Docs · Power tools

Boss key, screenshot, interceptor.

The set of tools that go beyond "browse a webpage": pause requests like Burp, pop a clean screenshot with redactions, and the F9 panic switch that turns every Husk window into a calculator.

Boss key (F9)

Press F9 from anywhere inside Husk. Every Husk window across every running profile flips to a calculator:

  • Window title becomes Calculator.
  • The chrome and content are replaced by a working calculator UI.
  • Taskbar icon and Alt-Tab preview swap to the calculator look.
  • Any audio playing in tabs is muted.

Press F9 again to flip back. The boss state is shared across Husk processes via named Windows events, so a single keypress flips multiple windows simultaneously.

It's a real calculator. The buttons work. Type things into it. Use it. If someone is standing over your shoulder, the calculator should look like a calculator they interrupted you using.

Limits

  • Memory. Boss key hides the visual surface of Husk; it doesn't unload tabs or clear the WebView. A memory snapshot of the process still contains the page you were on.
  • Network. In-flight requests continue during boss mode (the calculator is a UI overlay, not a kill switch). For a hard stop, close the tab before triggering boss key.

Screenshot tool

Click the screenshot icon in the chrome bar, or press the configured shortcut. Two modes:

  • Full page — captures the entire scroll height, not just the visible viewport.
  • Rectangle — drag to select a region. Escape cancels.

Built-in editor

The screenshot opens in a small editor with three tools:

  • Crop — trim out the parts you don't want to share.
  • Arrows — point at things, multi-color.
  • Redact — solid blocks over sensitive text. Use this before sharing anything.

Save the result to disk (default HuskData/screenshots/) or copy to clipboard. The OpenInExplorer action validates the path against the configured screenshots directory before opening, so a tampered settings file can't make Husk open arbitrary system folders.

Request interceptor

A Burp-style request-and-response interceptor, built into the chrome. Toggle the intercept switch in the chrome bar; from that point onward every request and fetch / XHR response pauses in a chrome panel before the page sees it.

  • Pause & edit — modify URL, headers, body, and forward.
  • Drop — kill the request silently. The page sees a network error.
  • Forward as-is — let it through unchanged.
  • Replay — re-send a previous request, with edits.

Sensitive header redaction

Cookies and auth headers never reach the chrome JS heap. Headers like Cookie, Authorization, X-API-Key, X-Auth-Token are redacted before the request is surfaced to the interceptor UI. You see the URL, method, path and other headers — but the secret value is replaced by a placeholder. The real value still travels to the server unchanged.

Pop-out window

The interceptor can run in its own window. Drag tab traffic into a second monitor while keeping the main browser focused on the page you're testing.

Cookie editor

Per-site, accessible from the shield icon. View, edit, or wipe individual cookies for the current origin. Useful for clearing a sticky tracker without losing every other session on the browser.

Paranoia tabs

A stricter mode applied per-tab: paranoia tabs lose access to certain JS APIs (clipboard read, page-visibility backgrounding tricks, some sensor APIs) and the activity counter only ticks on user-initiated events. Use it when you're loading something you'd rather not have the site observe in detail.

Wipe

Each profile has a "wipe everything" action in its menu. Wipe asks for the phrase (for encrypted profiles), then securely overwrites the materialized state with zeros before removing the encrypted blob. After a wipe the profile is gone — no recovery.

There is no panic wipe via IPC. Earlier drafts had a hotkey that could be triggered from content script — that route was removed before v0.1 ship because any visited site could synthesise the message. Wipe is now only reachable from the chrome menu, which requires the phrase.