DHIVA LABS · LEARN

Appearance

Beginner guide ​

By the end of this page you will have visited a website, searched the web, worked with tabs, bookmarked a page and checked how many ads and trackers Flint blocked.

What you need ​

  • Flint Browser installed. See Install.
  • An internet connection.

The window ​

Flint opens on its home page, a new tab with a search box. The parts you will use most:

The Flint Browser window with three tabs open and the home page showing
  1. 1Tabs — One tab per page. Select the x on a tab to close it.
  2. 2New tab — Opens a new tab on the home page. Ctrl+T does the same.
  3. 3Back — Back, forward, reload and home sit together here.
  4. 4Address bar — Type an address or search words here.
  5. 5Ad and tracker blocking — The shield. Shows how many requests were blocked and turns blocking off or on for this site.
  6. 6Menu — New windows, bookmarks, history, downloads, reader view, settings and more.
  7. 7Search the web or enter an address — The home page search box.
  8. 8Top sites — The sites you visit most. Select one to open it.

The downloads button, an arrow pointing down, sits between the shield and the menu.

1. Visit a website ​

  1. Select the address bar, or press Ctrl + L.

  2. Type example.com and press Enter.

    Flint opens https://example.com. A padlock at the start of the address bar means the connection is secure. A warning sign and the title Not secure mean the page came over plain http://.

  3. Select Back (the left arrow) to go back to the home page.

You do not need to type https://. Flint tries the secure version of a site first and only falls back to http:// if the secure one does not answer.

2. Search the web ​

  1. In the address bar, type a few words, for example how do tides work, and press Enter.

    Anything that is not an address goes to your search engine. The default is DuckDuckGo.

  2. As you type, a list of suggestions appears under the address bar. They come from your own history and bookmarks only; Flint does not send what you type to anyone until you press Enter.

To use Google, Bing or Brave Search instead, open the menu, select Settings and change Search engine.

3. Work with tabs ​

  1. Press Ctrl + T to open a new tab.

  2. Right-click any link on a page and select Open Link in New Tab. The new tab opens behind the current one.

  3. Press Ctrl + Tab to move to the next tab, or select a tab to switch to it.

  4. Press Ctrl + W to close the current tab.

  5. Closed one by mistake? Press Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen it.

When you quit and start Flint again, it reopens the tabs you had. You can turn this off with Restore tabs on startup in Settings.

4. Bookmark a page ​

  1. Go to a page you want to keep.

  2. Select the star at the right end of the address bar, or press Ctrl + D.

    A message says Bookmark added and the star fills in.

  3. To see all your bookmarks, open the menu and select Bookmarks.

Select the star again to remove the bookmark.

5. See what was blocked ​

Flint blocks ads and trackers on every site from the start.

  1. Visit a news site or any site that shows ads.

  2. Look at the shield on the toolbar and at the tab. Each shows a small number: how many ad and tracker requests Flint blocked on that page.

If a site does not work properly with blocking on, see Block ads and trackers to turn it off for that one site.

What you learned ​

  • The address bar takes both addresses and search words.
  • Ctrl + T, Ctrl + W and Ctrl + Shift + T open, close and reopen tabs.
  • The star bookmarks a page, and the shield shows what was blocked.

Next steps ​