🌐 Why Vimium C Belongs in a Terminal-First Workflow

I recently finished integrating LibreWolf into my Arch / Hyprland setup. The most impactful upgrade wasn’t a compositor tweak or a new daemon... it was a browser extension: Vimium C.

If most of your work happens in a terminal, using a mouse to navigate the web is an unnecessary context switch. The problem isn’t the browser itself; it’s that the browser forces a different interaction model. Vimium C removes that mismatch. The browser stops feeling like a separate GUI application and starts behaving like another fast, keyboard-driven pane in your workflow.

Movement and flow

Vimium C maps familiar Vim motions directly onto the browser. Your hands stay on the home row, and navigation becomes predictable.

Scrolling line-by-line with j and k mirrors editor behavior. Page jumps with d and u keep momentum without breaking focus. gg and G give instant access to the top or bottom of a page. Browser history becomes trivial with H and L, instead of hunting for UI elements.

Link navigation

Pressing f overlays short key hints on every clickable element. Typing the hint activates the link immediately.

f opens in the current tab.

F opens in a new background tab.

This scales cleanly from simple pages to dense documentation sites. The keyboard reaches targets faster and more reliably than a pointer ever does.

Tab and URL control

Vimium C adds small but important primitives browsers should have had by default.

gu moves up one level in the URL path.

gU jumps straight to the domain root.

gi focuses the next input field.

gt and gT cycle tabs without visual scanning.

x closes the current tab, X restores the last one.

These aren’t tricks; they’re missing affordances.

Search and clipboard

The Vomnibar (o / O) replaces most launcher-style searches with something faster and context-aware. You can search history, bookmarks, or open tabs without leaving the keyboard. Copying URLs (yy) or link targets (yf) becomes a single keystroke operation, which fits cleanly into scripting and note-taking workflows.

Bottom line

Vimium C doesn’t make the web better. It makes it consistent with a keyboard-driven environment. If you value low friction, predictable motion, and minimal context switching, this is one of the simplest upgrades you can make.

Stop reaching for the mouse. Treat the browser like part of the system.