W3M(1)

📦
version 0.5.6 · 4 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

🦋 W3M(1) — the man page, bestie 💅

okay so welcome to the w3m(1) page, straight out of the General Commands Manual ✨ this is the whole thing, every flag, every file, no skips, no cap. grab a snack 🍓

🌸 NAME 🌸

w3m — a text based web browser and pager 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

w3m [OPTION]... [ file | URL ]...

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

w3m is a text based browser that can display local or remote web pages plus other documents too. It handles HTML tables and frames but it ignores JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets — like, straight up does not care about them 💀. w3m can also serve as a pager for text files named as arguments or passed on standard input, and as a general purpose directory browser. multi-talented, honestly 👑

w3m organizes its content in buffers or tabs, so navigation between them is easy peasy. With the w3m-img extension installed, w3m can display inline graphics in web pages 🎀. And whenever w3m's HTML rendering capabilities don't meet your needs, the target URL can be handed over to a graphical browser with a single command. iconic behavior, truly.

For help with runtime options, press H while running w3m. iykyk 💅

🦋 ARGUMENTS 🦋

When given one or more command line arguments, w3m will handle targets according to content type. For web, w3m gets this information from HTTP headers; for relative or absolute file system paths, it relies on filenames.

With no argument, w3m expects data from standard input and assumes text/plain unless another MIME type is given by the user.

If provided with no target and no fallback target (see for instance option -v below), w3m will exit with usage information. not the vibe, but okay 😭

✨ OPTIONS ✨

Command line options are introduced with a single - character and may take an argument. periodt.

🌈 General options

  • -B — with no other target defined, use the bookmark page for startup
  • -H — Deprecated! Do not use! use -o high-intensity=true instead
  • -M — monochrome display
  • -no-mouse — deactivate mouse support
  • -num — display each line's number
  • -N — distribute multiple command line arguments to tabs. By default, a stack of buffers is used
  • -ppc num — width of num pixels per character. Range of 4.0 to 32.0, default 8.0. Larger values will make tables narrower. (Implementation not verified)
  • -ppl num — height of num pixels per line. Range of 4.0 to 64.0. (Implementation not verified)
  • -title, -title=TERM — use the buffer name as terminal title string. With specified TERM, this sets the title configuration style accordingly
  • -v — with no other target defined, welcome users with a built-in page
  • -W — toggle wrapping mode in searches
  • -X — do not initialize/deinitialize the terminal
  • +num — go to line num; only effective for num larger than the number of lines in the terminal

🧚 Browser options

  • -cols num — HTML is rendered to lines of num characters
  • -cookie, -no-cookie — use stored cookies and accept new ones, or do neither
  • -F — render frames
  • -graph, -no-graph — use or do not use graphic characters for drawing HTML table and frame borders
  • -header string — append string to the HTTP(S) request. Expected to match the header syntax Variable: Value
  • -m — Render the body of Usenet messages according to the header "Content-type"
  • -no-proxy — do not use proxy
  • -post file — use POST method to upload data defined in file. The syntax to be used is var1=value1[&var2=value2]...
  • -4 — IPv4 only. Corresponds to dns_order=4 in configuration files
  • -6 — IPv6 only. Corresponds to dns_order=6 in configuration files
  • -insecure — use insecure SSL config options, alias for -o ssl_cipher=ALL:eNULL:@SECLEVEL=0 -o ssl_min_version=all -o ssl_forbid_method= -o ssl_verify_server=0
⚠️ bestie, -insecure is literally called insecure. it turns off verification. you've been warned 💀

🎀 Text pager options

  • -l num — number of lines preserved internally when receiving plain text from stdin (default 10,000)
  • -r — use caret notation to display special escape characters (such as ANSI escapes or nroff-style backspaces for bold and underlined characters) instead of processing them
  • -s — squeeze multiple blank lines into one
  • -t num — set tab width to num columns. No effect on stdout

💜 Data type/encoding options

  • -I charset — user defined character encoding of input data
  • -O charset — user defined character encoding of output data
  • -T type — explicit characterization of input data by MIME type

