Chervil is AI-first, but it's also a real browser β it has the everyday furniture you expect, so you can make it your only one. This page is the quick reference.
Tabs that stay alive
Every website tab runs in its own view, so background tabs keep going: music keeps playing when you switch away, a half-filled form is still filled when you come back, and switching tabs is instant β no reload. When a background tab is making sound, its π badge appears right on the tab; click it to mute that tab without switching to it. (To keep memory in check, only your most recent background sites stay warm β older ones quietly reload when you return.)
Pinned tabs load before you click them. When Chervil restores your session, your pinned tabs warm up in the background right after launch β staggered so they don't all hit the network at once β so the first time you click each one in the morning it shows a loaded page instead of reloading from scratch. (Extras beyond the warm-tab pool still load on first click.)
Reload a site with the β³ toolbar button, or right-click any tab for Reload and Duplicate tab (the duplicate keeps the whole conversation and page history). Want the full screen for a page? Hide the tab bar from the toolbar toggle, Ctrl+Shift+\, or the tab right-click menu β nudge the top edge of the screen (left edge with vertical tabs) and the strip peeks back out until your mouse leaves it.
Resizable panes: drag the seam on the right edge of the chat sidebar (or, in vertical-tabs layout, the tab rail) to set its width, and double-click the seam to reset. Your sizes are remembered and sync across your machines.
Tab groups
Right-click a tab β Add to groupβ¦ to file it into a named, colored group (or create a new one). The group's colored header sits in the tab strip with a βΎ / βΈ fold arrow: click it to collapse or expand the group (the arrow points right when it's folded), right-click it to rename, change the color, ungroup, or close the whole group. Group tabs wear their color as a stripe, stay together when you drag things around, and come back after a restart.
Zoom
Zoom the current page or embedded site with Ctrl +, Ctrl β, and Ctrl 0 to reset. There's also a β 100% + cluster in the toolbar (click the percentage to reset). Zoom on a website is remembered per site β the news site you always read at 125% stays at 125%, while everything else keeps your default. Don't need the cluster? Hide it in Settings β General β Toolbar buttons (now laid out in two columns), or right-click the toolbar. When the window is too narrow to fit every toolbar button, the extras tuck into a β― More menu at the right of the bar instead of being cut off, so everything stays one click away at any window size.
Downloads
Files you download from embedded sites save straight to your Downloads folder and appear in Library β Downloads, with Open, Show in folder, and Remove. Removing an item only clears it from the list β it never deletes the file.
Press Ctrl+P (or View β Printβ¦ in the menu bar, or the optional π¨ toolbar button) and Chervil shows you the page before it commits it to paper β its own print preview, not a hand-off to the system dialog.
The actual paginated sheet is on the left, with a live page count at the top. On the right: Destination (any printer, or Save as PDF), Pages (All, or a custom range like 1-3, 5), Copies, Layout, Paper size, Margins, Scale, Color or black & white, and whether to include background graphics. Change any of them and the sheet re-renders, so what you're looking at is what comes out. Black & white greys the preview too, rather than showing you colour and printing mono.
A few details worth knowing:
- Live websites print in place β logged in, scrolled, exactly as they are on screen.
- Composed Chervil pages print as they stand, with ticked checkboxes and interactive state intact β but at 100%, not at whatever zoom you happened to be reading at. Screen zoom is a viewing preference; the dialog has its own Scale.
- Save as PDF is just another destination β pick it, click Save, choose where it goes.
- Print using the system dialogβ¦ is one click away when you need your printer's own settings β paper tray, duplex, anything driver-specific.
- Type a range that doesn't fit the document (a typo, or pages past the end) and Chervil prints the whole thing and says so, instead of failing.
Chervil is built on Electron, which ships Chromium's printing engine but not Chrome's preview UI β which is why printing used to land on a Windows dialog reporting "This app doesn't support print preview." Now the preview is Chervil's own.
Reader view
On a live website, click the π Reader button to strip the article down to clean, readable text β no ads or clutter. The reader page is a normal Chervil page, so you can go Back to the site, listen to it, export it, or bookmark it. It runs entirely on your machine (no model call, no cost).
