Ladybird teases Windows version of the browser

While Project Ladybird is currently available for Linux and macOS, you can’t run it on Windows unless you run it via WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux). However, that might be changing soon.

The lead developer of the Ladybird browser, Andreas Kling, posted a teaser of the project running on Windows. You can find the X post attached below.

It says “Hello from @ladybirdbrowser on Windows,” implying that the team has managed to run it natively on Windows without needing WSL2. This is good news, because it implies that a pre-alpha build for Windows exists somewhere internally.

For those unaware, the Ladybird Browser Initiative is run by a small engineering team supported by community testing; they’ve built the entire browser engine from scratch. It doesn’t use code from existing engines such as Gecko, WebKit, or Chromium.

The post on X didn’t offer a clear timeline or a promise of a specific release date for the Windows version. I wouldn’t estimate it to come out soon either, since the Ladybird browser is still in the pre-alpha development stage for both macOS and Linux. Only recently have they shut the public contribution queue, and the team is preparing for an alpha launch that more people can use.

Since it’s in the pre-alpha stage, you can’t directly install the browser. It’s a tedious process involving cloning the GitHub repository and then compiling it yourself. It’s not a simple, one-click installation right now, even for macOS and Linux.

Fortunately, development seems to be progressing well. Ahead of its alpha release, memory usage was cut by around 80%, so it’s rather efficient now. Furthermore, downloads, history, etc have also been added recently. In the near future, we might see HDR support, as confirmed by Andreas Kling.

For now, the target is 2026 for an alpha release, 2027 for the beta, and 2028 for the public launch.

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