Lilo

The Arc-style Mac browser on WebKit, not Chromium.

Your Chrome extensions, terminal tabs beside your pages and a built-in MCP server for your AI agents. Free, open source, no account.

brew install --cask alexays/tap/lilo · macOS 26 or later

Website · Discord · Coming from Arc · Documentation · Contributing

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Lilo is a Mac browser for people who live in a sidebar, and it is not another Chromium fork. It is native Swift and AppKit on the WebKit engine already in macOS, and it still runs the Chrome extensions you rely on. It puts terminal tabs beside your pages, and lets the AI agents you already use drive it over a built-in MCP server, in a Space of their own. Free, MIT licensed, no account. If you are leaving Arc, it imports your Spaces, pinned tabs and folders in a few clicks.

Status: public beta. Lilo is usable every day, but it is still a beta: expect rough edges and an interface that still moves, and please report what breaks. ROADMAP.md lists priorities and non-goals.

Join the Discord community to share feedback and get help with Lilo.

Coming from Arc

Arc shuts down on December 22, 2026. Lilo keeps its sidebar way of browsing, and imports what you have in Arc straight from your Mac, without changing anything in it:

• Spaces, tabs and splits: each Arc space becomes a Lilo Space with its icon and color, its pinned and open tabs, folders and splits. Favorites become bookmarked tabs.
• History and sign-ins: your recent pages fill the command bar, and cookies are copied so you stay signed in.
• Extensions: the ones from the Chrome Web Store install again from the store. You pick which.
• Shortcuts: start from the Arc preset, then remap any of them.

What changes is the engine: WebKit instead of Chromium. With the same tabs, Chrome draws about 3 times Lilo's power (measured), and a few Chrome extension APIs still differ (COMPATIBILITY.md). The Arc alternative page compares both, feature by feature.

Why Lilo

Most Arc alternatives are Chromium with a new sidebar. Lilo keeps the sidebar and changes the rest.

• Not Chromium. No Chromium, no Electron: Swift, AppKit and WebKit, with the sidebar and settings in Svelte. Lower memory use, a battery that lasts the day, and Apple's security updates with every macOS release. Lilo runs on the WebKit that ships with macOS, Safari's engine; on Apple silicon it can also bring engine fixes ahead of macOS with its own build, used only while that build holds every security fix of your macOS (how).
• Private by default. No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no server: nothing you do is sent to the project. Ads and trackers are blocked out of the box, cross-site tracking is blocked as in Safari, and Global Privacy Control is on (macOS 27). Every request Lilo makes on its own is listed, with how to turn it off.
• Chrome extensions anyway. Leaving Chromium usually means leaving its extensions. In Lilo, Chrome Web Store extensions install with one click on "Add to Lilo", on WebKit's native runtime (COMPATIBILITY.md).
• Your agents drive it, it has no AI of its own. No chatbot bolted on: the agents you already run (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client) use a real browser through the built-in MCP server, in their own Space and throwaway profile, and ask you before they send, pay or delete.
• A terminal beside your pages. Ghostty-based terminal tabs live in the sidebar with your sites, showing the branch and pending changes of their repository.
• Yours. MIT licensed. The whole interface is a Svelte layer over WebKit that you can change and rebuild in seconds.

Features

Browsing

• Spaces and profiles: Spaces with an emoji and a color, each signed in as its own profile; swipe between them. Private Spaces forget everything when they close.
• Sidebar: pinned tabs, favorites, folders nested up to five levels (lockable), drag to reorder, audio and now-playing controls.
• Command bar (Cmd+T): tabs, history, bookmarks, Spaces and every action in one field, ranked by what you use.
• Recent tabs (Ctrl+Tab): switch through your last tabs, from every Space, in the order you used them.
• Peek: a link from a pinned tab to another site, or any Shift-clicked link, opens over the page.
• Little window (Cmd+Option+N, from any app): a small window for one link or search, sent to a Space when it turns into something.
• Tabs that tidy themselves: unpinned tabs you stop using are archived after a delay you choose per Space; Cmd+Shift+K clears them, and the archive is one keystroke away.
• Link rules: links opened from other apps go to the Space or the Little window a rule picks.
• Split view: up to four tabs side by side, restored on relaunch.
• Shortcuts: every shortcut can be remapped, starting from the Lilo or Arc preset.
• Import: bookmarks, open tabs and Spaces, history, cookies and extensions from Safari, Firefox, Zen and Chromium browsers (Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Dia, Comet, Chromium), read straight from your Mac.

Extensions and the web

• Chrome extensions: Manifest V3 through WebKit's native extension runtime, plus small Swift handlers for the APIs WebKit lacks (COMPATIBILITY.md).
• Password managers: setup offers the one you use (1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, KeePassXC, NordPass, Proton Pass).
• Streaming: protected video and music through FairPlay; YouTube in 4K HDR.
• Content blocking: EasyList, EasyPrivacy and uBlock Origin lists, kept up to date, with cosmetic filtering and scriptlets.
• Screenshots: a capture floats as a card over the page, ready to edit with markup, save or dismiss.
• And more: reader mode, Picture-in-Picture (calls float in an always-on-top panel), page translation, Web Serial, AppleScript, Shortcuts actions and a Focus filter.

For people who build

• Terminal tabs: libghostty-vt terminals on a Metal renderer, beside your pages (Cmd+D beside, Cmd+Shift+D below), with the branch and pending changes in the sidebar.
• Changes view: every diff of the repository, images included.
• Stays awake while it works: a long command keeps the Mac awake, even with the lid closed, then lets it sleep.
• Agents over MCP: the built-in MCP server, see For AI agents.

For AI agents

Lilo has a built-in MCP server. Turn it on, and the agents you already run (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client) drive a real WebKit browser beside you. Lilo ships no AI of its own.

• Their own Space. Agents open their tabs in a folder of the Agents Space, in a throwaway profile wiped after each session. They never take your keyboard, your mouse or your tabs, and never see a private Space. An agent can borrow one of your profiles once you allow it.
• You say yes first. Lilo asks before an agent sends, pays, deletes or publishes (Allow Once, Always Allow on the site, or Deny), and before it hands a page one of your files. Each client is approved once, tied to the program behind it rather than the name it gives.
• One click to connect. In Settings > AI agents, turn on "Let agents use Lilo", then press Connect next to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex or Cursor: Lilo adds itself to that client's MCP servers. Any other client copies the configuration from "Other agents".

Then ask your agent something like:

Open localhost:3000/checkout in Lilo, pay with the test card and find out why the order fails.
Check the console and the network.

The tools cover:

• Tabs and navigation in the agent's folder, and isolated tabs that share no cookie or sign-in.
• Input: click, type, keys, scroll, drag, form filling, file and image uploads.
• Page reading: the accessibility tree with element refs, text search, the page text.
• Screenshots of a full page or one element, and GIF recordings.
• Console and network: messages, requests with their full responses, HAR export,