Web² (WebSquared)

An ad-free, open-source, lightweight web proxy. Browse freely from anywhere, no extensions, no installs, no ads.

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Features

• Ad-free: no advertisements, no trackers, no data collection
• Lightweight: minimal dependencies, fast startup
• Tabs: open, close, and switch between multiple proxied sites, including private tabs
• Back / forward / refresh: a real per-tab navigation history, like a normal browser
• Bookmarks & history: saved locally in your browser, with folders and individual-entry management
• Settings: theme, font size, search engine, desktop mode (mobile), and more
• Live "online now" counter: see how many people are currently browsing through the same instance
• Self-loop & SSRF protection: the proxy can't be pointed at itself or at internal/private addresses
• Per-site cookie isolation: cookies from different proxied sites are kept separate, so logging into one site can't collide with another
• Service Worker: intercepts dynamically-generated requests for deeper compatibility
• URL obfuscation: target URLs are XOR-encoded and base64url-encoded so they are not plaintext in the address bar

For how everything actually works under the hood, see ARCHITECTURE.md. For a guide to using every feature, see USAGE.md.

Getting started (local development)

Requirements: Node.js ≥ 20

git clone https://github.com/Hexadecinull/WebSquared.git
cd WebSquared
npm install

Development

npm run dev

Opens the Vite dev server at http://localhost:5173. The Express + Wisp server runs at http://localhost:3000. Vite proxies /w2, /api, /wisp, and /w2-presence to the backend automatically.

Production

npm run build
npm start

Builds the client to dist/, bundles the worker scripts, and compiles the server to dist-server/, then serves everything from a single Express process on port 3000 (configurable via the PORT environment variable).

Self-hosting

Want to run your own instance on a VPS or home server, with a real domain, running continuously? See docs/DEPLOY.md for a full walkthrough covering PM2, Cloudflare Tunnel or nginx, and an optional GitHub auto-deploy webhook so pushing to main deploys itself.

Known limitations

• WebSocket proxying through Wisp requires a WASM TLS transport (epoxy-tls / libcurl.js), the Wisp server is present but the browser-side transport is not yet wired up
• Sites that rely on window.location equality checks or document.domain manipulation may behave incorrectly
• OAuth flows that use postMessage across origins will not work
• Service workers registered by the proxied site itself are not supported
• DRM-protected video (Widevine/EME) generally won't play through the proxy
• CAPTCHA/anti-bot challenges tied to their own domain (e.g. Google's reCAPTCHA) will generally fail. This is inherent to how any proxy works, not fixable on our end

Documentation

See docs/README.md for the full documentation index: usage, self-hosting, architecture, contributing, and policies.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome, see docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines. All contributions are made under the AGPL-3.0 license.

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 © 2026 SSMG4 and contributors