Plash

Add several websites, switch between them, and turn on Browsing Mode when you want to click around in the page.

Use-cases

• Bing Photo of the Day
• Calendar
  For example, Google Calendar or Outlook 365.
• Personal stats
  You could even make a custom website for this.
• Random street view image
• Animated GIF
  For example, an animated GIF from Giphy.
• Random color
• Build a custom website
  You could build something quick and host it on GitHub Pages, jsfiddle, or CodePen.

Share your use-case

Features

• Show a remote or local website
• Interact with the website (“Browsing Mode”)
• Automatically reload the website at a custom interval
• Add multiple websites
• Show the website on a different display
• Invert website colors (fake dark mode)
• Add custom CSS and JavaScript to the website
• Lower the opacity
• Transparent background
• Automatically deactivate while on battery
• Audio is muted
• Single image will be aspect-filled to your screen
• Hide menu bar icon
• Shortcuts support
• Scriptable
• Share extension

Tips

Browsing mode

You can interact with the website by enabling “Browsing Mode”. When in this mode, you can right-click to be able to go back/forward, reload, and zoom in the page contents (the zoom level is saved). You can also pinch to magnify. This is different from zooming the page contents in that it will zoom in to a specific part of the page instead of just enlarging everything.

Plash injects a CSS class named plash-is-browsing-mode on the <html> element while browsing mode is active. You could use this class to customize the website for browsing mode.

If clicking a link opens it in a new window, you can hold the Option key while clicking the link to open it in the main Plash window.

Zoom in website

To zoom in the website, activate “Browsing Mode”, right-click the website, and then select “Zoom In”.

URL placeholders for screen width and height

Use [[screenWidth]] and [[screenHeight]] in any URL and Plash will substitute the right values for you. For example, https://source.unsplash.com/random/[[screenWidth]]x[[screenHeight]]?puppy.

Scroll to position

You can scroll a website to a specific position each time it is loaded by putting the following in the website’s “JavaScript” field. Adjust the “500” to how far down it should scroll.

window.scrollTo(0, 500);

You can also scroll to a specific element matching a CSS selector:

document.querySelector('.title')?.scrollIntoView();

Make the website occupy only half the screen

You can use the “CSS” field in the website settings to adjust the padding of the website:

:root {
	margin-left: 50% !important;
}

Detect Plash

Plash injects a CSS class named is-plash-app on the <html> element. You could use this class to customize your website for Plash. For example, if your website has instructions on how to use it in Plash, you could hide those when it’s running in Plash.

Share extension

Plash comes bundled with a share extension. You can, for example, use it to quickly add a website you have open in Safari to Plash.

Frequently Asked Questions

Scripting

You can control Plash using anything that supports opening a URL with a custom scheme.

For example, to reload the current website, run this terminal command:

open -g plash:reload

Tools

• plash-cli: Command-line tool.
• alfred-plash: Alfred workflow.
• Raycast commands

Commands

add

Add a website to Plash.

You can optionally specify a title. If no title is given, a title will be automatically fetched from the website.

open -g 'plash:add?url=https://sindresorhus.com/plash&title=Plash%20website'

Don’t forget to correctly encode query parameters.

reload

Reload the current website.

open -g plash:reload

next

Switch to the next website in the list.

open -g plash:next

previous

Switch to the previous website in the list.

open -g plash:previous

random

Switch to a random website in the list.

It will never show the same website twice in a row, unless you only have a single website.

open -g plash:random

toggle-browsing-mode

Toggle browsing mode.

open -g plash:toggle-browsing-mode

Examples

Node.js

import {execFileSync} from 'node:child_process';

execFileSync('open', ['--background', 'plash:reload']);

Swift

import Cocoa

let command = "plash:reload"

let configuration = NSWorkspace.OpenConfiguration()
configuration.activates = false
NSWorkspace.shared.open(URL(string: command)!, configuration: configuration)

AppleScript

do shell script "open --background 'plash:reload'"

Python

import subprocess

subprocess.run(['open', '--background', 'plash:reload'])

Older Versions

• 2.16.0 for macOS 15+
• 2.15.0 for macOS 14+
• 2.14.1 for macOS 13+
• 2.12.1 for macOS 12+
• 2.10.1 for macOS 11+
• 2.1.1 for macOS 10.15+

Non-App Store Version

A special version for users that cannot access the App Store. It won’t receive automatic updates. I will update it here once a year.

Download (2.17.2)

Requires macOS 26 or later