qbpm 1.0rc3

qutebrowser profile manager

qutebrowser profile manager

qbpm (qutebrowser profile manager) is a tool for creating, managing, and running qutebrowser profiles. Profile support isn't built in to qutebrowser, at least not directly, but it does have a --basedir flag which allows qutebrowser to use any directory as the location of its config and data and effectively act as a profile. qbpm creates profiles that source your main qutebrowser config.py, but have their own separate autoconfig.yml, bookmarks, cookies, history, and other data. Profiles can be run by starting qutebrowser with the appropriate --basedir, or more conveniently using the qbpm launch and qbpm choose commands.

qutebrowser shares session depending on the basedir, so launching the same profile twice will result in two windows sharing a session, which means running :quit in one will exit both and launching the profile again will reopen both windows. But launching two distinct profiles will start two entirely separate instances of qutebrowser which can be opened and closed independently.

Usage

Create a new profile called "python", edit its config.py, then launch it:

$ qbpm new python
$ qbpm edit python
$ qbpm launch python docs.python.org
$ qbpm choose # run dmenu or another launcher to pick a profile

qbpm from-session can copy the tabs of a saved qutebrowser session to a new profile. If you have a window full of tabs related to planning a vacation, you could save it to a session called "vacation" using :session-save -o vacation in qutebrowser, then create a new profile with those tabs:

$ qbpm from-session vacation

The default profile directory is $XDG_DATA_HOME/qutebrowser-profiles, where $XDG_DATA_HOME is usually ~/.local/share, but you can create and launch profiles from anywhere using --profile-dir/-P:

$ qbpm --profile-dir ~/dev/my-project new qb-profile
$ cd ~/dev/my-project
$ qbpm -P . launch qb-profile
# or
$ qutebrowser --basedir qb-profile

Installation

If you use Nix, you can install or run qbpm as a Nix flake. For example, to run qbpm without installing it you can use nix run github:pvsr/qbpm -- new my-profile.

On Arch and derivatives, you can install the AUR package: qbpm-git.

Otherwise you'll need to install from source, directly or using a tool like uv. Using uv you can run qbpm without installing it using uv tool run --with git+https://github.com/pvsr/qbpm qbpm, or install to ~/.local/bin with uv tool install --with git+https://github.com/pvsr/qbpm qbpm. The downside of a source installation is that the man page and shell completions will not be installed automatically.

On Linux you can copy contrib/qbpm.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications to create a qbpm desktop application that runs qbpm choose.

MacOS

Nix and uv will install qbpm as a command-line application, but if you want a native Mac application you can clone this repository or copy the contents of contrib/qbpm.platypus to a local file, install platypus, and create a qbpm app by running platypus -P qbpm.platypus /Applications/qbpm.app. That will also make qbpm available as a default browser in System Preferences > General > Default web browser.

Note that there is currently a qutebrowser bug that results in unnecessary file:///* tabs being opened.