Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers | Hacker News Reader

Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers

polypane.app

207 pointsulrischa131 comments

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Hey, I'm Kilian, the creator and solo developer of Polypane. Exciting to see this on the homepage again.

Happy to answer any questions folks have!

I like your pricing model.

You have to sign up, and then this welcomes me:

The password has to have:

- At least one lowercase letter

- At least one number

- At least one uppercase letter

- At least 8 characters

I do not like it when websites (or applications, w/e) do this. I am somewhat OK with "at least 8 characters long" and I even understand its significance (from a security perspective) but not the rest.

zero relevance to the pricing.

Just use the browser's built in password suggestion.

For something not-so-serious I probably should, but my browser does not have one. :D

I don't. Nine dollars per month for an individual? No thanks. Charge what you like. It's your right to do that, but as a hobbyist there's no chance I'm buying.

Its a great tool and for a front end developer its reasonable.

Quick feedback: The "Polypane Portal" page hangs after opening it in Chrome on M1 Pro Macbook.

Can't seem to replicate that here (m4 macbook), but I'll keep it open for a bit and see what happens. Thanks for letting me know!

M1 Pro here too, the page doesn't hang, but it's extremely slow to scroll on my end.

M1 Max MacBook Pro and no issues, fwiw. Just to help provide data.

M1 Mac mini here and instant loading in Brave.

Scrolling is unusable on that page for me:

Computer: Apple M3 Max

macOS: 14.7.3 (23H417)

Google Chrome 134.0.6998.118

I also tried in my "clean" chrome profile (to rule out extensions) and it's still got really bad scroll lag. This happens as soon as I open the page.

Here is a video though I understand it's hard to convey since you can't see when/how much I'm scrolling. I can tell you I scrolled slowly down and back up consistently through this video.

https://cs.joshstrange.com/m71YtZdk

Even worse, I just found that having that tab open (and visible) makes Chrome (no other app) laggy everywhere. Something is definitely wrong with that page. Also that page was open in a different chrome profile and it still made my main chrome profile lag when just trying to click around the text area for this comment on HN.

Edit: Some extra details for my setup, I have external monitors (4) and the Macbook Pro is closed in clamshell mode. Not sure why either of those things would matter but I figure both those cases are more common for people on HN (external monitors/closed laptop) than the general public so I wanted to mention it.

Edit2: And here is a video of me doing the same scrolling on the homepage just to show the difference: https://cs.joshstrange.com/GWLr0Qwl

Can confirm, M1 Air 16 GB, Brave and macOS are up-to-date

Have any extensions installed that may be blocking requests?

same

It should be better now, as I made tweaks to the starfield canvas at the top of the page.

I recall using your product years ago and it was fantastic. It helped me work solo on a web app with ease. Not having CSS and JS skills like a lot of front end devs, it was nice knowing all viewports were handled.

I brought it to the hn frontpage again. Is this worth getting some free month? ;-)

Haha, email me and we’ll see

I love the idea of the product, I could have definitely used it in the past. And I really love your responses to questions asked here. You're very honest and friendly. If I get into webdev again, I'll definitely give Polypane a shot!

I built a prototype of something similar with iframes for a gig at eBay a decade ago. Ended up showing it off at the first React conf. Definitely useful to have as much immediate feedback as possible when you're developing.

Glad to see a productized version! Most of my work these days is for internal tools with fixed browser expectations, otherwise I'd probably be downloading a trial right now.

Congrats!

You have the Google logo on your landing page above the fold - what's the connection?

That was the first thing I noticed as well. OP can you answer?

Those are customers. Just like for example on netlify.com.

I had a title stating that for the longest time, then I noticed nearly all other landing pages simply have it without title and just a clean list of logos, so I changed it to that as well.

How and where is Google using Polypane?

Google has tens of thousands of engineers—one of them using Polypane at Google would be indicative of Polypane being used at Google.

If only a few engineers are using it out of their own volition that I don't think that justifies trying to imply that Google is a customer.

