// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Search – A small, fast WebKit browser for macOS
A small, fast, quiet web browser for the Mac, by Office Commun.
Download for macOS → · macOS 14 or later · free · about 3 MB
Or with Homebrew: brew install --cask driceroland/tap/search
Search is a browser with nothing in the way. A row of tabs — across the top or down the left, your choice — and the page. There is no toolbar, no start page, no sidebar of suggestions, no account to sign into, nothing that wants your attention. You type an address or a few words in one field and you are on the page.
It uses WebKit, the engine already inside every Mac (it is what Safari runs on). That is why the whole app is about 3 MB on disk and opens instantly: there is no second copy of Chromium to download, update and keep in memory.
It was built by a design studio that spends its whole day in a browser and was tired of the ones that had become products. This one is a tool.
A private tab (⇧⌘N) has its own cookie jar and leaves nothing behind when it closes.
⌃Tab and ⌃⇧Tab walk along the row of tabs; Tab stays the page's, for moving through a form. esc puts away whatever is open.
So anyone can read exactly what a browser handling their passwords and history is doing, build it themselves, or fix something that bothers them. The code is small enough to actually read — about 12,700 lines of Swift, no dependencies beyond what Apple ships with macOS, one file per concern.
A build you make yourself won't be notarized or carry Office Commun's Developer ID, so the first launch needs a right-click → Open (or an allow in System Settings → Privacy & Security). That's expected — it's the same thing that happens with any app that isn't from the App Store or a notarized DMG. Your own build also keeps its passwords apart from a signed Search's: the keychain tells the two apart by their signatures.