Blisk Browser

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Chromium
Wayland
Blisk
is a specialized web browser, made for web designers and web developers, made by Estonian company
SyncUI OÜ
. The browser is free to use with limited functionality, but in order to get full access to the development features, a paid subscription is required. The Blisk browser is based on Chrome, using
Chromium
as its base.
Installation
Install
the
blisk-browser-stable
AUR
package.
Add-ons
Blisk is based on
Chromium
and has access to the Chrome Extension Store. However, while most extension should work just fine, there are possible issues, especially with more complex extensions, focusing on more Chrome specific functions and features. Hence,
not all of these add-ons actually work
with Blisk.
Configuration
Configuration of Blisk is possible through the menu, in the same way as it works with
Chromium
. However, as with Chrome and other browsers, you can also access are more complex set of options and settings by using:
chrome://settings
This gives access to some advanced and experimental settings, mainly meant for experimental features and debugging. Unless you know what you are doing, or are specifically told to change them, you can usually leave them alone.
Note
Unlike
Firefox
or
Chromium
, the Blisk browser does not offer synchronization with other devices or browsers.
KDE integration
For integration into
Plasma
install
plasma-browser-integration
. See
KDE Plasma Browser Integration
for more details.
PDF viewer plugin
Blisk, like
Chromium
and Google Chrome are bundled with the
Chromium PDF Viewer
plugin. If you do not want to use this plugin, check
Download PDFs
in
chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments
.
Running on Xwayland
If you are using NVIDIA's proprietary driver, running Blisk on Xwayland may cause the GPU process to occasionally crash. To prevent the GPU process from crashing, add the following flags:
--use-angle=vulkan --use-cmd-decoder=passthrough
Note
This does not prevent all Xwayland-related crashes.
Native Wayland support
Blisk supports native
Wayland
, the same way Chromium does. This can be enabled with the following flags
[1]
:
--ozone-platform-hint=auto
The flag is also available via
browser flags menu
.
This will select Wayland's Ozone backend when in wayland session. So you can use a single
desktop entry
, if you switch between X11 and Wayland often.
Note
When changing the "ozone-platform-hint" in browser flags menu, the browser will provide you a relaunch button. Do not use it, because the browser will still be relaunched in a platform it was before changing the flag. You need to close the browser, then open it.
Additionally, if you are having
trouble with input methods
, which may or may not apply to Blisk, you may also want to force newer GTK:
--gtk-version=4
If you are using
Fcitx5
and it does not work properly using the above flags, try using the
--enable-wayland-ime
flag instead of
--gtk-version=4
.
[2]
--enable-wayland-ime --wayland-text-input-version=3
Note
Enabling the
--enable-wayland-ime
flag works if the
text_input_v1
protocol is implemented by default. Known compositors that implement this protocol are: Weston, KWin, Hyprland.
Tips and tricks
The following tips and tricks should work for both Blisk and Chromium, unless explicitly stated.
Browsing experience
chrome:// URLs
A number of tweaks can be accessed via Chrome URLs. See
chrome://chrome-urls
for a complete list.
chrome://flags
- access experimental features such as WebGL and rendering webpages with GPU, etc.
chrome://extensions
- view, enable and disable the currently used Chromium extensions.
chrome://gpu
- status of different GPU options.
chrome://sandbox
- indicate sandbox status.
chrome://version
- display version and switches used to invoke the active
/usr/bin/chromium
.
An automatically updated, complete listing of
Chromium
/ Blisk
command-line parameters
is available.
Blisk task manager
Shift+ESC
can be used to bring up the browser task manager wherein memory, CPU, and network usage can be viewed. This is a helpful tool for developers or if your browser is running slow.
Search engines
Make sites like
wiki.archlinux.org
and
wikipedia.org
easily searchable by first executing a search on those pages, then going to
Settings > Search
and click the
Manage search engines..
button. From there, "Edit" the Wikipedia entry and change its keyword to
w
(or some other shortcut you prefer). Now searching Wikipedia for "Arch Linux" from the address bar is done simply by entering "
w arch linux
".
Note
Google search is used automatically when typing something into the URL bar. A hard-coded keyword trigger is also available using the
?
prefix.
Tmpfs
Cache in tmpfs
Note
Blisk stores its cache separate from its browser profile directory.
To limit Blisk from writing its cache to a physical disk, it is possible to define an alternative location via the
--disk-cache-dir
flag:
$ blisk --disk-cache-dir="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/chromium-cache"
Cache should be considered temporary and will
not
be saved after a reboot or hard lock. Another option is to setup the space in
/etc/fstab
:
/etc/fstab
tmpfs	/home/
username
/.cache	tmpfs	noatime,nodev,nosuid,size=400M	0	0
Alternatively, create a symbolic link to
/tmp
. Make sure to delete Blisks's cache folder before you run the command, to avoid any problems:
$ ln -s /tmp /home/
username
/.cache/blisk
Profile in tmpfs
Relocate the browser profile to a
tmpfs
filesystem, including
/tmp
, or
/dev/shm
for improvements in application response as the entire profile is now stored in RAM.