Pretty misleading and underhanded I think.

I work at one of those companies (not google) and Polypane is actively banned as “not safe, shouldn’t be used at all”.

Not to take away from the product, which does look cool, but the “customer list” is definitely sketchy.

Fair point. I'm just explaining how Polypane might have rationalized the positioning.

Congrats Kilian!

Polypane made a massive difference in getting our startup's website shipped a few months ago. I highly recommend it for entrepreneur-devs.

Never heard of the product and just had a look at the landing page. Immediately spotted a typo :D

> On Mac, Window and Linux

should be

> On Mac, Windows and Linux

Shouldn’t it be macOS?

Apple would say that, but I think most Mac users would say Mac. I know I think so and I've been a lifelong user.

Well that’s embarrassing, thats been there for literal years.

At least the icons are right!

I totally get why you do subscription. I totally get why I don't do subscription.

Is there some sort of middle ground? Say, minimum purchase cost is the same price as six months, but it keeps on working afterwards sans updates. When the dev realizes that such a tool is only 80% effective unless it is totally updated, they can subscribe.

Happy to answer this. Polypane is a browser. If you don't keep your browser rendering engine up to date, you're opening yourself to a whole host of security issues (not to mention just generally diverging from what your end users use). Keeping that rendering engine up to date means dealing with a slew of potentially breaking changes with each new chromium version.

So there's two reasons:

1. The only way to do that continuous upkeep of the rendering engine that I have found to be sustainable is with a subscription.

2. I definitely don't want to be responsible for people using years-old versions of Chromium.

If my users are using an old version of Chromium, I probably want to support that and test on it.

Sure. Chromium is an evergreen browser, which means it's continuously patched and updated in the background. Getting a pinned Chromium version takes quite a lot of work, and really only happens in very specific, controlled environments.

If you happen to work in such an environment you have vastly different considerations from the other 99% of developers building websites and apps on the public facing web.

I liked the old "pay for updates" model. Nowadays, that seems less viable because security updates are so important[0]. I think the middle ground model would be something like security updates are free, feature updates cost money. Something like pay $x for version n+1 or a discounted rate for a subscription.

Sounds like a bit of a hassle on the logistics/release engineering side, though. That would need to be handled with some care and planning.

[0] Which I'll admit I don't 100% buy, but I'd love for a security expert to weigh in.

You admit this, but yeah, it's a big headache that has its own trade-offs.

By design, you'll have users spread across any number of versions. And you have to decide how far back you're going to issue updates. And instead of having nice in-app updates and a policy of "just upgrade to the latest version", you have a system that's complicated for you and your users. And you have to decide if you're okay letting users use (by design) releases with issues that have long been fixed.

I can see how Adobe and Jetbrains have the manpower to do it, but a solo dev or a small team, you should spend your time building the dang product rather than appeasing people who don't think your product is worth $9/mo.

Yeah, I've seen similar in pro-level software tools, CAD applications, MATLAB, etc, but those tend to be large and mature organizations with the expertise and manpower to e.g. backport bugfixes to released versions.

Maybe it could work similar to how Bitwig licenses work – you buy a license with a year of updates and it's yours – after the year expires you can download binaries for the latest version you're entitled to. Later you can buy access to the current version with an another year of updates (at a lower price) when you've decided that they've added something new you want.

Interestingly, this didn't work for Jetbrains. They found people often skipped a year and decided they wanted the "missing" revenue. There answer is to sell the version you "own" as of the date they process your order. You're allowed a full year of updates. However, if you don't continue the subscription then your version automatically rolls back to the version as of your purchase. You lose all the fixes and updates you've been using during the year.

Why don't you do subscription?

I've heard plenty of arguments on the 'financial tools to manage them are bad' (forget about them, hard to cancel) but few against 'paying money proportional to how much I use the product'. As a general concept that seems reasonable to me - if you use a product for 10 years, it's fair to pay more than somebody who uses it for a couple of months.

