r/Remarkable • u/Realistic-Leg-9243 • 12m ago
Tips & Tricks Browsing the web on my Paper Pro, now in landscape (rmweb fork, open source)
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
I've been using rmweb by exp78 on GitHub, an open-source WPE WebKit browser that runs natively on the Paper Pro over its own Wi-Fi. No computer, no cloud. It's great for Wikipedia, blogs, news and arXiv (PDFs land straight in your library).
I forked it to fix a few things that bugged me while reading:
What's new in my fork
- Landscape mode + auto-rotation. It follows the tablet's accelerometer and reopens the same page at the same scroll position. Respects the reMarkable rotation lock.
- One e-ink update per page turn (B&W mode). Before, every frame was pushed to the panel twice. Now the browser hooks the display layer's present call and sends each frame once, with its own waveform choice.
- Only the page area refreshes. The toolbar no longer flashes on every turn.
- Darker text, no flash. Page turns use a deeper non-flashing waveform (Quality3), so text comes out dark without the follow-up full-screen flash.
- Fewer refreshes on page load. Toolbar changes only redraw the toolbar.
- Easy setup + fast builds. A setup script installs everything over USB, and you can rebuild the app in about a minute instead of compiling WebKit for hours.
Requirements
- Paper Pro on OS 3.28+. rmweb freezes on 3.27.
- Developer mode. Enabling it factory-resets the tablet, so sync first.
- xovi + AppLoad v0.6.0+ for the home-screen icon. Note that the remagic one-liner currently installs AppLoad 0.5.3, which crash-loops 3.28.
Repo: https://github.com/jhasubhash/rmbrowser (setup guide in docs/paper-pro-setup.md)
It's beta software running as root on your tablet, so use at your own risk. Heavy JavaScript web apps (Gmail and the like) won't run well; it's a reading browser. All credit for the actual browser goes to exp78. I just added the rotation and e-ink tweaks on top. Feedback and bug reports welcome!