PDF viewer
PDFs open inline in Chervil β click a link to a PDF and it renders right in the tab, with the built-in viewer's zoom, page navigation, and print. (Links that are explicitly marked as downloads still download to your Downloads folder.)
Favorites, Saved Pages & Replies
Chervil keeps three different things apart in the Library:
- Favorites β your favorite websites, like a normal browser. Add the current site with the β button. In Library β Favorites you can organize them into folders (each row has a folder picker, plus a + Folder button and a Collapse/Expand all control), and turn on the favorites bar under the address bar from Settings β General β foldered favorites become dropdowns, loose ones become one-click buttons.
- Saved Pages β the Chervil pages you compose. Save the current page with the bookmark button. Saved Pages are organized into Spaces, with Synthesize and Publish for the whole Space right there (see Spaces).
- Replies β the chat answers you kept. Hover any of Sprig's chat replies and click β. Each one is filed under the question that produced it, searchable by its own text, and can be reused as composer context or opened as a real page (see Compose vs. Chat).
Switching from another browser? Your bookmarks come straight in as Favorites β see Import from another browser.
Collections
Favorites are for the sites you visit forever; Collections are for the pages you're working with right now β trip research, product comparisons, sources for a project. Right-click any tab β Add to Collectionβ¦ and pick a collection (or create one on the spot). They live in Library β Collections, sync across your machines with folder sync, and each one offers οΌ Add this page, β§ Open all (the whole set back in tabs, gathered into a tab group named after the Collection so they stay together and fold away as one), rename, and delete.
The AI part is why they exist: a Collection is a data source. Say "open all pages in the Kyoto Collection in tabs" to restore the set, or "compose a page based on the Kyoto Collection" and Sprig fetches your saved pages and grounds the new page on them.
Your places
Settings β You β Your places is where you tell Chervil which corners of the web are yours: your webmail (Gmail, Outlook, or any URL), blog, X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok β plus anything else under a name you choose. URLs only; logins stay in the encrypted vault. Once registered:
- "Open my email" / "check my blog" works typed, from the omnibox, or by voice ("Hey Sprigβ¦"), and your places appear in omnibox suggestions.
- mailto: links open your webmail's compose window in a tab, pre-addressed β no desktop mail app needed. There's a βοΈ Email this page button in the toolbar, too.
- One-click tiles for your places appear on the welcome screen.
- After you publish something, Sprig can draft a share post for each network and open its compose box pre-filled β see Publishing. You always press Post yourself.
The Library
The Library button opens Saved Pages (composed pages, organized by Space), Activity (a flat timeline of everything you compose), Favorites, Collections (working sets of pages Sprig can use), Downloads, History (your web browsing history), and Trash β with a search box that filters whatever list you're viewing.
Trash
Pages you delete from the Library go to Trash so you can get them back. Composed pages aren't small β one with an illustration is around 150 KB β so Trash is cleaned up for you:
- Pages are deleted after 30 days by default. Change the window (7 / 14 / 30 / 60 / 90 days) or turn it off entirely under Settings β Your Web β Trash, which also shows what Trash is currently holding and how old the oldest item is. The clock starts when you deleted the page, and only ever applies to pages already in Trash.
- A banner appears when Trash gets heavy β past 50 MB or 200 pages β with the real size and count, and an Empty now button.
- Emptying really empties. The pages are removed and the file is compacted, so the disk space actually comes back.
Address bar: search & suggestions
Type in the address bar and Chervil suggests matching results β your open tabs first (pick one to switch to that tab instead of re-opening the page), then sites from your history and favorites, plus quick Search the web and Ask Sprig actions. Use the arrow keys and Enter to pick one.
By default a plain question goes to Sprig. To do a traditional web search instead, start with a bang:
g!β Googleddg!β DuckDuckGob!β Bings!β your default engine (set it in Settings β General β Search)
For example, g! best hiking boots opens Google results.
