638524075c930fea577573e42b0de1ce8

Found a bug?

Open an issue and say what you did and what happened. Right-click a page and pick "Save a bug report about this page" to attach one. It removes sign-in tokens from the report, but please double-check it doesn't include anything personal.