Running Aether

From a build of the Aether repository, run the desktop browser with:

$ ./target/debug/aether [url] [options]

Or through mach, which builds the aether port unless you pass --port:

$ ./mach run -d -- [url] [options]
$ ./aether --help

The profile directory defaults to ~/.config/aether. History is stored there as places.sqlite, and the chosen search engines as search.json.

Enabling experimental web platform features

Servo has in-progress support for many web platform features. Some are not complete enough to be enabled by default, but you can try them out using a preference setting. For a list of these features and the preference used to enable them, see Experimental features. You can enable a useful subset with --enable-experimental-web-platform-features.

Keyboard shortcuts

Handled by the desktop window before the event reaches the page:

• Ctrl+Q (⌘Q on macOS) exits Aether
• Ctrl+T (⌘T on macOS) opens a new tab
• Ctrl+W (⌘W on macOS) closes the current tab
• Alt+← (⌘← on macOS) goes back
• Alt+→ (⌘→ on macOS) goes forward
• Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8 select a tab by position; Ctrl+9 selects the last tab
• Esc exits fullscreen mode

Internal pages

The location bar and the application menu open pages on the privileged servo: scheme:

• servo:newtab is the start page
• servo:history is the history page
• servo:settings is settings, including search engines at servo:settings#search
• servo:processes lists browser processes, fed by servo:process-list

Troubleshooting

Aether should run on most desktop systems without extra runtime packages beyond what ./mach bootstrap installed. If you are on Linux and the browser reports that a shared library is missing, ensure that you have the following packages installed:

• GStreamer ≥ 1.18
• gst-plugins-base ≥ 1.18
• gst-plugins-good ≥ 1.18
• gst-plugins-bad ≥ 1.18
• gst-plugins-ugly ≥ 1.18
• libXcursor
• libXrandr
• libXi
• libxkbcommon
• vulkan-loader