Browser Deputy is a Mac utility that puts a command palette overlay inside any application, letting you search tabs, history, and browser actions without switching away from your current window.
What is Browser Deputy?
Browser Deputy is a lightweight macOS menu-bar utility from Anybox that surfaces a universal command palette you can summon from any app on your machine. Instead of alt-tabbing to your browser whenever you need to jump to a tab or find something you visited yesterday, you hit a keyboard shortcut and the palette appears right where you are — over Xcode, over Figma, over your terminal, wherever.
The mental model is simple: your browser should be a resource you reach into, not an application you have to visit. Browser Deputy makes that possible without requiring you to reorganise your entire workflow.
What does Browser Deputy do best?
Its strongest suit is zero-context-switch tab navigation. I spend a lot of time writing code with my browser full of reference docs, and the friction of ⌘-Tab-ing into Safari just to grab a URL or jump to the MDN tab I left open was quietly costing me several minutes of focus per hour. Browser Deputy collapses that to a single keystroke and a few characters of fuzzy search.
- Fuzzy-search open tabs across all windows without leaving your current app
- Jump into browser history — ideal when you half-remember a page you visited two days ago
- Trigger bookmarks and browser actions straight from the palette
- Works across the browsers Mac power users actually care about, not just one
The palette itself is snappy. There is no perceptible delay between invoking it and being able to type — something that sounds like table stakes but that tools like Alfred browser integrations and Raycast's built-in browser history search occasionally fumble when the tab list is large.
How much does Browser Deputy cost?
Browser Deputy is free to download and try from the Anybox website. The same team ships Anybox (a well-regarded bookmarks manager for Apple platforms), so Browser Deputy feels like a natural extension of that ecosystem — available on the Mac App Store-adjacent distribution model typical of indie Mac developers who take quality seriously.
Check the official site at anybox.ltd for the current pricing tier, as indie apps in this category sometimes shift between freemium and one-time purchase models. What I can say with confidence is that the barrier to trying it is low.
Who should use Browser Deputy?
If you live in a keyboard-first workflow — developers, writers, designers who context-switch constantly — Browser Deputy slots in naturally beside tools like Raycast or Alfred without competing with them. It is doing something neither of those does out of the box: going deep into your browser's live state (open tabs, not just history bookmarks) from any process on the system.
It is less compelling if you already have a hyper-tuned Alfred workflow with custom browser scripts, or if you mostly work in one window and rarely need cross-app navigation. Casual users who are comfortable with ⌘-Tab will not feel the pain point Browser Deputy solves.
How does Browser Deputy compare to Raycast and Alfred?
Raycast and Alfred are general-purpose launchers that include some browser features as extensions. Browser Deputy is the opposite: a browser-first tool that happens to appear universally. Raycast's browser history extension is solid but shallow — it searches history, not live open tabs. Alfred's browser workflows are community-maintained and vary wildly in quality.
Browser Deputy's palette shows you the live state of your browser — every open tab, right now — with a speed and accuracy that broad-purpose launchers rarely match. Think of it less as a Raycast competitor and more as a complement: Raycast launches apps and runs scripts, Browser Deputy tames the browser from anywhere. I run both without conflict.
Compared to native Spotlight, it is not a comparison worth making — Spotlight does not surface live tabs at all.
What are the best Browser Deputy alternatives?
If Browser Deputy does not fit, the closest alternatives are:
- Raycast Browser Extension — broader launcher, shallower browser integration; free tier is generous
- Alfred + Browser Workflow — highly customisable, steeper setup, community-dependent
- Vimium / Vimari — keyboard navigation inside the browser, not from outside it; different problem, different solution
- Anybox itself — if your core problem is bookmark organisation rather than tab switching, the parent app may be the better buy