Use an active profile management tool such as
profile-sync-daemon
for maximal reliability and ease of use. It symlinks or bind mounts and syncs the browser profile directories to RAM. For more, see
Profile-sync-daemon
.
Launch a new browser instance
When you launch the browser, it first checks if another instance using the same data directory is already running. If there is one, the new window is associated with the old instance. If you want to launch an independent instance of the browser, you must specify a separate directory using the
--user-data-dir
parameter:
$ blisk --user-data-dir=
/path/to/some/directory
Note
The default location of the user data is
~/.config/blisk/
.
Directly open *.torrent files and magnet links with a torrent client
By default, Blisk downloads
*.torrent
files directly and you need to click the notification from the bottom-left corner of the screen in order for the file to be opened with your default torrent client. This can be avoided with the following method:
Download a
*.torrent
file.
Right-click the notification displayed at the bottom-left corner of the screen.
Check the "
Always Open Files of This Type
" checkbox.
See
xdg-open
to change the default association.
Reduce memory usage
By default, Blisk uses a separate OS process for each
instance
of a visited website.
[3]
However, you can specify command-line switches when starting Blisk to modify this behavior.
For example, to share one process for all instances of a website:
$ blisk --process-per-site
To use a single process model:
$ blisk --single-process
Warning
The single-process model is discouraged because it is unsafe and may contain bugs not present in other models.
[4]
In addition, you can suspend or store inactive Tabs with extensions such as
Tab Suspender
and
OneTab
.
User Agent
”The User Agent can be arbitrarily modified at the start of Blisks's base instance via its
--user-agent="[string]”
parameter.
DOM Distiller
Chromium has a similar reader mode to Firefox. In Blisk, this is called DOM Distiller, which is an
open source project
. It is disabled by default, but can be enabled using the
chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode
flag, which you can also make
persistent
.
Not only does DOM Distiller provide a better reading experience by distilling the content of the page, it also simplifies pages for print. Even though the latter checkbox option has been removed from the print dialog, you can still print the distilled page, which basically has the same effect.
After enabling the flag, you will find a new “Enter reader mode” menu item and corresponding icon in the address bar when Blisk thinks the website you are visiting could do with some distilling.
Forcing specific GPU
In multi-GPU systems, Blisk automatically detects which GPU should be used for rendering (discrete or integrated). This works 99% of the time, except when it does not — if an unavailable GPU is picked (for example, discrete graphics on VFIO GPU passthrough-enabled systems),
chrome://gpu
will complain about not being able to initialize the GPU process. On the same page below
Driver Information
there will be multiple GPUs shown (GPU0, GPU1, ...). There is no way to switch between them in a user-friendly way, but you can read the device/vendor IDs present there and configure Blisk to use a specific GPU with flags:
$ blisk --gpu-testing-vendor-id=0x8086 --gpu-testing-device-id=0x1912
...where
0x8086
and
0x1912
is replaced by the IDs of the GPU you want to use (as shown on the
chrome://gpu
page).
Import bookmarks from Firefox
To ease the transition, you can import bookmarks from
Firefox
into Blisk.
Navigate Blisk to
chrome://settings/importData
If Firefox is already installed on your computer, you can directly import bookmarks as well as many other things from Firefox.
Make sure
Mozilla Firefox
is selected. Optionally, you can uncheck some unwanted items here. Click the
Import
and then
Done
. You are done with it.
Note
If you have not created any bookmarks in Blisk yet, the bookmarks will show up in your bookmarks bar. If you already have bookmarks, the bookmarks will be in a new folder labeled "Imported From Firefox"
If you import bookmarks from another PC, you have to export bookmarks from Firefox first.
Ctrl+Shift+o
Import and Backup > Export Bookmarks To HTML
in Firefox.
The procedure is pretty much the same. You need to go to
chrome://settings/importData
. However, this time, in the
From
drop-down menu, select
Bookmarks HTML File
and click the
Choose File
button and upload the desired bookmark file.
Enabling native notifications
Go to
chrome://flags#enable-system-notifications
and select
Enabled
.
Enabling autoscroll with middle mouse button
The autoscroll is still an experimental feature
[5]
. It is intended to be disabled by default if Blisk or Chromium-based browsers are not a development build and is running on a Linux environment.
[6]
To enable this feature, launch your browser with the
--enable-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll
flag. In case you want to make the option persistent, see
Chromium#Making flags persistent
.
Note
While setting
--enable-blink-features
works in the same way as only typing
--enable-features
, the browser instead may display a warning to state this is an unsupported flag, which "stability and security will suffer".
As an alternative you can add an extension like
WHEELY
with similar behavior from Chrome Web Store.
Tip
Another option is to
install
chromium-extension-autoscroll
AUR
, but this is not recommended since it is an outdated package and not official. Use it with caution.