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NEW Tacet 1.6.2 is here

The quiet browser
for your Mac.

Tacet, formerly Lumen, is a minimal, fast browser built on WebKit. Ads and trackers are blocked before they load, the blocker turns off in one click, and an assistant reads the page so you don't have to.

Download for Mac View on GitHub

Free and open source · macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel · about 9 MB

The Tacet window with tabs along the top and the Tacet website open
0analytics, accounts or trackers in Tacet itself
1 clickto turn the blocker off for a site
9 MBdownload, universal for Apple silicon and Intel
100%WebKit, the engine behind Safari
Why Tacet

Everything you need.
Nothing that gets in the way.

The speed and battery life of WebKit, with the features Safari is missing and none of the noise Chrome brings.

Tabs that tidy themselves

Drag a tab onto another to make a group, or let Tacet group tabs from the same site. Save a group and close it, reopen it later with every tab, pick several with ⌘-click, sort by site or title, close duplicates in one click.

Split view and Reader

Put two pages side by side with ⌥⌘S. Turn a cluttered article into clean text with ⇧⌘R, and save it to the Reading List with its images, to read on a plane.

Ads blocked, natively

Stopped before they load, by WebKit's own content blocker. No extension, no slowdown, and it works offline.

Light on memory

Tabs you haven't touched in a while hibernate, then wake up exactly where you left them, history included.

Private by default

Tracking stripped from links, automatic HTTPS, Global Privacy Control, and private windows that forget everything and lock with Touch ID.

Passwords with Touch ID

Saved in the Mac's Keychain, filled after Touch ID, strong ones suggested on sign-up. Works beside 1Password and KeePassXC.

Extensions

Add the Safari extensions that come with your apps, or Chrome and Firefox ones from a file. You see what each can do first.

Sites as apps

Install any site as an app with its own window and Dock icon, kept apart from your browsing.

Customize Site

Give any site its own theme, font and width, hide floating bars or anything you click on, add your own CSS or JavaScript.

Moving in is easy

Bookmarks, history and sign-ins come over from Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, Opera and Arc. Guided setup in English, Italian and French.

One bar for everything

Type. It's already there.

Addresses, searches, open tabs, bookmarks, history, Reading List and every command live in one bar. Press ⌘L or ⌘K in Tacet. Try it here: press ⌘K or type below.

esc
Tacet Shield

Ad blocking you can actually switch off.

Most blockers are all or nothing. Shield gives you a clear switch for every site, and sensible defaults everywhere else. Try the switches.

  • Works offline. A built-in list covers the biggest ad and tracking networks from the first launch.
  • Community lists. Turn on EasyList and EasyPrivacy for tens of thousands more rules, converted to WebKit rules and refreshed weekly.
  • No cookie walls. Consent banners are hidden and the page scrolls again.
  • Fewer YouTube ads. Video ads are stripped or skipped automatically.
  • Third-party cookies blocked. Sites can't follow you around the web.
  • ⇧⌘B turns the whole thing off and on again.
Tacet Shieldnews.example.com
Protection on this site
Block ads and trackers
Hide cookie banners
Skip YouTube ads
Block third-party cookies
Remove tracking from links
275 rules active
0 requests blocked on this page
Clean links

Links without the luggage.

Shared links are stuffed with tags that tell advertisers where you came from. Tacet strips them before the page even loads, so you land on the same page, minus the tracking.

  • Removes utm_, fbclid, gclid, msclkid and dozens more
  • Knows the site-specific ones on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon and X
  • "Copy Link Without Tracking" in every page's menu
  • Upgrades to HTTPS, and an HTTPS-only mode if you want it strict
Link you clickedCleaning…
https://shop.example.com/item?id=42&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=autumn_sale&fbclid=IwAR2xK9vQ7mT3pL&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8eTFBhCX
Tacet Assistant · Beta

Ask the page you're reading.

Open a panel beside any page with ⇧⌘A. The page comes along automatically. It can read your other tabs, your history and bookmarks, the transcript of a YouTube video, look things up on the web, and with Browser use turned on, click and type for you.

  • Apple's on-device model on macOS 26: free, offline and private, no key needed
  • Web access searches the web and reads pages, and lists its sources under the answer
  • Browser use, off until you turn it on, clicks, types and scrolls for you. It never touches password or card fields, and asks before sending, buying or deleting
  • Select text, right-click: Explain, Translate, Summarise or Ask About It
  • Chat history on your Mac only, a full-window chat view, a panel you can resize
  • Text in web pages is treated as content, never as instructions. Off until you turn it on
Apple on-deviceAnthropicOpenAIOpenRouterDeepSeekOllamaLM Studio
Tacet Assistant Betaclaude-opus-5-5
Ask Tacet Assistant…⇧⌘A
Make it yours

Your browser, your colours.

Pick an accent colour, put the sidebar on either side or switch to tabs along the top, float the page with rounded corners, and choose your start page. Try a colour, then a background:

  • Window tint that follows each site's colour
  • Start page with clock, greeting, favourites and gradients, animated gradients, your own photo or a short video
  • Light, dark or system, on the whole browser and per site
  • Search shortcuts: type yt lofi to search YouTube, w for Wikipedia, gh for GitHub
Aurora
Dusk
Ocean
Forest
Ember
Graphite
Tab groups along the top of the Tacet window, each in its own colour
Tab groups, each in its own colour.
How it compares

Safari's engine, Arc's ideas,
nobody's tracking.

