Questions about Tarn

Tarn is a fast, private web browser. On macOS the window, sidebar and toolbar are drawn natively with GPUI in Rust, and pages render in the system WebKit. Chromium can be chosen per tab or as the default engine while automatic updates are on.

Tarn is made by Quavon UG (haftungsbeschränkt). Release builds are signed with Quavon's Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple.

Nothing. Tarn is free to download and use, and it needs no account.

The source code lives in a GitHub repository by Quavon-dev. The repository is not public at the moment.

Tarn 0.1.0 is released for macOS 14 or later. Versions for Windows, Linux (WebKitGTK), iOS 17 or later and Android 9 or later are in development and have no signed or store builds yet.

No. Tarn has no accounts and no servers of its own. History, cookies, tabs and settings stay on your Mac, separately for each profile.

No. Tarn sends no telemetry and no usage data. Crash reports stay on your Mac unless you send them yourself. The few connections the browser makes on its own, such as the update check and the filter-list download, are listed in Settings › Privacy › Connections Tarn makes.

Tarn checks for updates once a day and installs them for you. Updates come from the project's GitHub releases, are signed and verified before they are unpacked, and an older version is never installed over a newer one. You can turn automatic checks off in Settings › General or check by hand with Tarn › Check for Updates….

Open an issue in the GitHub repository for bugs and questions. Report vulnerabilities privately through the repository's Security tab with Report a vulnerability, not in a public issue. Reports are acknowledged within 3 working days.

Yes, with access to the repository. You need macOS 14 or later, the Xcode command line tools and stable Rust; then run cargo run -p app --release.

Standard suits everyday browsing and is the default for new profiles. Use Strict when you want HTTPS everywhere, and Lockdown for sites you do not trust or need to read without scripts.

No. Tarn has no certificate bypass at any level, and Strict blocks plain-HTTP navigations into a site that is HTTPS-only.

Many sites need JavaScript, so some will not work under Lockdown. Set Lockdown for one site from the Shield badge rather than for the whole profile if you only need it there.

Shield sets the level of protection; ad, tracker, cookie-banner and other blocking are switches in Settings › Privacy that work alongside it. Ads, trackers and cookie banners can also be turned off for one site from the Shield button.

No. Which sites you visit, which were blocked and which you let through are not sent anywhere. Tarn has no accounts and no telemetry.

No. Ad, tracker and cookie-banner blocking are built in and run on your Mac against lists from EasyList, AdGuard and uBlock Origin.

Yes, with the YouTube ads switch, which is on by default. YouTube changes its player often, so it can break until an update follows.

No. Hiding a banner neither accepts nor refuses anything; the banner is simply not shown.

Block lists are checked on your Mac. The separate fraudulent-website check is done by WebKit and asks Apple, which relays Google Safe Browsing, about shortened hashes of addresses, not the addresses themselves. It follows the dangerous-sites switch.

A new signed bundle is built daily, and Tarn checks for it once a day while Filter-list updates is on in Settings › Privacy.

The Shield card counts pages on block lists stopped and pop-ups blocked, kept on your Mac. Ad and tracker blocks in WebKit tabs are not counted, because WebKit does not report what its blocking rules stop.

It serves the same purpose: browsing that leaves no history behind. Tarn's private space keeps cookies, history and site data in memory only and writes none of it to disk; only files you download stay.

Use a burner tab for a single throwaway visit, such as opening a link you do not trust. It runs at Strict with its own data store and is burned as soon as you close it or switch away.

Yes. Profiles keep cookies, logins, site data, history and bookmarks fully separate, and each space belongs to one profile.

No. Private and burner browsing always use WebKit, and Chromium's data is kept for one regular profile only.

Android is in development. Its system WebView has no in-memory store, so private browsing there runs in a separate process whose data folder is deleted when the private space closes.

No. Each profile has its own WebKit data store, so a login in one profile is not seen by another. You can choose "Share data with another profile" when creating a profile if you want two profiles to use the same store.

Yes. History, cookies, cache, permissions, downloads and settings are stored separately for each profile on your Mac.

