What’s new in Hominis

Hominis now runs on Firefox ESR 153.4, with Mozilla's latest security and stability fixes. This release adds split view in focus mode, sharing a workspace as a single file, and a chat tile, and panning and zooming on the canvas are smoother.

• Two tiles side by side. In focus mode, drag one tab onto the middle of another, or drag it out of the tab bar onto the page, to show both tiles side by side. Drag the divider to set the split. The pair survives a restart and appears as one joined tab. Choose Separate split from the tab's menu to go back to one tile.
• Share a workspace as a file. Share a workspace from the app menu or the workspace switcher. It becomes one page that any browser can open, listing what is inside. Opened in Chrome, Safari or Edge, the page offers "Open in Hominis". Hominis always asks before adding a shared workspace. The file never includes your identities, history or anything from a private window.
• Chat, and applets with steps. A new chat tile keeps your conversations in one library. You can attach the current page, another tile or a selection as context, and pin a reply to the canvas as a note. Applet tiles now have one header, and you can go back to any of an applet's last eight versions. Both use your own Inception API key and are unavailable in private windows.
• Smoother panning and zooming. Panning now runs on the compositor. Scrolling a page past its end no longer starts moving the canvas. Pinch zoom covers about three times the distance it did, in line with other canvas apps on the Mac. The zoom buttons and reset zoom now animate, the first zoom in a window no longer stutters, and images keep up with a zoom instead of staying blurry until you stop. Zooming out fast is smooth again.
• More shortcuts, all changeable. Settings → Shortcuts now covers 45 actions, up from 27. The new ones include Back, Forward, Print, Copy the address, Find and zoom, Reopen closed tile, Open a file, Web view, New private window and History.
• A tidier canvas. Each tile's page now sits inside its rounded card. An expanded group gets a full-width tinted header, like a tile's. Sketch ink follows the tile stack, so a tile you raise later covers it. Each icon now has one meaning (Stop, for example, looks the same everywhere). Toolbars, the find bar and the editor now fit small tiles and narrow windows without clipping or spilling text.
• Accessibility. Focus rings and selection stay visible in high-contrast (forced colours) mode, and focus rings are no longer clipped. Reduce motion now removes every transition. With an input method (Japanese or Chinese, for example), pressing Enter to confirm a word no longer submits the field. A disabled control's tooltip now says why it is disabled.
• Fixes. Opening a download that can run as a program (such as a .command or .jar file) now asks first. International domain names now show in their own script, while look-alike names still show in encoded form. PDF forms that calculate their own fields now work. Emoji and wide characters no longer misalign the terminal's cursor. Clicking the active tile's dock chip or index row returns the camera to it; double-click to enter focus mode. The Web view names tiles by their titles and includes every kind of tile. Group card icons show tile titles in their tooltips. The media card's track buttons stay in place, dimmed, when a page does not support them. The find list no longer closes while you type. The workspace switcher's footer fits in private windows.

A security update on Firefox ESR 153.3. This release also brings keyboard access to nearly everything and a calmer, more consistent interface. If you are updating from 26.09.05, read the note at the end first.