⭐ Options for data output, followed by immediate exit

  • -dump — dump rendered page into stdout. Set implicitly when output is directed to a file or pipe
  • -dump_source — dump the page's source code into stdout
  • -dump_head — dump response of a HEAD request for a URL into stdout
  • -dump_both — dump HEAD, and source code for a URL into stdout
  • -dump_extra — dump HEAD, source code, and extra information for a URL into stdout
  • -help — show a summary of compiled-in features and command line options
  • -show-option — show all available configuration options
  • -version — show the version of w3m

🔥 Options for overriding default settings and resources

  • -bookmark file — use file instead of the default bookmark.html file
  • -config file — use file instead of the default configuration file
  • -o option=value — modify one configuration item with an explicitly given value; without option=value, equivalent to -show-option
  • -debug — use debug mode (only for debugging)
  • -reqlog — log headers of HTTP communication in file ~/.w3m/request.log

🙈 Experimental options

Experimental options might change in the future or even be removed. Feedback to the author is highly welcome. (they're literally asking for your opinion, bestie 🫶)

  • -R — restore session
  • -cookie-jar file — use file instead of the default cookie file
  • -session file — use file instead of the default session file

👑 Session management 👑

If -R is given, w3m will restore a session from a session file. If no session file is provided with -session the default session file is used. The default session file will be deleted after restoring a session when exiting w3m. If a session file is given it will not be deleted. If URLs or files were given as parameters they will be loaded after restoring the session and added to the first tab. If -N and -R are given the old session is restored as is and any new buffer are opened in separate tabs.

Note: Session management is still an experimental feature and might change in the future! so don't come for me if it shifts 💅

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

🍓 Pager-like usage

Combine snippets of HTML code and preview the page

$ cat header.html footer.html | w3m -T text/html

Compare two files using tabs

$ w3m -N config.old config

🔥 Browser-like usage

Display web content in monochrome terminal

$ w3m -M http://w3m.sourceforge.net

Display embedded graphics

$ w3m -o auto_image=TRUE http://w3m.sourceforge.net

Display content from Usenet

$ w3m -m nntp://news.aioe.org/comp.os.linux.networking

Upload data for a URL using the POST method

$ w3m -post - http://example.com/form.php <<<'a=0&b=1'

💜 Filter-like usage

Convert an HTML file to plain text with a defined line length

$ w3m -cols 40 foo.html > foo.txt

Output the bookmarks page as text with an appended list of links

$ w3m -B -o display_link_number=1 > out.txt

Conversion of file format and character encoding

$ w3m -T text/html -I EUC-JP -O UTF-8 < foo.html > foo.txt

🧚 Start with no input

Welcome users with a built-in page

$ w3m -v

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

w3m recognises the environment variable WWW_HOME as defining a fallback target for use if it is invoked without one.

If the W3M_DIR environment variable is set to a directory name, w3m will store its user files there instead of under the ~/.w3m directory.

🎀 FILES 🎀

The default locations of some files are listed below. These locations can be altered via the W3M_DIR environment variable.

  • ~/.w3m/bookmark.html — default bookmark file
  • ~/.w3m/config — user defined configuration file; overrides /etc/w3m/config
  • ~/.w3m/cookie — cookie jar; written on exit, read on launch
  • ~/.w3m/history — browser history - visited files and URLs
  • ~/.w3m/keymap — user defined key bindings; overrides default key bindings
  • ~/.w3m/mailcap — external viewer configuration file
  • ~/.w3m/menu — user defined menu; overrides default menu
  • ~/.w3m/mime.types — MIME types file
  • ~/.w3m/mouse — user defined mouse settings
  • ~/.w3m/passwd — password and username file
  • ~/.w3m/pre_form — contains predefined values to fill recurrent HTML forms

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

README and example files are to be found in the doc directory of your w3m installation. Recent information about w3m may be found on the project's web pages at https://w3m-pager.org

💖 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 💖

w3m has incorporated code from several sources. Users have contributed patches and suggestions over time. we love a community effort 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Akinori ITO, and others. This version is maintained by Rene Kita <mail@rkta.de>. Use <~rkta/w3m@lists.sr.ht> to contact the developers.

and that's the whole page, bestie 💅 this was w3m version 0.5.6, dated 2025-06-07 — go forth and browse in text mode, you absolute icon ✨🦋🎀

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