A small, private desktop deck for the web apps you keep open all day — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, WhatsApp, Gmail and ~50 more — each in its own isolated session, in Full View or its own pinned flyout.
There are good multi-service containers already. Ferdium is the mature one — bigger service catalog, sync server, years of polish. If you want the most featureful open-source option, use Ferdium; it is genuinely better at being Ferdium.
WebRoost is for two things Ferdium isn't aimed at:
- AI tools first. The container category grew out of instant-messaging clients, so their defaults are Slack and Telegram. WebRoost ships with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity on the sidebar, and per-service session isolation means you can run two accounts of the same tool side by side without logging out.
- A codebase you can read in one sitting. No framework, no bundler, no build step for development. Roughly 4,300 lines of plain JavaScript across twelve files. If you want to change how it works, you can actually find the place.
If neither of those matters to you, Ferdium is the better tool. That's a real recommendation, not modesty.
Services
- ~50 built-in services across AI, messaging, mail, social, productivity, dev and media — plus any custom URL
- Isolated session per service by default, so two accounts of the same app coexist; switchable to a shared session
- Drag to reorder, per-service rename and URL editing
- Choose a site favicon, a bundled Simple Icons mark, or a custom image for each service
- Custom CSS and custom JavaScript per service
Pinned sites & flyouts (Windows and macOS)
- Pin any service from Full View to give it its own notification-area/menu-bar icon
- Each pinned icon independently shows or hides that service in a compact, frameless flyout; Full View remains separate in the normal taskbar window
- Flyouts have their own persisted size and position, stay visible when focus moves elsewhere, and do not disturb other pinned sites
- Per-site tray/menu-bar actions resize, move, or unpin that site without deleting its service, login, or session
Notifications
- Native desktop notifications, forwarded from both the
NotificationAPI and service workers - Clicking a notification focuses the app and replays the click into the service, so its own handler still opens the right thread
- Per-service disable, global Do Not Disturb, and a privacy mode that shows "New message" instead of the content
Privacy & compatibility
- Ad blocking is enabled by default per service and can be toggled from the active-service toolbar
- Per-service browser identity and device profiles support sites with specific desktop, phone, or tablet compatibility needs
- iPhone 17 and iPad mini profiles use matching mobile user agents, viewport aspect ratios, and touch input so a pinned site can stay in its mobile layout for quick access
Workspaces & performance
- Group services into workspaces (Work / Personal) and switch between them
- Inactive services sleep after a configurable idle period to free memory; per-service opt-out for anything that must stay connected
- Built-in task manager showing per-service CPU and memory
Window & editing
- Light / dark / follow-system themes
- System tray, start minimized, always-on-top, close-to-tray, custom window title
- Find in page, per-service mute, back/forward/reload
- Spellchecker with selectable dictionaries (macOS uses the system spellchecker)
- Screen and window sharing for Meet, Teams, Zoom and Discord
- Built-in todo panel
Data
- Everything is stored locally in one JSON file. No account, no server, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting
- Export / import that config as a plain file to move between machines
- Update check asks GitHub once a day whether a newer release exists, sends no identifiers, and can be turned off
WebRoost uses Electron Chromium's native platform and version identity by default, and keeps sign-in popups in the service's persistent session so successful logins survive restarts.
Changing what a service identifies as (right-click → Configure → Identify as) remains available for sites with a specific browser-compatibility requirement. Keep the default unless a site actually needs an override.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Cmd/Ctrl + 1–9 |
Jump to service |
Cmd/Ctrl + Tab |
Next service |
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Tab |
Previous service |
Cmd/Ctrl + R |
Reload service |
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + R |
Restart WebRoost |
Cmd/Ctrl + N |
Add a service |
Cmd/Ctrl + F |
Find in page |
Cmd/Ctrl + T |
Toggle todo panel |
Cmd/Ctrl + , |
Settings |
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + M |
Task manager |
Right-click a sidebar icon to configure that service.
Download the build for your platform from Releases.
Builds are not code-signed, because signing certificates cost money this project doesn't have. That means:
-
macOS will say "Apple could not verify WebRoost.app is free of malware". The app is fine — macOS simply cannot check a developer it does not know.
Click Done (never "Move to Bin"), then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway next to "WebRoost.app was blocked".
