macos-web-next
macOS desktop simulation in the browser — companion to windows-web-next for computer-use agent training.
Credits
macos-web-next is a fork of macOS Web by Puru Vijay (MIT-licensed, © 2021 Puru Vijay). Puru built the original browser-based macOS desktop in Svelte — the menu bar, dock, window manager, desktop chrome, SCSS styling system, and the first set of apps. I forked it because I needed a controllable, instrumentable desktop for a synthetic-data pipeline for computer-use agents, and a polished macOS desktop already existed rather than being something worth rebuilding from scratch. Attribution is also surfaced in the running app's About pane, which credits both developers.
What was already there
From Puru's macOS Web: the core desktop simulation — Svelte architecture, window management and traffic-light titlebars, the dock, the menu bar, the SCSS styling and visual fidelity, and the original app shells.
What I added
- 20+ new macOS app components and fleshed-out implementations for previously-skeleton apps.
- Consolidated OS services — a virtual filesystem, clipboard, and notification layer so agent actions hit structured affordances instead of raw pixels.
- Embed bridge (
html2canvas+ relative-path build) so the desktop can be embedded as an orbiter and screenshotted for training data. - Edge/corner window resizing with corrected diagonal-cursor mapping.
- Screenshot-driven visual polish across Finder, Safari, Music, Notes, Calculator, Reminders, Photos, Mail, Messages, and more.
Problem
Computer-use agents need controllable, instrument-able desktop environments to learn from. Real OS instances are messy: state isn't inspectable, actions aren't transactional, and resets are slow. macos-web-next extends the same idea behind windows-web-next to the macOS UI vocabulary.
Solution
A browser-based macOS desktop — menu bar, dock, window management, a suite of apps — built so an agent (or a human annotator) can act on it through structured affordances rather than pixel-level guesses.
How
- Stack: Svelte, deployed on Vercel.
- Upstream: forked from PuruVJ/macos-web (itself preceded by a Preact version, PuruVJ/macos-preact).
- Companion to:
windows-web-next— same controllable-desktop shape, different OS chrome.
Results
Live at macos-web-next.vercel.app. Embedded as an orbiter on the home hero.
Lessons
Open question: how much OS-specific surface area pays off vs. a single abstracted desktop? Documenting tradeoffs as they emerge.
Neighborhood