Apr 2023 → Nov 2023Source

Overse Browser

A multi-tab desktop browser in Python and PyQt5, with SQLite history and AES-encrypted profiles.

The browser running: tab strip, address bar, and the Chromium widget doing the rendering.

Type: Artifact
Where: Personal
When: Apr 2023 → Nov 2023
Duration: 7 mo
Status: Complete
Source: GitHub

The problem

I wanted to understand what a browser actually does — tab lifecycle, session state, history, and where the security boundaries sit — which is hard to learn from the outside.

What I built

PyQt5 over a Chromium widget for rendering, with the parts I wanted to understand written by hand: tab lifecycle and state, bookmarks, and history in SQLite.

Profile storage is AES-encrypted through OpenSSL, so the interesting question — what a browser is trusted to hold on disk, and what happens if that file is read by someone else — had to be answered rather than assumed.

Screens

History, read back out of SQLite — the state a browser keeps is the part I wanted to build by hand.

Results

Multi-tablifecycle by hand

SQLitehistory + bookmarks

AESencrypted profiles

Working multi-tab browser with persistent history and bookmarks.
Encrypted profile storage rather than plaintext on disk.
A concrete understanding of where browser state actually lives.

Architecture

The rendering engine is borrowed; everything to the right of it was the point.

In hindsight

Encrypting the profile without a real key-derivation story is security theatre — the key handling is the weak link, not the cipher. Done again, I'd start from where the key lives and work outwards.

Stack

PythonPyQt5SQLiteOpenSSLAES