On macOS 15 and later, right-clicking the app and choosing Open no longer works; Apple removed that shortcut. If you would rather use the terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/WebRoost.app
-
Windows will show a SmartScreen warning. Click "More info" → "Run anyway".
If that trade-off isn't acceptable to you, build from source — it takes two commands.
git clone https://github.com/nerdytyphanie/webroost.git
cd webroost
npm install
npm startRequires Node.js 20+. There is no build step for development — npm start runs the source directly.
npm test # unit tests
npm run icons # regenerate assets/ from tools/make-icons.js
npm run dist:mac # package for the current platform (also dist:win, dist:linux)| File | Role |
|---|---|
main.js |
Main process: window, tray, menus, sessions, permissions, notifications, screen-share |
preload.js |
The only bridge the UI gets — a fixed allowlist of IPC calls |
webview-preload.js |
Runs inside each service; intercepts notifications |
renderer.js |
All UI: tabs, webviews, sleeping, settings, workspaces, todo |
catalog.js |
The built-in service list |
lib/store.js |
Immediate local config-file read/write |
lib/urls.js |
Decides whether a popup is a login flow (stays in-app) or a link (opens in your browser) |
lib/version.js |
Version comparison for the update check |
This app loads arbitrary third-party web pages, so the boundaries matter:
- The UI window runs with
contextIsolation: true,nodeIntegration: false. There is norequireand noipcRendererin the renderer — only the allowlist inpreload.js. - Every
<webview>is force-hardened in the main process viawill-attach-webview, so a compromised renderer can't attach a privileged one. - All user-controlled strings are rendered with
textContent. The page has a strict CSP with nounsafe-inlinefor scripts andconnect-src 'none'. - Permissions are default-deny; only the set a web-app container actually needs is granted.
- Custom per-service JavaScript is opt-in, entered by you, and warned about in the UI.
Found a security problem? Please open an issue, or email the maintainer for anything sensitive.
No account. No server. No telemetry, analytics or crash reporting.
WebRoost makes exactly one network request on its own behalf: once a day it asks the GitHub releases API whether a newer version exists. It sends no identifiers — GitHub sees an anonymous GET — and you can turn it off in Settings → General. Everything else on the network is the services you added, talking to their own servers. Icons are either bundled with the app or come from the service's own favicon — WebRoost never calls a third-party favicon API, because doing so would leak the list of every service you use.
Your data lives in one file:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/WebRoost/config.json - Windows:
%APPDATA%\WebRoost\config.json - Linux:
~/.config/WebRoost/config.json
Service logins live in Electron's per-partition storage next to it, never in that file.
WebRoost checks for updates once a day and on launch. What happens next depends on your platform:
| Platform | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Windows, Linux | Downloads in the background, then shows "Restart to update". Same as VS Code. |
| macOS | Tells you a new version exists and opens the download page. |
macOS is the odd one out because Squirrel — the framework that applies updates — refuses to install over an app that isn't code-signed by a paid Apple Developer ID. Rather than ship something that silently works on two platforms and fails on the third, macOS gets an honest notification instead.
If you build WebRoost yourself with a Developer ID, set MAC_BUILD_IS_SIGNED = true in main.js and macOS gets full auto-update with no other change.
Check manually any time with Help → Check for Updates, or turn the daily check off in Settings → General.
Releases are cut automatically when the version in package.json changes on main, so a new version reaches users without anyone running git tag.
Issues and pull requests welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Adding a service to the catalog is a one-line change in catalog.js and is the easiest first contribution. CI runs the full test suite on every pull request.
Please keep the codebase readable: no framework, no bundler, no dependencies beyond Electron itself.
WebRoost exists because Rambox went closed-source and Franz went freemium. The projects that stayed free and open are worth your attention:
- Ferdium (Apache-2.0) — the most complete option
- ElectronIM (Apache-2.0) — minimal and privacy-focused
- Hamsket (GPL-3.0) — a fork of the last open-source Rambox
Brand marks come from simple-icons (CC0-1.0), inlined into icons.js at build time so the app ships no icon dependency and never fetches an icon over the network. Services without an official mark use a generated letter avatar until the site reports its own favicon.
WebRoost is derived from Panebox, which is distributed under the MIT License. See NOTICE for attribution.
iPhone and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc. WebRoost is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.