This Month in Ladybird
98 comments
·August 2, 2025OptionX
Really really hope these guys get a foothold in the market. I'm a decades long Firefox user but even I have to admit things with Mozilla aren't looking bright so projects like this are the only things that can save us from the chrome clone wars.
pmkary
You guys are hugely on fire. Who would have thought someday a new engine rises in this climate, and then who would have thought it would be a small team, without a trillion dollar giant behind them pouring hundreds of millions into its production? This is truly one of the greatest things I have seen in my lifetime.
kloop
> Who would have thought someday a new engine rises in this climate, and then who would have thought it would be a small team, without a trillion dollar giant behind them pouring hundreds of millions into its production?
Anybody who has ever worked on a large enterprise software team. Anybody who has ever worked in this scenario will believe this. Computing history is full of 2-10 people teams beating giant well funded teams to the punch.
This mostly occurs because work expands to fill the time and resources allowed for the project (Parkinson's Law), and large companies have almost unlimited amounts of both.
karambanoonoo
How long until it gets abandoned too?
net01
Here's a guide to help you get started contributing:
https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Docu...
Here are the latest Web Platform (WPT) tests:
https://wpt.fyi/results/?run_id=6292901677236224
There is a Discord if you want to ask questions:
Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile) and test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and see what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
how to build Ladybird https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/Docu...
hyperbolablabla
I tried contributing but its too c++-y for me to understand it unfortunately.
net01
This is the way to start learning.
Look at a WPT test and try to focus on it.
Look at the web spec
Ask questions in the Discord about where it would be, and people are gladly willing to help. :)
its-kostya
Unfortunately for c++, the industry is moving towards Rust. Even conservative gray-suit Corps are using rust for their new projects. The limiting factor is available rust devs. Writing c++ is a sure way to get hired maintaining a legacy codebase.
Ladybird is an outlier and there are probably a few more project like it, but anyone looking to be employed should pick up the new skill that is rust. Contribute to ladybird and learn c++ if the project interests you, but don't learn it for a career.
samuell
On Twitter, Andreas points out that his Keynote Presentation on the Ladybird Browser on the FUTO conference in Texas earlier in the year, might be the best current introduction to the project:
mrob
120Hz limit for high refresh rate support seems strange. The most common refresh rate for high refresh rate monitors is 144Hz, and faster refresh rates are available. If you run a 120fps animation on a 144Hz monitor you'll get duplicated frames, which negates a large part of the benefit.
hyperbrainer
My first thought was that this was done with consideration for mobile phones, since many higher-end models use 120 Hz displays, but Ladybird does not seem to support mobile for now.
> Websites using requestAnimationFrame now render at up to 120Hz on supported hardware
But the phrasing of it about "can now" suggests to me that this may simply be a performance issue too. They changed it from 60 to 120. Perhaps in the future they can go from 120 to 144 or even 240.
m12k
Maybe the developer that implemented it only had a 120hz display to test it on?
samuell
This is such an important project, to keep the big corporations from completely controlling the future of the web.
And it doesn't hurt that Andreas seems to be such a nice, humble guy.
Xaiph_Rahci
> Andreas seems to be such a nice, humble guy.
Truer words have never been spoken!
His monthly update videos are so soothing to watch.
larodi
Interesting whether guys employ LLM to speed up development. Starting a new browser just like this would be very bold decision like 15 years ago, now seems like a reasonable thing to do actually.
shakna
Ladybird is 425k LOC. Chromium is 3.5m LOC.
Starting a new browser, using LLMs... Is not going to maintain enough context.
Whilst Andreas does use Copilot a fair bit [0], he tends to do a line at a time, frequently disagree and rewrites his own, before prompting again. That is... He basically uses it as a fancy autocomplete. Not much else.
RadiozRadioz
Would have to be at the hands of an already skilled practitioner. Average Joe programmer setting out to build a browser with Copilot will end badly. Big-picture architecture and discipline is too important with this level of complexity.
net01
Most of the guys in the LB project don't use LLM's, even though it extremely spec-driven, because C++ is not great with AI for some reason.
hyperbolablabla
But Andreas does fairly heavily, if you watch his code VODs you see that he leans on copilot often.
therein
A comment that could apply to anything. Notice how nobody except for your subthread here is talking about AI. This thread is not about AI or LLMs, for a good reason.
kome
they’re downvoting you, but the developer actually uses copilot a lot in his development videos. why are people so up in arms?
of course, he’s a very, very proficient developer and a browser specialist. he’s not just vibecoding, like you might be implying. but he also uses llms for development.
NoboruWataya
Because it's bad enough (for those of us that aren't heavily invested in the topic) that often 50%+ of the frontpage is about AI now, to go into the comments for a clearly non-AI topic and see a bunch of "but what about LLMs" comments really just sucks the fun out of HN for a lot of us.
squigz
Because LLMs being a thing now has no bearing on whether it's a good idea or more practical to build a new browser.
Timwi
It is so amazing and wholesome to see a huge team of people come together and just collaborate on something they are passionate about and seriously believe in. I'm very hopeful that Ladybird will get to the point where we can use it as a main browser.
net01
Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile) and test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and see what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
how to build ladybird https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/Docu...
phito
You forgot the enormous learning curve of understanding how browsers work and how to write proper code in Ladybug that doesn't waste the maintainers´ time.
