Shep keeps WhatsApp, Gmail, Slack, Teams, Claude or anything else with a web address in a rail down the left of one window, each signed in on its own, each counting what is unread. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.
The window follows the desktop's light or dark style on each of them. On Windows and on a Mac the title bar carries the system's own buttons; Windows' notification area takes the coloured mark, and Linux panels and a Mac's menu bar the flat one.
Press + and pick a service from the list, or type any address; either way, that is the service. The list only fills in a name and an address, and a service picked from it is the same as one typed in.
- Every service works the same way. Nothing in Shep knows one site from another, so there are no per-service scripts to go stale when a site changes. The one exception is Google's sign-in, which turns away a browser that states its Chrome version, so the request that carries it leaves the version out.
- The icon is the page's favicon, as the page itself shows it. A service that marks news by changing its favicon, like Google Chat, shows it in the rail that way.
- The unread count comes from the page title, the
(3)most web apps put in front of it. A title that says there is something without a number,(•), draws a dot. - Links stay in the app. A link to another site opens in a window of Shep's that shares the service's session, so it is already signed in. When a sign-in there finishes back on the service, the window closes and the service carries on. A link to the site of another service you added opens in that service instead, brought forward with its workspace. To open a link in your browser, click it with
Ctrl(⌘on a Mac) or the middle button, or pick Open Link in Browser from the right click. - Pages see a browser: the Chromium Shep is built on, with nothing of Shep or Electron in its user agent, which is what sign-ins and captchas check for.
- The page in view is driven from the title bar: back, forward, reload, home to the address it was added with, and find. A zoom other than 100% shows there too, and a click puts it back.
- The service itself is on its right click in the rail: reload, notifications, sound, disable, edit, move to a workspace, remove.
Services can be grouped into workspaces, one on screen at a time, switched from the top of the rail. The ones out of sight keep running, counting and notifying, and the switcher shows a dot when one of them has something new.
Shep also has a do-not-disturb switch, a lock screen with a password, an icon in the system tray, spell checking, screen sharing through the system's own picker on Wayland and on macOS 15 and later, and through Shep's own everywhere else, and a report of what each service's title says, for when a count looks wrong. It speaks English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Releases carry an AppImage, a deb and a tarball for x86-64 Linux, an installer and a zip for x86-64 Windows, and a disk image and a zip for Macs with Apple silicon or Intel. Shep updates itself from those releases on Linux and Windows; on a Mac, Check for Updates opens the latest release.
Shep 1.0 is a new app and starts from a clean profile. Services added in 0.10 have to be added again.
The AppImage needs FUSE 2, which some distributions no longer install by default: fuse-libs on Fedora, libfuse2t64 on Ubuntu 24.04 and later, libfuse2 on Debian. Without it, run the AppImage with --appimage-extract-and-run.
The installer writes to your own account, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Shep, and asks no administrator for anything; the zip is the same app with nothing to install. Windows 10 or 11.
Neither is signed, because a certificate costs money this app does not have. The first run of either one meets SmartScreen: More info, then Run anyway. For the zip, ticking Unblock in the downloaded file's properties before extracting settles it for every file inside at once. Nothing an installer can do changes this, since the warning is about the missing signature rather than about what is installed.
Take Shep-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg for a Mac with Apple silicon, Shep-<version>-mac-x64.dmg for one with Intel; the zips are the same app. Open the disk image and drag Shep to Applications. It is not signed with a Developer ID or notarised by Apple, for the same reason, so the first time it opens macOS refuses it: open System Settings › Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway beside Shep. That is also why a Mac does not update it by itself, since macOS installs updates only for a signed app.
| Keys | |
|---|---|
Ctrl+1 … Ctrl+9 |
The first nine services in the rail |
Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
The next and the previous service |
Ctrl+Alt+1 … Ctrl+Alt+9 |
A workspace, the number after the last being all services |
Alt+←, Alt+→ |
Back and forward in the page |
Ctrl+R, F5 |
Reload, and Ctrl+Shift+R without the cache |
Ctrl+F |
Find in page |
Ctrl+=, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0 |
Zoom in, out, back to actual size |
Ctrl+N |
Add a service |
Ctrl+, |
Preferences |
Alt+Shift+D |
Do not disturb |
Alt+Shift+L |
Lock |
F11 |
Full screen |
Ctrl+Q |
Quit |
On a Mac, ⌘ takes the place of Ctrl, and ⌥ of Alt, except where the Mac has keys of its own: ⌘[ and ⌘] go back and forward, ⌘⇧[ and ⌘⇧] switch services beside ⌃Tab, ⌥⌘I opens the developer tools, and ⌃⌘F is full screen.
There is no account and no server. Shep keeps your services, workspaces and preferences in ~/.config/Shep/shep.json, on Windows %APPDATA%\Shep\shep.json, on a Mac ~/Library/Application Support/Shep/shep.json, and each service keeps its own session beside it, so you stay signed in until you remove the service, which deletes its session too.
Shep sends nothing about you anywhere. It makes two requests of its own: the update check, to this repository's releases on GitHub, and the download of a spell-checking dictionary the first time a language needs one, which Chromium fetches from Google. What each service does is up to the service: Shep is a frame around its web app and does not look inside.
Camera, microphone and screen sharing are asked about once per service and the answer is remembered. Notifications follow the service's own switch, and a few that expose nothing, such as going full screen, are granted. Every other permission a page asks for is refused.
The lock password is stored as a salted scrypt hash. The lock hides the window's contents; it does not encrypt the sessions on disk.
Node 22 or later and npm.
npm install
npm start # the app, with the interface reloading as you edit
npm test # typecheck, lint, build, unit tests, then the end-to-end suite
npm run package # the packages for the system you are on, into dist/npm run package builds what that system can build: on Linux the AppImage, the deb and the tarball, on Windows the installer and the zip, on a Mac the disk image and the zip. None builds another's.
A run from the repository uses its own profile, ~/.config/Shep-dev, on Windows %APPDATA%\Shep-dev, and never touches the installed app's.
The end-to-end suite launches the real app, so it opens windows. On Linux, with xvfb-run installed, it opens them on a virtual display instead of your desktop; one test also needs xdotool, and skips itself where there is none. On Fedora that is dnf install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb xdotool. Windows and macOS have no such thing, so the windows open on your desktop and take the focus while the suite runs. npm run test:network adds the tests that load real sites, such as the one that renders a Cloudflare captcha.
If Electron aborts at start with a sandbox error, as it does on Ubuntu 24.04, the distribution keeps unprivileged user namespaces from Chromium's sandbox. Pass --no-sandbox, which is what the packaged builds do.
See CONTRIBUTING.md before sending a change.
Shep began as a fork of Rambox Community Edition, archived in 2022, and 1.0 is a rewrite that keeps its name and none of its code. The idea that every service should work the same way comes from ElectronIM. The workspace icons are from Lucide.
Shep is not affiliated with any of the services it opens.