None of its tabs, cookies or history were written to disk; the private space keeps them in memory only. Files you downloaded stay in your Downloads folder.

⌃1 to ⌃9 select the first nine spaces in sidebar order. These keys are fixed and cannot be rebound.

Yes. Settings › Privacy › Your data exports a profile's data as JSON and deletes its spaces, tabs, snapshots, history, site settings and WebKit cookies, cache and storage. Files you downloaded stay.

DuckDuckGo. Each profile has its own search engine, which you can change in Settings › Search.

No. Search-engine suggestions are off, so nothing is sent until you press Enter on a search.

Type > in the field. Each action is listed with its current shortcut, including keys you changed in Settings › Shortcuts.

Yes. Find in Tabs, from the command bar or Edit › Find in Tabs…, searches the text of the current space's tabs and lists up to 12 matches with snippets.

While editing it shows exactly what was typed. At rest the toolbar shows the page's host.

⌃⌘N opens Split View with the current tab beside the space's last used tab, and closes it again. It is also in the Tabs menu and in each tab's menu.

⌃⌘N pairs the current tab with the tab you used last in the same space. To pair a different tab, visit it first, then switch back and press ⌃⌘N.

Yes. Drag the divider between them. Each pane keeps at least 20 % of the width.

Hold ⇧ and click the link. It opens in a peek over the page; Open in Tab keeps it as a tab with its history, and Esc or a click outside closes it.

Yes. The peek's web view is built like a tab's, with the same profile data, content rules and Shield level for the link, so Lockdown keeps JavaScript off there too.

No. The active tab and both split panes never sleep, and the tabs-kept-awake limit leaves the partner pane alone while the split is open.

Yes. Tabs are listed in a sidebar on the left, with a tile grid, pinned tabs, folders and tab groups above the open tabs. ⌘S shows or hides it.

Press ⇧⌘T, or use Undo on the toast that appears when you close a tab. Tarn keeps the last 20 closes; tabs closed together, such as a group, come back together.

By default, background tabs sleep after 30 minutes and are reloaded when you open them. Settings › Tabs can also close unused tabs after 12 hours, 1 day or 7 days; they go into an Archived Tabs bookmark folder. That option is off by default.

Yes. Mute Site in the Tabs menu, a tab's menu or the toolbar's menu silences that host in the profile. An unmute button shows in the address field while the page is muted.

Save Space as Snapshot keeps the addresses, titles and groups of a space's tabs until you delete it. It holds no page state or cookies, and a private space cannot save one.

Yes. Choose Rename… from the tab's menu or double-click its row. The name is shown instead of the page title until you choose Reset Title.

Press ⌘/. It opens a cheat sheet over the window; press Esc or ⌘/ again to close it.

Yes. The menus, the cheat sheet, the command bar, toolbar tooltips and the tab and sidebar menus show the current keys.

Yes. Each changed row in Settings › Shortcuts has Reset, and Reset All restores every default.

Tarn refuses it and names the row that already uses it, so two actions never share a key.

Yes. ⇧-click a link to open it in a peek over the page; Open in Tab keeps it, and Esc closes it.

⇧⌘K closes all tabs. ⇧⌘T reopens a closed tab.

No. The interface is drawn with GPUI from a Rust shell, and pages render in the system WebKit. There is no bundled web runtime drawing the window.

WebKit, the engine macOS ships, is the default for every tab. You can open individual tabs in Chromium, or make Chromium the default, while automatic updates are on.

No. Tarn has no accounts, no telemetry and no servers of its own. The few connections the browser makes itself, such as update and filter-list checks, are listed in Settings › Privacy.

Chromium connects to Google, and Tarn tells you so before the first Chromium tab. Its background networking, component updater and search-engine choice screen are off, but the hosts it may contact on its own are not enforced.

macOS 14 or later.

Not yet. Windows (with Chromium through CEF), Linux, iOS and Android are in development and have no released builds. Linux, iOS and Android use each platform's own web engine; Windows uses Chromium through CEF.