Trowser

A browser that lives in the tray.

 

What is Trowser?

Trowser is a WinUI 3 Windows desktop application that lets you pin browser shortcuts as tray icons. Click a tray icon to open a real popup WebView2 window near the tray, then pin it to keep it alive and topmost.

• Add multiple browser shortcuts, each with its own tray icon
• Popup window opens instantly near the system tray
• Popup hides on deactivation unless pinned
• Pin mode keeps the popup window alive, topmost, and movable/resizable
• Configurable popup size per browser
• Mobile emulation enabled by default
• Favicon auto-fetched and cached per config

Requirements

• Windows 10 Build 19041 (20H1) or later
• .NET SDK 9.0.311 (pinned via global.json)
• Windows App SDK
• x64 or ARM64 architecture

Build & Run

# Build (Debug, x64)
dotnet build

# Build (Release)
dotnet build -c Release

# Run directly
dotnet run --project Trowser/Trowser.csproj

# Publish MSIX
dotnet publish -c Release -p:Platform=x64

Architecture

Pattern: MVVM + Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting DI container

Project	Purpose
Trowser.Core	Models (TrayBrowserConfig), FileService for JSON persistence, shared helpers
Trowser	WinUI 3 app — Views, ViewModels, Services

Key files:

• App.xaml.cs — single-instance enforcement, DI init, tray icon lifecycle
• TrayBrowserService — loads configs from %LocalAppData%/Trowser/ApplicationData/TrayBrowsers.json
• FaviconService — fetches/caches icons to %LocalAppData%/Trowser/Icons/{configId}.ico
• SettingsWindow → SettingsPage → SettingsViewModel — full CRUD for browser configs

Shared WebView2 environment cached at %LocalAppData%/Trowser/WebView2Data, shared across all BrowserPage instances.

Settings & Data

Item	Path
Browser configs	%LocalAppData%/Trowser/ApplicationData/TrayBrowsers.json
App settings	%LocalAppData%/Trowser/ApplicationData/LocalSettings.json
Cached favicons	%LocalAppData%/Trowser/Icons/
Debug log	%LocalAppData%/Trowser/trowser-debug.log