This Open-Source Tool Fixes Browser History (Hister)

Hister is an open-source browser history search engine that makes everything you read actually searchable, not just the page title and URL. In this video, I test Hister from scratch on an Apple Silicon Mac, set up the local server and browser extension, index real pages in Chrome, search for text buried inside articles, compare the results with normal Chrome history, and try Hister’s query language, terminal interface, and browser history import. 🔗 Relevant Links Hister Repo - https://github.com/asciimoo/hister Hister - https://hister.org/ ❤️ More about us Radically better observability stack: https://betterstack.com/ Written tutorials: https://betterstack.com/community/ Example projects: https://github.com/BetterStackHQ 📱 Socials Twitter: https://twitter.com/betterstackhq Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betterstackhq/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@betterstack LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betterstack 📌 Chapters: 00:00 Hister: Full-Text Search for Your Browser History 00:30 The Problem with Chrome and Firefox 01:22 Installing Hister on Mac 01:51 Setting Up the Chrome Browser Extension 02:00 How Hister Automatically Indexes Pages 02:35 Searching Text Hidden Inside an Article 03:00 Hister vs Chrome Browser History 03:14 Advanced Full-Text Search Queries 03:45 Searching Browser History From the Terminal 04:10 Importing Existing Chrome & Firefox History 04:40 How Hister Stores and Indexes Web Pages 05:16 Hister vs Karakeep, ArchiveBox & Readwise 05:47 Using Hister With AI Agents and MCP 06:12 Memory Usage, macOS & Safari Limitations 07:25 Who Should Actually Use Hister?