In a world where finance improves (more subs via Apple Pay et al, more banks like Revolut that show & allow unilaterally blocking any given recurring charge) would you still avoid them?

    - It's hard to convince my boss to create a subscription.
    - I don't want to become hostage to monthly payments - if I don't pay one month my whole workflow is messed over, so I have to continue (vs. otherwise I can slowly trade it out of my workflow, and/or look for alternatives)
    - Its hard for me to mentally grok how much I am paying monthly on subscriptions. 
    - I never cancel, because inertia.
    - I am not sure if this is something that justifies a monthly subscription, and two weeks is too little time for me to invest in changing my workflow to accommodate it.
    - I hate subscriptions (this is an emotional thing, so you could tell me to get a shrink. But I suspect I am not the only one).

I feel like I am missing even bigger reasons, but /rant

I've used it a lot. Great product, emulates subtle device issues very well that Chrome device view doesn't

Such as?

https://polypane.app/docs/emulation/

You can do all of those in chrome

I wish such a browser could accurately emulate a mobile device's browser, not just change screen size, but even Apple's iOS simulator fails at this.

No need, nowadays sites just guess you're on a phone if you resize the browser window too narrow and whinge at you to "use a desktop device or use our app for the best experience".

> "use a desktop device or use our app for the best experience".

Plot twist: their "app" is just the same site wrapped in a webview, minus the nags to install the app.

Plus autostart on boot and daily notifications.

There's a huge list of things Polypane emulates beyond the screen size.

For devices:

  - user agent
  - reported platform
  - device pixel ratio
  - rendering mode (mobile rendering and desktop rendering respond differently depending on your viewport meta tag)
  - default input device
  - orientation APIs

Beyond that it can also emulate reading direction, page language, browser locale, user-configured default font-size, different network settings and a whole range of different media queries like color-scheme, reduced-motion reduced-data, reduced-transparency, prefers-contrast, forced-colors (windows high contrast mode) and color gamut. I'll be adding even more device browser-specific emulations later this year.

Can it emulate email rendering?

no I'm not touching that can of worms with a ten foot pole. Someone braver than me can build that!

You need a farm of machines that run the actual mail clients, to do that reliably. https://www.emailonacid.com/ is such a service.

I hate this so much. I don't want to do this, as its not cost efficient for development

Oh I wasn't even thinking about those things, but that's really cool! I was thinking more about different CSS implementation behavior, though that's less of a mobile-specific issue and more of a "every browser is different" issue.

I don't have a list of differences off the top of my head, but I regularly find big enough differences that I don't rely on "responsive mode" or even (as mentioned) Apple's iOS simulator (because it does not accurately replicate the real on-iPhone browser rendering, which has bitten me before).

Using Polypane doesn't mean you can skip out on testing other rendering engines. That's such an important point that I even mention it on the homepage!

So yeah, you should be testing (mobile) Safari and Firefox too. Chrome on android has some different APIs compared to Chrome on desktop, but rendering is identical.

When developing your site, you can use Polypane Portal[1] to tunnel your local site to real devices while keeping them fully in sync with what you do in Polypane, so you can scroll, interact, inspect and even edit across real devices from inside Polypane, saving you a ton of time.

[1] https://polypane.app/portal/

I must admit i can't argue the subscription for polypane, if we already have browserstack subscription.

And only polypane that dont support other engines then also don't work.

This reasoning misses a very large portion of Polypane, which is that you use it while developing, not just testing. It's a replacement for your time in Chrome/Firefox/Safari, not your time testing across devices (real or through online tooling like Browserstack).

It does however minimise that device testing time. So it all depends on how valuable that time is for you.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those all things chromium gives you for free? I open the inspector right here, click the devices button, and I can set all those

Yes. This is a fancy electron browser.

I would love to know counter points instead of just down voting. I guess not being on the gravy train doesn't satisfy the paid for advertisement.

The question is that it seems to emulate many things, but what doesn't it emulate well?