Private tabs
Open a private tab with Ctrl+Shift+N or the tab right-click menu. Each private tab gets its own isolated, in-memory session β separate cookies and site storage that vanish the moment the tab closes, so sites in a private tab can't see the accounts you're logged into elsewhere. Nothing in a private tab is saved to your history, Library, or living pages, and it isn't reopened after you restart. Private tabs keep the same protections as normal ones β per-site permission prompts, ad blocking, safe downloads. (They aren't network-level anonymity.)
Multiple windows
Open another window with Ctrl+N, File β New Window, or the tab right-click menu β handy across monitors. Extra windows are for browsing in the moment; your saved session lives in your main window.
Ad & tracker blocking
Turn on Block ads & trackers in Settings β Browser β Browsing & privacy to block common ad and tracking hosts on embedded sites. It shows a running count of what it blocked this session. It's off by default.
Clear browsing data
Settings β Browser β Browsing & privacy β Clearβ¦ wipes cookies, cache, and site data for embedded sites, plus your History and Downloads list. Your Favorites, Saved Pages, and saved logins are kept.
Site permissions
When an embedded site wants your camera & microphone, location, or notifications, Chervil asks you first β per site β and remembers your answer, exactly like a normal browser. So a video-call site can get your camera without every page getting it too. Review or change any of those decisions later in Settings β Browser β Site permissions: flip a site between Allowed and Blocked, forget a single permission so it asks again, or reset them all. (Chervil's own voice input is separate β the microphone for "Hey Sprig" and dictation stays under your control in Settings β Voice.)
Picture-in-picture & tab audio
Pop a playing video out of an embedded site into a floating window with the πΊ Picture-in-picture button. When any tab β foreground or background β is making sound, a π badge appears on it; click the badge to mute or unmute that tab without switching to it. You can also Mute tab from any tab's right-click menu, whether or not it's currently making sound.
Some sites show an "Enable notifications" or "Enable push" button powered by the Web Push service. Chervil is a desktop app without a push back-end, so those buttons could only ever fail β Chervil hides the Web Push API on embedded sites so they don't appear. (Ordinary site notifications, above, still work.)
Spell-check
Text fields get red-squiggle spell-check tuned to your system language β in Chervil's own composer and on embedded sites. Right-click a squiggled word for suggestions or Add to Dictionary. Turn it off in Settings β Browser β Browsing & privacy.
Send a page to your phone
On any website, click π± Send to phone for a QR code β point your phone's camera at it and the page opens there. Great for directions, tickets, or an article you want to keep reading on the couch.
Welcome setup
The first time you run Chervil on a fresh profile, a short Welcome setup walks you through the switch: import your bookmarks, history, and address from Chrome/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera, pick your web-search engine, and make Chervil your default browser. Skipped it, or want it again? Settings β Browser β Import β Welcome setup β Openβ¦
Make Chervil your default browser
In Settings β Browser β Browsing & privacy, click Make defaultβ¦. Chervil registers as an http/https handler and opens your operating system's default-apps picker, where you confirm the choice (Windows and macOS don't let an app set itself). After that, links you click in other apps open in a Chervil tab.
Sync across your computers
Chervil can follow you from machine to machine β free. In Settings β Publishing & Sync β Sync between computers, point Chervil's data at a folder your cloud client already keeps in sync (inside OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox), and set the same folder on each computer. Your tabs, Favorites, Saved Pages, history, Spaces, and agents come with you. (API keys aren't synced β they're encrypted per-machine, so re-enter them once per computer.)
If your sync folder is inside OneDrive, mark it "Always keep on this device." To save space, OneDrive's Files On-Demand turns files it hasn't seen used lately into online-only placeholders and re-downloads them when an app opens them β which makes Windows pop an "Automatic file downloads β Chervil is downloadingβ¦" toast whenever you open a part of Chervil whose data had been offloaded. Because Chervil reads and writes these files constantly, keep them local: in File Explorer, right-click your sync folder β Always keep on this device. The cloud icons turn to green checkmarks and the prompts stop. (Google Drive and Dropbox have the same "keep offline / available offline" option.)
Show the menu bar
The native File / Edit / View menu bar is hidden by default (press Alt to reveal it). To keep it visible, turn on Always show the menu bar in Settings β Appearance.