On your Mac
Keep it local.
Create personal boards without an account. Your work saves on your Mac, with backups and export whenever you need them.
How storage worksBroadserResearch on one canvas.
Keep web pages, notes, and ideas together. Collect locally on Mac. Open saved pages, discuss, and collaborate on the web.
- Free
- macOS 13 or later
- Apple silicon
- Version 1.0.15
No account needed for personal Mac boards. Cloud features are optional.
Mac + browser
Work together.
Sign in to create cloud boards and invite people to view or edit. Your personal Mac boards stay local unless you choose to share a copy.
Explore collaboration01 — How it works
One board, start to finish. Collect, read, clip, and structure — without losing where anything came from.
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1Collect
- Paste a link, press W, or drag a tab
- The real page lands on the board
- Browse it right in its card
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2Read
- Open it in Side Peek B
- Find in page ⌘F
- Pin to board
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3Clip
- Save a passage, picture, or screenshot
- The clip keeps its page and date
- Copy a citation
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4Structure
- Mind map ⇧M
- Flowchart S
- Table ⇧T
- Each topic shows its page's icon
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5Share
- A web page anyone can open, frame by frame
- Send a copy by AirDrop, Mail, or Messages
- Export a file, image, Markdown, or Mermaid
- Your input
- Broadser does it
- A step on the board
02 — Web pages
Pin the page, not a bookmark. Broadser for Mac opens pages directly, subject to site restrictions and compatibility.
- Paste a link, press W, or drag one in from another tab.
- Browse a page on Mac, or read its saved screenshot in the browser.
- Connect pages to each other and to your notes, and label how they relate.
03 — Side Peek
Read beside the board. A page at full size, with your work still in view.
- Press B, or click a clip's source line, to open it.
- Its own address bar, tabs, and history, with Find in page, zoom, and Print.
- Drag a passage or picture out of it to clip it.
04 — Clips
Take the quote. Keep the source. Every clip remembers the page it came from, and when.
- Click the source line to go back to the page; ⌘-click opens it at the passage, highlighted.
- Copy a ready-made citation, or the clip as Markdown.
- One sources list for the whole board, each page once.
05 — Structure
Turn what you found into structure. Maps, flowcharts, and tables, right beside their sources.
Mind maps ⇧M
They lay themselves out as you type: Tab adds a branch, ↵ a sibling. A topic can cite a page. Open its original source when you need more context.
Tables ⇧T
Paste cells from a spreadsheet, a Markdown table, or a page. Sort, resize, and copy them back out.
Flowcharts S
Steps, decisions, and swimlanes. Click a shape's dot to add the next step; a decision labels its branches Yes and No.
Room for the whole project
Frames group cards by topic. Zoom out and the board becomes a map of titles; the outline lists every frame and card.
Nested boards
A whole board inside a card, for the topic that outgrows its corner.
Templates
Issue tree, fishbone, timeline, org chart, swimlane, and decision matrix.
Export and cite
A board file, a web page anyone can open, an image, a Markdown document, or a bibliography in APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, or RIS.
06 — Home
A board for every project. As many as you like, and Home to keep them in order.
Home ⇧⌘H
Your recent boards and the pages you added lately, and a new board, blank or from a template.
Folders and Starred
Put boards in folders, and star the ones you're working on. Both sit in the sidebar.
Library
Every page and note on every board, filtered by site. A click opens its board with it selected.
PDFs
Drop a PDF on the board and read it beside your pages. A passage you take out of it remembers the PDF.
Save from any browser
The Save to Broadser bookmark sends the page you're reading, and the passage you've selected, to the board that's open.
Bring your bookmarks
Import Chrome bookmarks to start with the pages you already saved.
07 — Collaboration and sharing
Choose how you share. Work together live, send a snapshot, or keep a file.
Forty tabs and a doc, or one board.
Research is mostly moving between what you read and what you think about it. Broadser keeps both in the same place — so the trail you followed is still there when you come back.
08 — Privacy and storage
Built to keep your work. Personal boards stay on your Mac. Cloud sharing is optional.
Personal boards work offline. Web pages, external AI services and cloud collaboration need a connection.
Personal boards on your Mac
Personal boards, settings and website data stay on your Mac. Signing in enables separate cloud boards and collaboration; it doesn't upload your personal boards.
A backup every day
Once a day while Broadser is open, every board, folder, and template is copied to a backup folder: its own, or one you choose, like iCloud Drive. The last 14 are kept, and Restore adds boards back without replacing any.
Yours to take
Export everything makes one file with every board, to keep or to move to another Mac.
No advertising tracking
Broadser has no advertising or advertising tracking scripts. Websites you open have their own privacy practices. We don't sell personal information. Service providers process data to operate the app, and sharing follows your choices. Read the privacy policy.
Fig. 02 — Where your boards live
Your MacPersonal boards save on this Mac, even offline. Optional shared boards sync through the cloud.
BackupsEvery board, folder, and template. The last 14 are kept.
Is Broadser free?
Yes. Broadser is a free personal project with no payment details required. Personal Mac boards need no account; browser and cloud features require sign-in.
What does Broadser for Mac need?
A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 13 or later. The version from this website updates itself: it checks once a day and installs a new version when you quit.
Where are my boards stored?
In Broadser for Mac, personal boards stay on your Mac (Settings ▸ Boards and storage ▸ Show in Finder opens the folder), with local backups. Optional shared boards use cloud storage and collaboration. The privacy policy has the details.
How many boards can I have?
As many as you like: Home lists them, with folders, Starred, your templates, and a Library of every page and note.
Can I share a board?
Share ▸ Collaborate invites people to a cloud board with view or edit access. A read-only link publishes a separate snapshot for anyone with the link; turn it off on Shared links. You can also export a copy or send it by AirDrop, Mail, or Messages on Mac. Saved or downloaded copies can't be recalled.
Can I bring things in from other tools?
Paste a Mermaid diagram or an indented outline and it becomes a map. Paste cells from a spreadsheet, a Markdown table, or a table from a page and it becomes a table. Drop a .csv file or a board file on the board to bring it in.
Does it work on a phone or tablet?
The browser canvas supports touch on phones and tablets and works best on a larger screen. The downloadable app is for Mac with Apple silicon. Shared snapshot links can be viewed without an account.
How do I delete my data?
For local Mac data, delete boards from Home (Trash ▸ Empty Trash), and clear website data and page pictures in Settings. Existing backups and exports remain until you remove them. For your browser account board, choose Delete my board data from the account menu. Manage shared boards separately, and turn off snapshot links on Shared links. For account deletion or other privacy requests, use Support; accounts are shared with Ken's Toolbox.
Bring your research into one place.
Broadser for Mac is free. Personal boards work without an account; cloud sharing is optional.