Last time I tried, I couldn't find a website that worked with it. Where do you even begin contributing to such a large, complex, very much WIP project? The barrier to entry is daunting.
barkingcat
When it comes to larger projects, first:
- you don't need to understand the whole in order to help
the kind of bugs you can start with are like :
- this icon is a bit weird, it's off centre by 2px - how do I add 2 pixels to this icon? either by moving it or by changing the underlying image asset? if I'm moving it, what is the subroutine that paints it? if I'm changing the image asset itself, where is it stored? (is it in a packed store? or is it just a plain file, etc)
- when I click this button, trace the pathway - it's supposed to add to history and turn blue. is it doing that?
etc.
For large projects, start super small and work your way out from there.
saagarjha
Pick a site that almost works on it and then fix it to fully work?
therein
>Last time I tried, I couldn't find a website that worked with it.
That was the case for me last time I tried it as well, which was a few months ago. Tried it again yesterday and I could load many pages. Could even render complex real life pages like YouTube.
I recommend anyone to build it themselves. It is a very simple and smooth experience.
Timwi
I did actually watch a friend compile and run it, and we tried it on a couple of simple web pages and were impressed with the results!
However, there are two barriers to me building it myself and submitting PRs. The first is that it's not officially supported to build or run on Windows, so I'd have to get familiar with WSL first or set up a dual-boot environment.
The second is that it's written in the obsolete and unusable language of C++. I would have loved an opportunity here to get into Rust or something, but C++ has proven itself hazardous to my mental health, so I'm staying away from it.
emilbratt
I love Rust, but I do not like how people are rust evangelists and look down on everything else. That is not how we in the Rust community look at things.
Now, with that out of the way. Andreas has been very clear about the reasons why C++ is the chosen language. He has years of experience with it along with writing browsers.
Im paraphrasing here, but he has said that the web evolved around the era of OOP and C++ is the OOP language of that era. Including statements on how C++ fits nicely with the OOP styles of web specs.
rs186
I don't know which bubble you are in, but C++ is nowhere near obsolete status. As much as want Rust to be adopted widely, that still hasn't happened, despite small-scale effort to sprinkle it in various projects.
jeroenhd
For the WSL part: that's one command in powershell/cmd and then a download from the Microsoft store. You won't find it challenging, there's not much more to it than that in 99% of cases (and if you do run into issues, there are probably better alternatives to trying to fix WSL anyway).
As for C++, Ladybird uses very modern C++ that makes it substantially easier to write reasonably safe code than the C++ of yore.
Still, as much as I would like to see the world move to safer languages, C++ is everywhere. Every major browser is written in it. It's not "unusable" in the slightest (though I certainly understand not wanting to learn C++ as an outsider at this point in time, it's a quite boring language in comparison and the C++ job market probably won't let you make use of modern language features that might make it interesting).
I would love to live in a world where projects with security risks like web browsers would "just" use Rust instead of C++ but you'll have to convince the people building the browser to spend their own time or their bosses' time to learn Rust first, and that's a tough sell.
There's Servo if you want to contribute to an open source browser in Rust. It looks like it can certainly use the help it you compare its development speed with Ladybird.
robin_reala
There’s always the option of contributing to Servo if you’re interested in Rust and browser engineering.
xdfgh1112
Unusable yet people have written a browser in it?
0points
Those are two you-problems.
skrebbel
> The second is that it's written in the obsolete and unusable language of C++.
Oh come on. There's nicer ways to say "I'm not good at it". It's OK you know, you can't be good at everything. Just don't make it other people's fault.
edent
I wonder if Ladybird will ever become a member of the WHAT-WG steering group. It would be nice to see more / any independent voices on there.
haunter
Why Discord though? Truly independent project, keep big corps away, future of the web at stake here yada yada yet using the most walled garden of walled gardens. If there is no publicly accessible and searchable archive then might as well not exist.
rs186
Would like to hear your suggestion of an alternative that:
* has a modern interface and allow people to communicate effectively
* does not cost a fortune to use
* has good moderation tools
* supports multiple channels
* has enough built-in moderation so that spam/illegal content is minimal
etc.
mnmalst
I think Andreas made a comment about this in some of his videos along the lines of: It's where the most people are.
42lux
Because it's chat if you treat it like a knowledge base it's on you.
globular-toast
If that were true than IRC would be absolutely perfect.
dotnetcarpenter
SerenityOS used IRC but when Andreas changed to discord he saw a massive influx of developers. I assume that it was a no brainer to use discord when forking Ladybird...
perching_aix
So would be Discord, and so it is.
bowsamic
Andreas has made it clear he’s not interested in free software politics. That’s not his battle
freedomben
That's fine, but I don't see what free software has to do with searchability and persistence of the backlog
bowsamic
I didn’t say it did. The person I replied to mentioned free software adjacent principles
The power of one, the power of a mind who can’t take no for an answer to the inner voice.
And don’t lecture me about the many, for the many wouldn’t have started it, they joined the one.
You know the one, cherish him.
Thanks!