Whist, a new cloud-hybrid browser(whist.com)
whist.com
Whist, a new cloud-hybrid browser
https://www.whist.com/
72 comments
What kind of privacy grantees does Whist make? Having more of the browser in the could could open up new opportunities for snooping either to sell data, or by state actors. Do you have a warrant canary?
The Whist privacy guarantee is that we've engineered our system so that no one, not even us, can see what's going on in your cloud tabs. We'll be releasing a blog post about how our system is engineered, stay tuned!
Privacy is also one of the reasons we've decided on the hybrid approach. Websites with sensitive information (your bank, etc.) can be used on local, incognito, or Tor tabs, all of which are not offloaded to Whist's servers and run 100% locally.
Privacy is also one of the reasons we've decided on the hybrid approach. Websites with sensitive information (your bank, etc.) can be used on local, incognito, or Tor tabs, all of which are not offloaded to Whist's servers and run 100% locally.
That's awesome, it seems like you've thought through privacy! It'd be above and beyond, but is it possible to self-host my own cloud backend?
Potentially! We could make this happen, it probably wouldn't even be that much work. It's more of a question of whether enough people/companies would be interested in self-hosting, which is something we'll keep an eye out for
I like the alternative of treating tabs more like bookmarks better.
So instead of explicitly bookmarking a page, not closing a tab is the indicator that you may be more interested in this page in the future than any page you visited in the past. In the meantime, you don't think that having many bookmarks requires more RAM.
As for the faster load times, I can see the lure, but I think it's a sellout. I'd like to know the resource footprint and incentivize website makers to make websites possible to run on computers without cloud GPUs.
Other than the fact that this browser doesn't solve problems that I'd like to have, I think that more browsers is both necessary and good. While they may rely on Google's browser engine technology (Blink), having more front-end diversity surely contributes to a better browser market.
So instead of explicitly bookmarking a page, not closing a tab is the indicator that you may be more interested in this page in the future than any page you visited in the past. In the meantime, you don't think that having many bookmarks requires more RAM.
As for the faster load times, I can see the lure, but I think it's a sellout. I'd like to know the resource footprint and incentivize website makers to make websites possible to run on computers without cloud GPUs.
Other than the fact that this browser doesn't solve problems that I'd like to have, I think that more browsers is both necessary and good. While they may rely on Google's browser engine technology (Blink), having more front-end diversity surely contributes to a better browser market.
I only recently learned that people like to tab-hoard, hence addons like one-tab that collapses your tabs into a neat page for revisiting later. That’s just how people use their browser. They assume their machines can hold all those tabs in the background but are then shocked when their CPU fan whirs violently. Remember a browser is the most complex piece of software on your system apart from the OS and has to do many things simultaneously.
I use Auto Tab Discard [0], which offloads tabs after a period of time. They still show as normal tabs (with a "ZZZ" icon to indicate it's been discarded), and the website reloads when I switch to them.
When I open the browser after closing it, the session is restored with all but the current tab offloaded so it opens quickly and using very little resources.
My current session has tens of tabs, only a handful of them active. It uses about .5% CPU when idle, and less than 1Gb RAM.
[0] https://add0n.com/tab-discard.html
When I open the browser after closing it, the session is restored with all but the current tab offloaded so it opens quickly and using very little resources.
My current session has tens of tabs, only a handful of them active. It uses about .5% CPU when idle, and less than 1Gb RAM.
[0] https://add0n.com/tab-discard.html
For a while now, I have been thinking of switching to Windows 365. This is halfway there because the heavy tabs are streamed from the cloud, but I am starting to think that the only way I can trust software to work is with a monthly fee. This has the added advantage of being able to switch to a thin client, and the data restoration and storage is paid for and is someone else’s problem.
But then I think there is another side to this. Windows has always continued with this cycle of planned obsolescence. The latest iteration was the worst. My copy of Microsoft Office 2019 slowed to a crawl after the Windows 11 update. Then, I had to buy a 365 subscription. That Office license was supposed to be good for life. I won’t forget that!
So I set up an older computer with 4 gigs of ram with Mint. It is snappy. I bought Crossover. It runs Word, but not PowerPoint. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a copy of Office 2016 that is stable with Wine/Crossover. So again I am stuck paying the Microsoft Mafia. Honestly, I am fine with paying. What I am not fine with is them adding no new features, and bogging down my hardware so I need to buy another machine.
I also feel acutely the need to get control of my email back from Google, as many others do.
