Pennywise For Linux

Let's say you don't have the luxury of having two monitors, and you have the benefit of being able to work while still being able to enjoy something entertaining or relaxing or helpful on the other monitor.

Well, there are tons of work-arounds to not having a two-monitor setup, mostly in the form of nifty browser extensions (Picture-in-Picture) that are capable of "detaching" videos from their webpages and allowing you to enjoy them in a floating, always-on-top window.

That's all fine and dandy, but what if you want a more "complete" solution, something capable of displaying videos and normal web content in a floating, always-on-top window? Simple - just try Pennywise.

Well, clearly, it's because the developer is a big fan of Pennywise, the creepy antagonist in Stephen King's horror novel called "It."

According to the app's GitHub page, it's named this way "because the application helps in floating and Pennywise loved to do that." This is pretty much the extent of what I'm willing to explain regarding the app's name and I'll leave the extra research on the subject to anyone who's interested.

Ok, so I covered why it's called Pennywise, and I hope that the fact that it's all about removing the annoyance of having to constantly "ALT+TAB" from your daily routine is quite obvious.

At its core, Pennywise is a simple browser that feautres a stripped down UI (which is what allows it to display content in a compact form without being awkward - just try that on a normal browser, try resizing it to less than a quarter of your screen and you'll know what I mean).

In terms of features, there's really nothing special about Pennywise. Yes, it's built with multi-tasking in mind, but not in the traditional sense. As far as features are concerned, you don't get anything more than the ability to adjust the opacity and a so-called "detached mode." What's cool is that everything can be done using the keyboard (check out the app's GitHub page for more details).

I really enjoyed Pennywise, and I really wanted it to be perfect for every situation out there. Sadly, that's not the case. Don't get me wrong, it's a great little app with a lot of use cases, but it could do with a small pop-up menu/window/thingy and support for bookmarks. Oh, and it would have been amazing if it would have a "open windows from last session" feature.

The browser might also come across a bit conservative when it comes to some video streaming platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, Daily Motion, and so forth. You might be able to make it work by disabling the "Auto Embed" option from the Edit menu, but I have to be honest, I did not have any issues with YouTube during my tests. It worked great.

While some might struggle to find a proper use case for Pennywise, I actually appreciate the idea and the execution. It might not be the perfect   tool of this sort (especially when it comes to video streaming platforms), but an app as Pennywise is as useful as you're willing to make it, to be honest.

As I mentioned at the start, it might be particularly useful for users who don't have a two-monitor setup. It might be easier to think of it as a sort of floating window for your checklists or a sort of desktop widget thingy.