• Shortcuts you can see and change. Settings has a new Shortcuts page. Every Hominis shortcut is listed there, and you can change or reset each one. A keyboard picture follows your Mac's layout. New shortcuts include reload and stop, choosing a tile by number or moving to the next one, Downloads, Extensions, the bookmarks library, mute, view source, Page Info, closing a window and reopening a closed workspace. F6 moves between areas of the window and F7 turns on caret browsing. No Distractions moves to Ctrl+Cmd+D, and Cmd+Shift+D now bookmarks all tiles.
• Find in page, redesigned. Find now floats over the tile's top corner and opens into a list of matches. Marks along the page's edge show where each match is, and Highlight All is on by default.
• A smoother canvas. Panning with many tiles open is back to full smoothness; it had been slower since the first release. A drag-pan now glides for a moment after you let go, and zooming with a mouse wheel or trackpad eases instead of jumping. Pages stay live while you pan and zoom. Tiles that were unloaded to save memory reload by themselves when you come back to them.
• Swipe to pan by default. A two-finger swipe or mouse wheel now pans the canvas and a pinch zooms. If you prefer the old behaviour, where scrolling zooms, you can switch back in Settings.
• Workspaces, groups and lists, redesigned. The workspace switcher shows your workspaces and identities in a list beside a detail pane, where you rename, open, close and create them. Changing a workspace's identity asks first and names the tiles that will reload. Group frames have new faces, and the Your web overview can arrange tiles by canvas, by site or by group. Dragged tabs, dock chips and index rows lift and follow the pointer, and right-clicking any of them opens a menu.
• Private windows, light or dark. Private windows now follow your light or dark setting with a violet tint instead of always being dark. Menus, popovers, dialogs, spacing and type now share one consistent look.
• Saved addresses and cards. Firefox's address and card autofill now works in tiles; before, it failed silently. The Vault shows saved addresses and cards next to your passwords.
• About and update notices. About Hominis is now a page in Settings. When an update is ready to install, a dot appears on the menu button and next to Settings. The Hominis licence and third-party notices open as readable pages.
• Fixes. The camera and screen-sharing prompt shows its device list and preview again. The bookmark ribbon in a tile's header works on the canvas. Double-clicking the window bar on macOS fills the screen and restores the window correctly. Hominis comes to the front when launched even if you move the mouse while it starts. The Downloads panel fits in the vertical layout. Text left unsaved in the editor can be recovered from Settings → Privacy & security.

Updating from 26.09.05: this release starts Hominis's workspace storage afresh, and it will not open the workspace database that 26.09.05 created. On first launch, a screen explains which file to move out of your profile folder before restarting. The old file is left exactly as it was, but its workspaces are not carried over. Bookmarks, history and saved passwords are kept in separate storage and are not affected.

The first update since the initial release. Most of the work went into making navigation inside a tile feel like navigation in a browser, and into a quieter canvas.

• History, where you expect it. Back and forward now work from the keyboard chords, the mouse's side buttons, and a two-finger horizontal swipe over a tile's page — each acting on that tile's own history. Holding the back or forward control opens the history dropdown, and the ••• menu carries a History row for tiles too narrow to show one. Modifier-clicking a history entry opens it the way you would expect: a new tile, or the background.
• Trackpad smart zoom. Double-tapping with two fingers zooms a page region, matching the behaviour of Firefox and Safari on macOS.
• A quieter canvas. The selected-row accent bar has been retired across the interface in favour of quieter selection styling, and the site trust panel was reworked: the address chip carries the indicator, and permissions appear in the panel only when you have actually set one.
• Smoother camera flight. Tiles no longer blank out while the camera is moving between them.
• Fixes. Escape now leaves focus mode and closes the history refine field and returns focus where it came from; a reopened tile takes keyboard focus; closing the last tile says so; the Downloads item in the app menu opens reliably; and the bookmarks button and empty state read correctly to screen readers.

Known limitation: Hominis does not yet show a notification when an update is available or ready. Updates are downloaded and applied on the next restart; you can check for one at any time in Settings → General → Hominis Updates.

First public release.

Hominis is a web browser built on Firefox that replaces tabs with an infinite canvas. Pages are tiles you can move, resize and arrange, grouped into workspaces that survive restarts.

• Spatial canvas. Open pages as tiles on an infinite canvas, arrange them freely, and pan and zoom between them. Tiles can be grouped into frames, and connections between pages are drawn from where you actually navigated.
• Workspaces. Durable, named workspaces restore exactly as you left them, including tile positions, sizes and page state.
• Focus mode. Collapse the canvas to a single page when you need to read or work without the surrounding context.
• Separate identities. Keep work, personal and throwaway browsing in isolated identities with their own cookies, storage and extensions.
• Private browsing that writes nothing. Private tiles are proven not to touch the database — the guarantee is verified by reading storage directly, not by trusting the interface.
• Per-tile media control. Set volume per tile, see what is playing at a glance, and stop background audio without hunting for it.
• Built-in applets. Sketches, notes, a file viewer, a text editor and a terminal live on the canvas as first-class tiles.
• Installed web apps. Install sites as apps with their own launcher entries and scope handling.
• Extensions. Firefox extensions work, including toolbar actions and permission prompts, with per-identity control over which are enabled.
• No telemetry. Hominis collects no usage data and submits no crash reports. Updates are signed and delivered from Hominis's own servers.