Show HN: Donut Browser, a Browser Orchestrator

Show HN: Donut Browser, a Browser Orchestrator donutbrowser.com/...

Hi HN,

I'm excited to share my open source project, a browser orchestrator. It's purpose is to make it easy to manage many browser profiles on one system. Currently it only works on MacOS, but since I've built it using Tauri (which is a Rust backend and TypeScript frontend), I expect to add Linux and Windows support in the future.

I've built it primarily for myself as I use a lot of browsers and having an easy way to manage all of my profiles would make (have made, actually) my dock less cluttered haha. Also, part of why I built it is because as someone who doesn't really care about anti-detect features (which I might support in the future), I don't understand how they cost so much for a very limited number of profiles in pretty much all anti-detect browsers. I feel like a lot of people feel the same and will cover their use cases with my free tool.

If you try it, please share your feedback! I haven't seen any open source projects like this and want to learn more about how people might use it.

Super duper stuff. Love the interface and ease of use.

I can't seem to figure out how to stop and start browsers while restoring my sessions, i'm I missing something obvious?

andrewzeno · 3 months ago

Thanks! I also like when the UI is not cluttered with different inputs.

What do you mean by "Stop and start browsers while restoring my sessions"? You should be able to start and stop the browser as long as it's not updating. If there is an update and you decide to install right then, you won't be able to open any profile that uses that browser during the update.

If you mean importing an existing profile, I haven't added that yet. But it's at the top of my list!

And if you mean something else... Then I'm not sure. Please either share more details or create a bug report if you feel like this is not the correct behavior.

TechDebtDevin · 3 months ago

This is really awesome, I do this myself with https://github.com/go-rod/rod

I have hacky cli tools I've built with it that manage lots of different browser profiles for scrapers. I need some sort of API though so I'm not sure Donut will do it for me, however, I may find some use for it.

ttoinou · 3 months ago

Amazing thank you. I thought about that years ago but since I never saw anyone do it I thought something must be wrong if nobody does it.

Theofrastus · 3 months ago

Looks great! Useful for privacy but also to keep work and private life separated. Will be on the lookout for other OS versions!

tgv · 3 months ago

Firefox offers multiple ways to do that: you can use containers or launch different profiles from about:profiles. The latter has no way of telling the windows apart, unfortunately. This tool seems quite handy, though.

crtasm · 3 months ago

Setting a different visual theme for each Firefox profile works well for me.

squeegee_scream · 3 months ago

Related: https://github.com/johnste/finicky, “A macOS app for customizing which browser to start”. Write a JSON file to tell it when to open a link in a certain browser, to strip certain strings like utm codes, etc

banditelol · 3 months ago

I tried this before, but since I often need to open different browser even if a link came from the same app, I ended up moving to https://github.com/will-stone/browserosaurus

Not to say you cant use both tho

Thanks for sharing! This project has "automatic URL editing", which is something I'd like to add my app. Great to learn that there is a real product with this feature.

wellhome · 3 months ago

The anti-detect browser space has essentially become a “bread and butter” necessity — many people with multi-account needs are more than willing to pay for a stable and streamlined experience. Open-source projects that can appeal to these users are great, of course, but once you reach a certain user base, the temptation to commercialize becomes hard to resist (after all, there was a tool that used to promise 1,000 free profiles but later walked back that promise). Hope you can find a sustainable balance in the long run. Big support! (grammar improved by AI)

nithssh · 3 months ago

This is great for web developers who have to manually write multi-browser compliant code. Fat frameworks might take care of the cross compat stuff, but for those raw dogging, this will be good.

Are you… me ? I have 6 browsers for 6 different independent profiles. Instead of using browser profiles I need different browsers for different features (no google tracking, youtube, business services, web development etc.) I was wondering if I was the only one crazy

Would be practical to have a unified way to install extensions in all of them

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll think how it can be added in a sane manner

Cool. Do you also use tons of browsers ? How many total tabs do you usally have ? I can easily have 300 tabs, including 30 useful

diddeb · 3 months ago

This is awesome. Thanks for your efforts!

Seeing it's not signed by Apple, I was wondering if you'd be open for a donation to get you a proper account so the app can be distributed more "solidly" without Gatekeeper in the way.

Let me know. More than happy to get you in there.

Oh wow, this is a very generous offer. Thank you! It might take me a while to get the Apple Developer account to do so, not for the financial reasons. I've noted your concern and will get the app signed the moment I have a chance to do that.

Awesome. Again, thanks. Can't wait to install this, signed.

bookmark99 · 3 months ago