Offpunk 3.0 released

[Posted February 9, 2026 by jzb]

Version 3.0 of the Offpunk offline-first, command-line web, Gemini, and Gopher browser has been released. Notable changes in this release include integration of the unmerdify library to "remove cruft" from web sites, the xkcdpunk standalone tool for viewing xkcd comics in the terminal, and a cookies command to enable browsing web sites (such as LWN.net) while being logged in.

Something wonderful happened on the road leading to 3.0: Offpunk became a true cooperative effort. Offpunk 3.0 is probably the first release that contains code I didn't review line-by-line. Unmerdify (by Vincent Jousse), all the translation infrastructure (by the always-present JMCS), and the community packaging effort are areas for which I barely touched the code.

So, before anything else, I want to thank all the people involved for sharing their energy and motivation. I'm very grateful for every contribution the project received. I'm also really happy to see "old names" replying from time to time on the mailing list. It makes me feel like there's an emerging Offpunk community where everybody can contribute at their own pace.

There were a lot of changes between 2.8 and 3.0, which probably means some new bugs and some regressions. We count on you, yes, you!, to report them and make 3.1 a lot more stable. It's as easy at typing "bugreport" in offpunk!

See the "Installing Offpunk" page to get started.

to post comments

No JavaScript

Posted Feb 10, 2026 2:13 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (5 responses)

Without even JavaScript support, it's not going to be very useful for most sites, unfortunately.

No JavaScript

Posted Feb 10, 2026 2:50 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (3 responses)

That is likely a deliberate choice, it comes from a community that wants to leave the modern web behind.

No JavaScript

Posted Feb 10, 2026 21:00 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Why bother with web support then? Just invent some kind of lightweight protocol and go from there.

I think that was even done, before, though.

No JavaScript

Posted Feb 10, 2026 21:29 UTC (Tue) by denials (subscriber, #3413) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, yes.

Gopher predated the web.

Gemini (https://geminiprotocol.net/ -- not the Google AI thing) began in 2019 in response to what the web has become.

But there are advantages to still being able to access where 99.9% of content lives in the interim.

No JavaScript

Posted Feb 11, 2026 7:31 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Had look at Gemini. Looks interesting, but I think it takes its textual purism one step too far: No inline images. Some way of adding illustrations to a text without starting an external viewer is needed, even if only allowing them to appear between paragraphs with no fancy layout options.

No JavaScript

Posted Feb 12, 2026 13:53 UTC (Thu) by ego (guest, #182305) [Link]

Well actually most of the site I use Offpunk to read the articles load very well, thanks to the library they use behind the scene to clean up all the crap. Unmerdify I think it is called.
There are exceptions of course, but then, I can always use 'open url' command to send it to my graphical browser.