The reason I, and I think a lot of others want privacy is because they are sick of the obsolescence kill switch. Give me light hardware and web applications that can get as much cloud processing power to run as needed, and I would be happy. But I really need to trust that cloud provider and I don’t trust Microsoft. After all, they are using emails to get URLs to scrape for Bing. Not good.
Maybe this is a nice balance of a cloud operating system and local control.
But then I think there is another side to this. Windows has always continued with this cycle of planned obsolescence. The latest iteration was the worst. My copy of Microsoft Office 2019 slowed to a crawl after the Windows 11 update. Then, I had to buy a 365 subscription. That Office license was supposed to be good for life. I won’t forget that!
So I set up an older computer with 4 gigs of ram with Mint. It is snappy. I bought Crossover. It runs Word, but not PowerPoint. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a copy of Office 2016 that is stable with Wine/Crossover. So again I am stuck paying the Microsoft Mafia. Honestly, I am fine with paying. What I am not fine with is them adding no new features, and bogging down my hardware so I need to buy another machine.
I also feel acutely the need to get control of my email back from Google, as many others do.
The reason I, and I think a lot of others want privacy is because they are sick of the obsolescence kill switch. Give me light hardware and web applications that can get as much cloud processing power to run as needed, and I would be happy. But I really need to trust that cloud provider and I don’t trust Microsoft. After all, they are using emails to get URLs to scrape for Bing. Not good.
Maybe this is a nice balance of a cloud operating system and local control.
This is super cool. Good for people with slow/older computers and also presumably reduces the surface for web based attacks
Yeah, the kind of people that need high-performance productivity apps for their jobs but can't afford to upgrade to a $1000 M1 Macbook Air but will be able to spend what I assume will be more than $10 / month indefinitely /s
Bro I _have_ a $1000 M1 Macbook Air, and it's slow af when I browse the web. Constantly lags, freezes, runs out of RAM.
And that's a $1000 that I have to spend every few years, for just a mediocre experience (Since by the time it's 4-6 years old, it's virtually unusable for anything but the simplest of websites).
Maybe if people just wrote more HTML+JS rather than these big hefty "500kb of JS" React-based websites, this wouldn't be necessary. But as it is, $120/year is actually very cheap if it actually solves the problem it claims to solve. (Even $300/yr wouldn't be unreasonable tbh, esp if it's on my employer's card since work tabs are the hefty tabs for me)
And that's a $1000 that I have to spend every few years, for just a mediocre experience (Since by the time it's 4-6 years old, it's virtually unusable for anything but the simplest of websites).
Maybe if people just wrote more HTML+JS rather than these big hefty "500kb of JS" React-based websites, this wouldn't be necessary. But as it is, $120/year is actually very cheap if it actually solves the problem it claims to solve. (Even $300/yr wouldn't be unreasonable tbh, esp if it's on my employer's card since work tabs are the hefty tabs for me)
I also have an M1 MacBook Air. It's very snappy on both Firefox and Safari.
Sometimes when I woke the computer up from sleep, Firefox would be crazy laggy. I suspect some resource leakage but at least RAM and CPU were fine. Closing and reopening the browser would work around it.
Sometimes when I woke the computer up from sleep, Firefox would be crazy laggy. I suspect some resource leakage but at least RAM and CPU were fine. Closing and reopening the browser would work around it.
How much do you plan to charge for your browser? I can't find pricing page on your site.
The basic version of Whist (with limited cloud tabs usage), will be free, forever.
For full cloud tabs support, we'll be charging a subscription fee as an add-on on top of the browser. We're still figuring out exactly what the pricing tiers will be, but we expect it to be in the 10-15$ range.
For full cloud tabs support, we'll be charging a subscription fee as an add-on on top of the browser. We're still figuring out exactly what the pricing tiers will be, but we expect it to be in the 10-15$ range.
I would feel way more comfortable with a paid application. Otherwise, how are you paying for the cloud compute time? Also, where is the company based and who are the funders?
Charging a subscription fee is the primary way for which we would pay for cloud compute time -- but we're thinking there will be a version of Whist which will have very limited amount of compute time and be free (a sort of free trial if you will)
It is funny where we are right now. After blowing up classical web pages to over-complex web applications that eat up memory, bandwidth and battery, we now think it is a good idea to optimize this by streaming these complex applications to clients?
To be honest: my fist take was "this has to be satire" - but this is really a product. Wow.
To be honest: my fist take was "this has to be satire" - but this is really a product. Wow.