It looks like it's built off chromium, so I'm assuming it wouldn't be able to show an issue that only appears in safari or maybe Mozilla?

Perhaps this is in the docs.

edit: It's in the FAQ at the bottom. Still, beyond the actual browser engine, are there other known limitations?

This feels like a lay-up, but here you go :) https://polypane.app/docs/emulation/#emulation-or-simulation

Polypane doesn't simulate the specific rendering engine of other browsers, it just pretends to be another browser (which is what emulation is) so you can test that the code you wrote for those browsers (for example, a polyfill) responds well. You'll still need to test in those real browsers to check against their rendering bugs or support gaps. (but something like Polypane portal[1] can make that step much easier)

[1] https://polypane.app/docs/portal/

Perhaps there's a way you could remotely render a page in Firefox, Safari, etc? And then stream into the viewport.

I just spent several long days implementing my first modern CSS responsive web design, learning flexboxes and grids and what-can-I-use along the way. I currently have three different browser windows and two device emulators open across two monitors. So what I'm saying is, I have an appreciation for how this app could probably have saved me a lot of trouble if I'd known about it last week.

You basically reproduced the product by opening a couple of browser instances, right? What would polypane do for you?

Maybe I am not getting it. I am probably not getting it.

polypane lets you see everything happen simultaneously, which is way less tedious than just like refreshing and changing your viewport and whotnot for however many permutations you're testing, is my understanding. as a general example if you make an inline CSS change in a browser tab that generally only affects the one you're currently in.

As a purpose-built tool, it improves on the experience of having multiple windows open. While the headline feature is keeping them all in sync, for my particular app, that's not as big a deal (though it's pretty cool that it will even do that for stuff like tweaking CSS styles in the inspector).

I've been playing around with it for a few minutes and I think what I'm really appreciating is that it's filled with dev tools of all kinds and it's really optimized for working on web sites rather than browsing. It can automatically open panes based on CSS breakpoints, and it has presets for many devices. Some of it is things I had in Chrome, but better, like rulers and guides and grids. Even the way screenshots are implemented shows they put thought into saving time and hassle over a thing you could of course do before with a few more steps. And it's not all related to layout: it shows meta tags and icons and previews for social media sharing.

Anyway, it's pretty cool IMO and I'll probably end up buying it if I keep working on web apps. The only downside I've noticed is that it feels a little sluggish, even when not heavily loaded down (e.g. just 3 panes). I'm using this monster M2 Ultra Mac Studio so it's a bit unusual for a browser to lag.

Sounds super useful indeed. Thanks for the detailed reply.

I don't understand the many comments here complaining that the browser has a subscription. Finally! I want more paid browsers, not less. I want to get back to a world where we paid for products with money, instead of being datamined and have ads pushed down my throat.

People here, out of all places, should be aware of what it means when a product is free.

I guess that when people usually talk about paid browsers, they talk about separate web engines not chromium forks. If this will help with the battle against Google's dominance.

Dominance comes from owning the product (the browser), it didn't come from the browser engine.

If dominance wasn't at least enhanced or supported by owning the browser engine, Google wouldn't be doing Chromium.

I've been using Polypane for over a year now, and while it may not be the right fit for everyone, it works well for my needs.

What I appreciate:

- Session management keeps my workflow organised.

- Responsive-first design, with panes for both desktop and mobile views.

- Comprehensive screenshot functionality, including annotations.

Sure, you could replicate these features with other browsers or plugins, but I prefer having everything set up out of the box—one less thing to configure.

The support is outstanding. I encountered an issue with my IDE not launching Polypane correctly, and after reaching out on Slack, Killian helped resolve it quickly.

Reading through the Slack conversations, it's clear he's dedicated to building the best possible product for his users.

* What are a few features you offer over Browserstack? (re: x-browser testing).

