Put OBSCURA on your computer
Its own icon in the dock or taskbar, its own window with no address bar and no tabs, and it opens with no connection at all. It is the same software you are looking at now, kept on your machine instead of fetched every time.
Install OBSCURA OS
Takes a couple of seconds. No account, no download folder, nothing to uninstall later except the icon itself.
Checking what this browser can do.
What you get
- A real application window. No address bar, no tabs, no other sites in the way.
- It opens offline. The whole workspace, and every tool, is stored on the machine after the first visit.
- The same folder. If you have connected an OBSCURA OS folder, the app writes to it exactly as the site does.
- It updates itself. There is no version to chase, and you are never running an old copy while online.
- Nothing new is trusted. It is the same code from the same address, not a separate binary asking for permission to run.
If the button did nothing
Browsers each handle this differently, and some of them do not let a page ask. Doing it by hand takes about the same time.
Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera on any system
Look at the right hand end of the address bar for a small install icon, a monitor with an arrow. Click it, then Install. If it is not there, open the browser menu and look for Install OBSCURA OS, or Cast, save and share, then Install page as app.
Safari on macOS Sonoma or newer
File, then Add to Dock. Safari on older versions of macOS cannot do this, and the site works normally in a tab instead.
Firefox
Firefox on the desktop removed this feature and has not brought it back. Nothing is missing from the site itself, so use it in a tab, or install from another browser and keep using Firefox for everything else.
iPhone, iPad and Android
Share, then Add to Home Screen on iOS. On Android, the browser menu offers Install app or Add to Home screen.
What this is not, yet
This is an installed web app, not a signed native binary. In practice the difference is small: it runs in its own window, it works offline, and it keeps its own icon. What it does not do yet is register itself as the program that opens a docx or a pdf when you double click one in your file manager, and it cannot run before you have visited the site once.
A properly signed application for Windows, macOS and Linux is being built, and file associations come with it. It is the first item on the waitlist on the pricing page, and putting your address there is how you find out the day it exists.
One thing worth doing after you install
Open it once while you still have a connection and click through the tools you actually use. Everything you open is kept, so the copy on your machine is complete before you need it somewhere with no signal.
If you have not set up the folder yet, do that too. Settings has the button, and after that every document, sheet, deck and note you make is written into a real folder on your disk, in ordinary formats, whether or not this site is ever reachable again.