How does this compare to Mighty (https://mightyapp.com)?
Whist and Mighty are similar in that they are browsers that offer cloud-offloading.
Whist differs by being built in a native browser on your computer, rather than being fully offloaded to the cloud, and supports both local and cloud tabs (so that you can adapt your workflow based on which web apps you are using, how strong your Internet is, etc.)
For more details on the exact differences with Mighty and with other browsers, we have a comparison chart on our website
Whist differs by being built in a native browser on your computer, rather than being fully offloaded to the cloud, and supports both local and cloud tabs (so that you can adapt your workflow based on which web apps you are using, how strong your Internet is, etc.)
For more details on the exact differences with Mighty and with other browsers, we have a comparison chart on our website
> For more details on the exact differences with Mighty and with other browsers, we have a comparison chart on our website
It would be helpful if you somehow included the browser name as I had to use Google Images for this. It's not very convenient.
It would be helpful if you somehow included the browser name as I had to use Google Images for this. It's not very convenient.
The comparison is present on the website homepage. Check it out. It's a hybrid browser(supports local and remote tabs) as opposed to a cloud only browser
I think it’s really funny that websites have now become so processing heavy that something like this makes sense.
Just wanted to let you know that the site takes a relatively long while to load on my Android Firefox browser.
I'm very interested in this idea as my non-work laptop is pretty old at this point and is struggling with chrome lately. How does Whist's resource utilization scale as you increase the number of tabs?
Whether you have 1 cloud tab or 100 cloud tabs, the resource utilization on your machine will be the same. If you open more local tabs, though, those will take up RAM/CPU on your machine.
This looks super epic. Can't wait to get access to it... contemporary browsers have remained pretty much the same – and slow – despite many user software needs advancing. Congrats to the team.
Congratulations y'all!! I cannot wait to try it in my Toshiba.
I’m excited to try this out. The idea of cloud hosted browsers is not new, but this approach seems really promising. In this era of connectivity and cloud compute, it makes so much sense.
I can imagine this making a lot of sense for engineers working on embedded linux while not needing to SCP things back and forth to a build machine if a good web IDE was supported
This sounds like an interesting idea, it would be nice to have a better and faster browsing experience. Is it going to be a 1-time payment or a subscription kind of thing?
Very closer to link without waiting, I think if you are in hurry, this could be the best option to manipulate your preferences in the web site. Can’t wait to try it
Wow! The world of technology is very grateful and this is the future of internet. So many questions about, but this is really underrated, fascinating
Has Whist implemented accessibility support for cloud tabs, e.g. by pushing the remote Chromium renderer's accessibility tree across the network?
We haven't implemented what you describe yet, but we've verified that basic accessibility support works for the Whist browser. We'll be making sure that Chrome's accessibility support is fully covered on Whist cloud tabs before general availability
This is awesome! Does this support history syncing?
Yes! Whist will support all native Chrome features like history sync-ing :)
Look into the remote browser isolation sector. That space is perfect for you guys!! I think you could make a splash in that sector.
Congrats on the launch! Tried early on - looking forward to trying again and intrigued by the hybrid approach.
I've been using the beta for a bit, it's a great tool, amazingly seamless streaming experience.
Can't wait to try this out -- it's something that's much needed in this day and age!
I am team close-your-damn-tabs-when-finished, but I know tons of people who need this urgently
Wow! Congratulations y'all! I love this, especially for building Webflow apps
Looks pretty sweet! Any thoughts on being able to game in one of the cloud tabs?
You absolutely can!
Really cool! Love the flexibility of the Accelerated mode especially.
Excited to try this out - just requested access!
Wow !
Great idea !
Great product !
I’m in
Congrats on the launch!! Really exciting.
this is awesome, if I didn’t have the M1 I bet I would need this given how many tabs I always have open…
Congrats on the launch!
Congrats on the launch!
congrats on the launch, excited to see where y'all go!
excited to try this out! congrats on the launch!
"Whist is a fork of Brave", and advertises their "Crypto Wallet". I'll pass.
I'm in the same camp. If it was a fork of regular Chromium I'd be all over this.
I'm curious. What do you (and the GP) have against Brave and its "crypto wallet"? I use Brave myself, but have never bothered with the wallet. Last I checked, you could earn BAT from watching ads provided by Brave, which is why I never personally bothered with it. (I really don't like ads.) Is that your reasoning as well? Or is there another reason?
this looks great!
awesome!
nice!
very cool!
suggested by a friend