qbpm (qutebrowser profile manager) is a tool for creating, managing, and running
qutebrowser profiles. Profile support
isn't built in to qutebrowser, at least not directly, but it does have a --basedir flag
which allows qutebrowser to use any directory as the location of its config and
data and effectively act as a profile. qbpm creates profiles that source your
main qutebrowser config.py, but have their own separate autoconfig.yml, bookmarks, cookies,
history, and other data. Profiles can be run by starting qutebrowser with the
appropriate --basedir, or more conveniently using the qbpm launch and qbpm choose commands.
qutebrowser shares session depending on the basedir, so launching the same
profile twice will result in two windows sharing a session, which means running
:quit in one will exit both and launching the profile again will reopen both
windows. But launching two distinct profiles will start two entirely separate
instances of qutebrowser which can be opened and closed independently.
Create a new profile called "python", edit its config.py, then launch it:
$ qbpm new python
$ qbpm edit python
$ qbpm launch python docs.python.org
$ qbpm choose # run dmenu or another launcher to pick a profile
qbpm from-session can copy the tabs of a saved qutebrowser
session to a new
profile. If you have a window full of tabs related to planning a vacation, you
could save it to a session called "vacation" using :session-save -o vacation
in qutebrowser, then create a new profile with those tabs:
$ qbpm from-session vacation
The default profile directory is $XDG_DATA_HOME/qutebrowser-profiles, where
$XDG_DATA_HOME is usually ~/.local/share, but you can create and launch
profiles from anywhere using --profile-dir/-P:
$ qbpm --profile-dir ~/dev/my-project new qb-profile
$ cd ~/dev/my-project
$ qbpm -P . launch qb-profile
# or
$ qutebrowser --basedir qb-profile
If you use Nix, you can install or run qbpm as a Nix flake.
For example, to run qbpm without installing it you can use nix run github:pvsr/qbpm -- new my-profile.
On Arch and derivatives, you can install the AUR package: qbpm-git.
Otherwise you'll need to install from source, directly or using a tool like uv.
Using uv you can run qbpm without installing it using
uv tool run --with git+https://github.com/pvsr/qbpm qbpm, or install to ~/.local/bin with
uv tool install --with git+https://github.com/pvsr/qbpm qbpm.
The downside of a source installation is that the man page
and shell completions will not be installed automatically.
On Linux you can copy contrib/qbpm.desktop
to ~/.local/share/applications to create a qbpm desktop application that runs
qbpm choose.
Nix and uv will install qbpm as a command-line application, but if you want a
native Mac application you can clone this repository or copy the contents of
contrib/qbpm.platypus
to a local file, install platypus,
and create a qbpm app by running platypus -P qbpm.platypus /Applications/qbpm.app.
That will also make qbpm available as a default browser in System Preferences > General > Default web browser.
Note that there is currently a qutebrowser bug
that results in unnecessary file:///* tabs being opened.