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W3M(1) General Commands Manual W3M(1) NAME w3m - a text based web browser and pager SYNOPSIS w3m [OPTION]... [ file | URL ]... DESCRIPTION w3m is a text based browser which can display local or remote web pages as well as other documents. It is able to process HTML tables and frames but it ignores JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets. 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. w3m organizes its content in buffers or tabs, allowing easy navigation be- tween them. With the w3m-img extension installed, w3m can display inline graphics in web pages. And whenever w3m's HTML rendering capabilities do not meet your needs, the target URL can be handed over to a graphical browser with a single command. For help with runtime options, press "H" while running w3m. ARGUMENTS When given one or more command line arguments, w3m will handle targets ac- cording to content type. For web, w3m gets this information from HTTP headers; for relative or absolute file system paths, it relies on file- names. 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. OPTIONS Command line options are introduced with a single "-" character and may take an argument. 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. (Implementa- tion 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_ci- pher=ALL:eNULL:@SECLEVEL=0 -o ssl_min_version=all -o ssl_for- bid_method= -o ssl_verify_server=0 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 char- acters) 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 di- rected 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; with- out 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. Feed- back to the author is highly welcome. -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 ses- sion 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 re- stored 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! 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. 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. w3m 0.5.6 2025-06-07 W3M(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ARGUMENTS | OPTIONS | Session management | EXAMPLES | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | SEE ALSO | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | AUTHOR
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