* Do you offer GenAI integrations? (Copilot, Claude, etc)

(Help me sell this to my manager)

Polypane is a chromium-based browser that you install on your own device and use while building applications that lets you develop at different (emulated) devices and screensizes/variation in one overview, with a bunch of development, accessibility and quality tools built right in.

Browserstack is an online device testing tool where you check if your site works on different real devices one-by-one. That is to say, they don't really compete: if you don't have real devices to test with then Browserstack is an excellent option.

What users mostly find is that by using Polypane (fast, local) they have far less use of Browserstack (slow, online) and the entire process speeds up. There will always be a need for real device testing.

There's no gen AI integrations, and I don't have any planned. You can happily use Claude or CoPilot in the browse panel though (which is a little browser that lives inside Polypane, so you can browse without losing the context of your project)

Thank you for not adding AI slop to this.

I really wish the pricing model offered some sort of lifetime purchase. This seems great but I don’t think I could justify the monthly/yearly cost.

I would be OK with payed upgrades but a subscription is a big no-no.

I explain my reasoning elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43472234

As a frontend developer focusing on mobile React, the features I've wanted the most for several years is the ability to simulate the safe-area (yes, the notch) on modern iOS devices.

I tried using Polypane, but unfortunately, I couldn't find any relevant settings.

That’s not surprising, though Chrome DevTools doesn’t support it, and even the Safari simulator lacks this functionality.

It seems I still have to rely on guesswork and iterative adjustments to resolve all the issues related to safe-areas.

I hired Igalia to work on Chromium recently. Give me a month or two ;)

Almost all of these features are already built into Firefox devtools. Why is a whole new browser warranted? It seems like this could've been an extension

> already built into Firefox devtools. Why is a whole new browser warranted?

Have you seen the state of the (lack of) competition in browser markets these days? Even Firefox (via Mozilla's new EULAs) has stopped caring about your privacy.

More competition in the browser and browser tooling space is absolutely warranted.

I don’t see how you can come to that conclusion with even a superficial reading of the homepage, unless you count ‘shows web pages’ as ‘almost all features’.

And even then the homepage only lists about 30% of what Polypane does.

You can simulate mobile screens, toggle light/dark/print/other media modes, edit css, debug layout, run a11y and lighthouse tests, and download all the framework-specific devtools you want.

Besides the multi-pane synced windows I don't really see a new feature here. It's a lot of advertising of little-known features that are already built-in to Firefox

I'm not trying to shit on your product. It seems polished and possibly useful. It just seems insincere for you to advertise browser features that are built in as features of your app specifically

> It just seems insincere for you to advertise browser features that are built in as features of your app specifically

Sorry but I honestly don't understand this line of reasoning. Advertising a product having a feature in no way means claiming other products do not have the same or similar features.

I could list dozens of things not in Firefox, Chrome or any other browser that Polypane has (and in fact, you list off a few that definitely aren't in Firefox. ) but even so, listing the features a specific product has is the whole point of a marketing website.

Do you also expect Apple to list HP and Acer laptop alongside their Macbooks because those also have screens and keyboards, or otherwise it would be insincere they advertise (on their own marketing website) the screen of a Macbook?

I understand the subscription model, but the cost doesn't sit right for me.

My all products JetBrains subscription is £137 a year, for every single product they create (and perpetual fallback licences). This is £91 a year, which is about 66% of the cost of my JB sub and if I stop paying, I assume PolyPane stops working.

Any free alternative?

Chromium

The top comment from the last time this was submitted pointed to an open source (AGPLv3) implementation <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29340887> but I don't know how they compare feature-wise

Wow this is great!

> Responsively App is built on top of Electron and uses Chromium as its rendering engine.

Now I want an app that shows Firefox, Chrome, and Safari side-by-side (besides manually opening them all side-by-side of course).

How could one make an app that could host those multiple engines? I've heard that Firefox doesn't embed well, maybe WebKit would be easier? What about Servo or the engine from LadyBird? Is it even possible?

