Browsers grow heavier over time, and what ends up pressed against the top of the window is a row of tabs squeezed sideways. They cost screen width, and they cost the attention spent hunting for a page again.

A list of entries instead of a strip of tabs

Colibri takes a blunt position: there are no tabs. The interface has no horizontal row of little squares. What it has is Links, and any page being read can be dropped into that list with one click, then reopened from it later. The stated purpose is to replace three things at once, the tab, the bookmark and the history, folding entries that normally scatter across three places into a single roll.

That roll does not stay on one machine. Links are described as persistent and stored safely on a server, so signing into the same account elsewhere brings the entries along. Once the list thickens, Lists split it by topic, a feature the project describes as the way to keep Links organised when a collection grows large enough to need smaller groups. The structure changes the question from where was that page I read last time into a search through a categorised list, rather than a click-through across dozens of tabs.

Feeds, and that compact surface

The other capability is Feeds. It subscribes to web feeds and pulls the newest items automatically, which is to say the content of sites you follow arrives inside the browser instead of being checked page by page. For anyone who already tracks news through subscriptions, collecting and reading happen in the same window.

Two words recur in the official description: light and compact. The page states the aim of being fast, efficient and uncluttered, with an interface thin enough that more content fits on the same screen. There is also a summary line worth quoting in spirit: a browser earns its keep by letting you browse faster, not by making you manage an endless row of tabs.

One premise that has to be stated

Before any of the above becomes a recommendation, one fact needs saying plainly: development stopped a long time ago. On the official releases page the newest version is 1.23.0, dated 24 December 2021, and its change was an update to the embedded browsing engine; the version before it, 1.22.0, sits on 30 May 2021. The news page is older still, its last entry from 15 September 2018 about the Linux build. The two pages agree on the same conclusion: no new release for years.

That makes it a finished design rather than a tool in motion. The idea holds up, a list instead of tabs, bookmarks and history merged, feeds built in, but it will not track the web standards as they move. Using it as a clear-headed, restrained reading entrance is reasonable. Expecting it to keep up with the newest web features over the long run is not.

Its value is not a long feature list but how far it pushes one easily ignored thing toward simplicity: let the browser remember the pages you mean to return to, then show them with a face that takes up as little room as possible.

How to use it well: build topic-based Lists first and file Links into them rather than piling everything at the root; subscribe to frequently read sites through Feeds so nothing has to be opened just to check for updates; and because the build has not moved for years, avoid making it the primary entrance for anything involving accounts or sensitive information.