w3m
| w3m | |
|---|---|
 w3m running in an xterm displaying the Wikipedia main page. | |
| Developer | Akinori Ito et al. |
| Initial release | 1995 |
| Stable release | 0.5.6[1] 
/ 23 January 2026 |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | OS/2,[2][3] Unix & Unix-like (Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD and EWS-UX (EWS-4800),[4] Windows (with Cygwin), macOS (with Homebrew) |
| Available in | English and Japanese |
| Type | Web browser, Terminal pager |
| License | MIT license |
| Website | git |
| Repository | |
w3m is a free and open source text-based web browser licensed under the MIT license. It differs from other very early text-based browsers by supporting elements such as tables, frames, and images.[5][6]
History
[edit]The name "w3m" stands for "WWW wo miru (WWWを見る)", which is Japanese for "to see the WWW", and where "W3" is a numeronym of "WWW".[7] The original project is no longer active. A different developer, Tatsuya Kinoshita, was maintaining a fork until early 2024.[8] Kinoshita left the project after a few months.[9] A new fork was created as a result.[10]
Functions
[edit]w3m runs in terminal emulator programs such as xterm and GNOME Terminal.[11] The browser has tabbed browsing, right click menus, and image support,[11] along with support for tables and frames. It also functions as a terminal pager.[5] It can be navigated solely using the keyboard or with the mouse. There are two different display modes, one with colors and one that is monochrome.[12]
w3m can be used within Emacs.[13]
Some distributions require the installation of a second package, w3m-img, to render images using w3m.[14]
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ "NEWS".
- ^ TOKORO, Kyosuke. "w3m 0.2.1–3 for OS/2 WARP". Archived from the original on 4 May 2001. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
- ^ Watson, Dave (September 2001). "Text-Mode Web Browsers for OS/2". The Southern California OS/2 User Group. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
- ^ w3m manual page
- ^ a b Rutland, David (2 November 2022). "The 3 Best Terminal-Based Web Browsers for Linux". MUO. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
- ^ Negus, Christopher (28 January 2005). Linux Bible. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-7645-8974-4.
- ^ "W3M FAQ". Retrieved 8 April 2022.
- ^ Das, Ankush (20 October 2020). "Best Terminal-based Web Browsers for Linux Users". It's FOSS. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
- ^ Kita, Rene (1 August 2024). "w3m Maintenance". GitHub. Retrieved 1 August 2025.
- ^ "w3m: Fork of Debian's w3m". SourceHut. Retrieved 1 August 2025.
- ^ a b Hoffman, Chris (23 January 2012). "How to Browse From the Linux Terminal With W3M". How-To Geek. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
- ^ "How to use the W3M text-based web browser on Linux". AddictiveTips. 17 April 2021. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
- ^ "EmacsWiki: w3m". www.emacswiki.org. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
- ^ Rankin, Kyle (2006). Linux Multimedia Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 978-0-596-10076-6.