To save other readers a click: https://responsively.app/

Super cool! Is there the possibility to get a students discount? Will try the free trial for now :)

Its free for students through the GitHub Student Developer Pack :)

Wow, that's amazing. Thank you sincerely!

I've been using it for a while now. It is an excellent tool in the tool belt, making me a much better developer and more productive, a lot less messing around.

I read the website, but I still don't get what value it's offering over Chrome? Better viewport sizing?

Here's a comment from the creator with a host of things that are mostly not available in Chrome:

There's a huge list of things Polypane emulates beyond the screen size.

For devices:

  - user agent
  - reported platform
  - device pixel ratio
  - rendering mode (mobile rendering and desktop rendering respond differently depending on your viewport meta tag)
  - default input device
  - orientation APIs

But chrome already supports all of that?

I don’t know chrome devtools enough to say whether or not it already has all of these features. I will say that you can place a nail with a hammer, but if you’re building houses for a living, it might be best to invest in a nail gun.

Seems quite similar to https://sizzy.co/

True! I’d love to hear from someone who tried out both and settled on one.

Sizzy seems to have been abandoned. The developer has been unresponsive and the last update was botched with no way to actually get it. It’s a shame because I preferred Sizzy's experience over the alternatives. It just felt more polished to me.

Shut up and take my money!

Is it just an Electron app with webviews synced via Browsersync?

Yeah, just like Dropbox is two curls duct-taped to an SD card.

And a stapler - don't forget their document integration!

My question was legitimate, though.

Remove the word "just" from your question, and you'll magically get a lot more positive feedback!

Sorry JUST remove the word ;)

How about ”simply”?

That doesn't change the meaning. It's not trivial to execute well on an idea, test a wide swath of use cases and edge cases, and release a high quality product.

Be fair, they also harvest your email and store it.

A browser with a subscription. I have no words. People try to make money out of anything. And they succeed in this. The world is an insane place, really.

Do browsers not make money though? Through leveraging their market share they generate revenue.

This is just a different approach. Provide a product (a browser), charge people that want that product.

Looks more like a browser-centred IDE to supplement (not replace) the regular codebase-centred IDE to improve front-end development productivity. That productivity increase is what's very valuable if it actually materializes. The goal obviously isn't to improve your Youtube-viewing experience or whatever, so it's not really comparable to Chrome or Firefox.

I see this more of an IDE/dev tool than a web browser. I'm not a web developer, but I could see why someone would pay for this to get more features than what you get in Chrome/Firefox/Safari.

I don't feel that you have a measured take on what is basically browser tooling. It's a customized browser built around web development. Is that _so_ insane?

Imagine someone came out with a browser that synced and allowed you to view/test your app in the days of ie6/7/8/9 across all those browsers. Would charging money per month for that be so weird?

This isn't for anyone to use as their normal browser.

> People try to make money out of anything.

So...software developers who mimic the real world. If I walk by a fruit stand, a grocery store, or a booth at a fair selling homemade crafts; I don't expect anything to be free. It is the exception when they are handing out free samples.

In the software world, too many expect everything in the store to be free (as in beer). Each software product represents real effort on someone's part, so it is not insane to expect them to want some compensation for that.

If I walk by a stand, it cost them something to give me their homemade crafts for free(they have less to give away)

With software development the only thing lost with giving it away for free is the opportunity cost that someone might have paid for it.

So I don't think physical products and software can be compared like that

Do you think that software comes out of thin air? It takes time and effort to develop and maintain software. The fact that it doesn't cost to reproduce it doesn't mean it doesn't cost to create it in the first place.

And it takes time and effort to develop the method for creating the crafts.

That doesn't change that they're different in reproducibility...

Absolutely incredible indeed! People asking money in change of their work, how dare they? /s

All these years where megacorps gave people stuff for free have tainted the minds of many.

If you questioned the subscription model over the perpetual license, that would be somehow acceptable, but assuming everything must be free is just non sense.

> People try

They are making lots of money with a very useful and nice-looking tool.

What's your excuse?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com