Your internet, in bloom.
Lilo brings Spaces, Chrome extensions, terminals and AI agents to a WebKit browser built for your Mac. Private by default. Free and open source.
Built on WebKit. Not on a second Chrome.
Lilo uses the engine already inside macOS, written in Swift. No Chromium bundled, no Electron, and your Chrome extensions still install from the Chrome Web Store. Your Mac spends its energy on your pages.
The engine Safari uses
Apple tunes WebKit for Apple silicon, video decoding and sandboxing. Lilo gets every macOS update for free.
Easy on the battery
Idle tabs freeze, then sleep. Background Spaces stop working when you are not looking at them.
Light on memory
Tab memory follows how much RAM your Mac really has, and gives it back under pressure.
Energy, measured
What the Mac draws for five busy tabs, above an idle Mac.
Idle, Lilo and Safari stay within the noise of an idle Mac, Chrome adds 62 mW and Firefox 45 mW. MacBook Pro M4 Pro, macOS 27, medians of 3 runs.Method and full results
The Chrome Web Store, with an "Add to Lilo" button.
Browse the store you know and install in one click. Lilo runs Manifest V3 extensions on WebKit, keeps them updated, and gives each profile its own set. See what still differs from Chrome in the compatibility reference.
Open these pages in Lilo to install.
What you do in Lilo stays on your Mac.
No account, no telemetry, no analytics. The project runs no server, so there is nowhere for your browsing to go. And every line is open for you to check.
On by default: Global Privacy Control (macOS 27). One switch away in Settings: HTTPS-Only mode.
Trackers blocked out of the box
Ads, trackers and cookie banners are filtered with community lists kept up to date, and sites embedded in others can't follow you from one to the next. Nothing to install.
Sign-ins kept apart
Each Space can have its own profile, with its own cookies and storage. Private Spaces forget everything when they close.
Agents on a short leash
Agents never see your private tabs, and Lilo asks you before one sends, pays, deletes or publishes anything.
Apple's engine and sandbox
Pages run in WebKit's sandboxed processes and get Apple's security fixes with every macOS update.
Every request, listed
Besides the pages you open, Lilo talks to a handful of services (filter lists, updates). Each one islisted, with how to turn it off.
Everything in its Space.
The sidebar you know, with the details that make it yours. Move in from Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, Dia, Comet, Chromium, Firefox or Zen in five minutes, straight from your Mac. How moving works
Spaces with their own sign-ins
Work and Perso side by side in one window, each with its cookies and extensions. Swipe between them.
Tabs on any edge
Left like Arc, right to keep the page first, or one strip on top or bottom like Safari. Drag the sidebar to another edge to move it.
Peek
Links from your pinned tabs open over the page. Keep reading, expand it to a tab, or put it in a split.
Little window
A quick window from any app, for one link or one search. Send it to a Space when it turns into something.
Tabs that tidy themselves
Unpinned tabs you stopped using are archived after 12 hours, or when you choose. Find them again in a keystroke.
Command bar
Tabs, history, bookmarks and every action in one field, ranked by what you use. Open a result in a split or a Peek.
Your shortcuts
Every shortcut can be remapped. Start from a preset, conflicts are flagged as you type.
Links land in the right Space
Links opened from Mail or Slack follow your rules: this domain to Work, the rest to the Little window.
Split view
Up to four tabs side by side, a terminal next to your docs, restored exactly as you left them.
Your terminal lives in the sidebar.
Terminal tabs sit next to your docs and your localhost, on a Metal renderer built on libghostty. Split one beside a page, and the sidebar shows its branch and pending changes at a glance.
Your agents get their own Space.
Lilo has a built-in MCP server. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client open tabs, click, type, and read pages, the console and the network, in a real browser beside you.
Good to know.
Is Lilo free?
Yes. Lilo is free and open source under the MIT license. There is no paid tier and no account to create.
Who makes Lilo, and will it last?
Alexays, who has also maintained the open-source Waybar since 2018. The part that keeps you safe is not his alone: WebKit ships with macOS, so Apple's security fixes reach Lilo with every macOS update. The code is MIT licensed, so it stays yours to run and fork whatever happens, and no company can switch it off. What comes next is in the roadmap, and you can back the work on GitHub Sponsors.
Can I put my tabs on top, like Safari or Chrome?
Yes. Tabs go on any edge of the window: left, right, top or bottom. Spaces, pinned tabs and folders come along. Switch anytime in Settings, from the command bar, or by dragging the sidebar to another edge.
What is Lilo built on?
WebKit, the engine Safari uses, in an app written in Swift and AppKit, with its sidebar and settings in Svelte. No Chromium is bundled. On top of it, Lilo runs Chrome extensions from the Chrome Web Store.
Which extensions work?
Manifest V3 extensions from the Chrome Web Store install with one click and keep updating. Manifest V2 extensions and blocking webRequest are not supported, and a few extensions rely on other features only Chrome has. The compatibility notes list exactly what differs.
Do Netflix, Spotify and other streaming services work?
Lilo plays protected video and music through Apple's FairPlay, the same system Safari uses, so services that support Safari, like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+ and Spotify, should play as they do there. YouTube streams in 4K HDR. Widevine is not available in WebKit, so a service that requires it plays at lower quality or not at all, and offline downloads in the browser are not supported.
Can I bring my stuff from another browser?
Yes. Lilo imports bookmarks, history and sign-ins from Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, Dia, Comet, Chromium, Firefox and Zen, open tabs where the browser keeps them, and offers to reinstall your Chrome Web Store extensions. See what comes with you.
What about my passwords?
Lilo keeps no passwords itself and never reads them from other browsers. Setup offers the manager you already use, such as NordPass, Bitwarden, 1Password, Proton Pass, Dashlane or KeePassXC. iCloud Passwords comes as soon as Apple approves it.
Is there sync, or a mobile app?
No, by design: Lilo has no account and no server, so there is nothing to sync through. It is a Mac app only. Your password manager keeps syncing your passwords everywhere, and importing changes nothing in your other browser, so its own sync to your phone keeps working.
Does Lilo have AI built in?
No. If you turn it on, the agents you already use, like Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, can drive Lilo over a local MCP server, in their own Space. Each agent is approved once, never sees your private Spaces, and Lilo asks you before it sends, pays or deletes anything. How agents work.
Where is my data?
On your Mac, kept apart per profile. No account, no telemetry, and the project runs no server, so nothing you do is sent to us. Read the privacy notes.
Is Lilo related to the Lilo search engine?
No. Lilo Browser is an independent, open-source web browser for Mac. The Lilo search engine at lilo.org is a separate project with no link to it. In Lilo, you pick your search engine in Settings.
Why only on Mac?
Lilo is built on the WebKit engine that ships with macOS and written in Swift. That is what keeps it light and easy on the battery. It needs macOS 26 or later.
How can I help?
Star the repo, report what breaks, send a pull request, or back the work on GitHub Sponsors. The whole interface is a Svelte layer you can change and rebuild in seconds.
Open source, for good.
Read it, fork it, change the sidebar in Svelte and rebuild in seconds. Your browser stays yours.