What you get out of the box, with nothing to install or sign up for.

Out of the boxTacetSafariChromeArc
Ads and trackers blocked✓✕✕✓
Blocker off per site, one click✓✕✕✓
Tracking stripped from links✓~✕✕
WebKit speed and battery life✓✓✕✕
Vertical tabs and tab groups✓~~✓
AI assistant that reads the page✓~~✓
Bring your own AI key, or run it offline✓✕✕✕
Chrome, Firefox and Safari extensions✓~~~
No account, no analytics✓~✕✕
Open source✓~~✕
✓ built in · ~ partly, or with an extension or add-on · ✕ not available. Based on the default setup of each browser on macOS as of October 2026.
Keyboard first

Fast hands, fast browser.

Everything has a shortcut, and the command bar finds the rest.

⌘ L
Command bar
⌘ K
Command bar, commands first
⌘ T
New tab
⌘ W
Close tab
⇧ ⌘ T
Reopen closed tab
⌘ N
New window
⇧ ⌘ N
New private window
⌘ S
Show or hide the sidebar
⌃ Tab
Next tab
⌘ 1 … 9
Go to tab
⌘ [ / ]
Back / forward
⌘ F
Find on page
⇧ ⌘ R
Reader
⌥ ⌘ S
Split view
⇧ ⌘ A
Tacet Assistant
⇧ ⌘ B
Ad blocker on or off
⌘ D
Bookmark the page
⌘ Y
History
⇧ ⌘ E
Export as PDF
⌃ ⌘ L
Lock window with Touch ID

No shortcut matches. The command bar has it: ⌘K, then type.

Latest release

Always moving.

Tacet checks for updates itself and installs them for you. Here's what the newest one brings.

1.6.2
Latest release
Downloads —
Size about 9 MB
Requires macOS 14 or later
License GPL-3.0

Tacet 1.6.2

  • Lumen is now Tacet. Same browser, new name; everything carries over when you update
  • New icon, "Eclissi": a dark disc in front of the sun
  • The setup fits its window again, and removing an extension also deletes its data
  • Tabs sent to a new window come back if the window doesn't open
All release notes →
Tacet app icon

Try Tacet today.

Version 1.6.2 · free · macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel

Download Tacet 1.6.2 All releases
1Download and openOpen Tacet-1.6.2.dmg, about 9 MB.
2Drag it to ApplicationsDrop Tacet onto the Applications shortcut, then eject the disk image.
3Open it the first timeIf macOS says Tacet is damaged, run this once in Terminal. Tacet isn't notarized by Apple yet; after this, its own updates just work.
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Tacet.app

Prefer to build it yourself? git clone https://github.com/scadavide55/Tacet && cd Tacet && ./build.sh makes a universal Tacet.app with just the Xcode command line tools.

Questions

Good to know.

Why did Lumen become Tacet?

There were already other browsers called Lumen, and the name sounded too much like an AI product. Tacet is the mark in music for silence, where an instrument stays quiet. It’s the same browser: updating from Lumen keeps your tabs, passwords, settings and extensions.

Is Tacet free?

Yes. Tacet is free to download and use, and open source under the GPL-3.0 license.

Does Tacet collect any data?

No. There are no analytics and no accounts. Tacet only talks to the sites you visit. If you turn them on, it also downloads filter lists from easylist.to and fetches search suggestions from your search engine. Suggestions are off by default. Tacet Assistant (beta) is off too; if you turn it on, your questions and the page you attach go only to the AI provider you chose, with your own key. When it searches the web for you, the search goes to your provider (Anthropic) or to DuckDuckGo (other providers). With Apple's on-device model, nothing leaves your Mac.

Why does macOS warn me when I open it?

Tacet isn't notarized by Apple yet, so macOS may say Tacet “is damaged and can’t be opened”. The download is fine. Open Terminal and run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Tacet.app once, then open Tacet as usual. Tacet’s own updates keep working after that.

Which engine does Tacet use?

WebKit, the same engine as Safari. Sites look and behave the way they do in Safari, and you get its speed and battery life.

Can I bring my bookmarks and passwords?

Yes. Tacet imports bookmarks, history and sign-ins straight from Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Brave, Edge and Arc. Passwords come across from a CSV exported by the Passwords app or your old browser, and are kept in your Mac's Keychain behind Touch ID.

Does Tacet support extensions?

Yes, on macOS 15.4 or later. Tacet runs web extensions, the same kind Safari, Chrome and Firefox use. Add the Safari extensions that come with apps on your Mac in one click from Settings › Extensions, or add a Chrome (.crx), Firefox (.xpi) or unpacked extension from a file. Most work; a few features only Chrome or Firefox have may not. Extensions never run in private windows.

What does the assistant cost?

Nothing from Tacet. With Apple's on-device model on macOS 26 it's free and offline. With Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or DeepSeek you pay the provider for what you use with your own key. With Ollama or LM Studio the model runs on your Mac.

Does it block every YouTube ad?

Most of them, most of the time. YouTube changes its ads often, so some may still get through.