Brevier is a new open-source browser designed exclusively for reading, developed using Rust. The application operates without JavaScript or CSS, converting web pages into Markdown format for local display. Users can customize typography, including font, size, line length, and spacing, which applies globally across all sites.
The browser supports RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds, and can render comment threads from platforms like Habr, Hacker News, and Discourse. It includes a navigation panel for table of contents, site links, and personal notes. All read articles are saved locally in a compressed Markdown archive, with search functionality available via Ctrl+Shift+F.
Brevier includes a developer tool similar to Lighthouse that evaluates how a site renders without scripts, providing a score from 0 to 100. The browser is available for Linux, Windows, and Android, with a command-line interface for macOS. It is distributed under MIT or Apache-2.0 licenses and does not track user activity or use databases.
Testing in September showed that 74% of 108 sampled pages rendered well, while 94% of 295 news sites were readable. The application is lightweight, with the core binary weighing approximately 5 MB. It does not require user accounts and stores all data, including history and bookmarks, as simple text files in the local directory.
