The browser extension

Install the White Rabbit extension once, and turn on Rabbit, White Rabbit's AI, when White Rabbit asks. The rabbit holes Rabbit finds in your browsing then show up on Home. Nothing to press. The extension's code is public, so you can read exactly what it does.

The extension keeps a short record of the pages you visit in normal browser windows: each page's address, title, and when you were there, and which page led to which. Whenever White Rabbit is open in the same browser, it reads that record. Rabbit is off until you turn it on, and White Rabbit asks as soon as the extension connects. Once you say yes, Rabbit looks through what it reads once a day, or sooner when a sitting looks like a rabbit hole (at most four times a day), never full addresses, finds the rabbit holes in it, and sorts each one's pages into a trail. Any White Rabbit page you have open on the computer can look, even in a tab you're not looking at. With Rabbit off, nothing is suggested.

When Rabbit finds one, Home shows Looks like you went down a rabbit hole, with the topic, the number of sources, and how long you spent. Choose Review & share to open it in the composer, Save privately to keep it just for yourself, Ignore to put it aside (Rabbit may offer it again if it finds those pages again), or Delete to be rid of it for good: Rabbit never offers or reads those visits again in this browser. After days away, Home says While you were away, Rabbit found 3 rabbit holes. If you aren't looking at White Rabbit in that browser when Rabbit finds some, you can get a push, or a line in a while-you-were-away email, saying how many and in which browser, never what they are. Open White Rabbit there to look.

1. Open White Rabbit on a computer, in the browser you use most.
2. Select Add to Chrome (or your browser's name) on Let your rabbit holes find you at the top of Home, or under The White Rabbit extension in Settings → Capture & privacy. New accounts are offered it during setup too, right after the sample trail.
3. Approve the extension in your browser. Chrome and the browsers built like it say it can “Read your browsing history.” Any White Rabbit tab that's already open connects by itself, so there's no need to reload.
4. When you turn on Rabbit, the extension opens a small window, Start with the past two days? Choose Allow and your browser asks once more, this time to read your browser history, so Rabbit's first look can include what you browsed before you added it. Choose Not now and Rabbit starts with what you browse from then on.

To check it's working, go to Settings → Capture & privacy. Under The White Rabbit extension, it says which browser it's on and whether it can see your browser history.

Phones and tablets can't run extensions, so rabbit holes are found on a computer. On a computer without the extension, you can import the history file your browser exports (Safari: File → Export Browsing Data; Chrome: Google Takeout) from Settings → Capture & privacy. You can write rabbit holes by hand anywhere. On a phone, save a link with +, or on Android, once White Rabbit is installed as an app, with Share → White Rabbit (see Keep adding after you post).

Safari doesn't let White Rabbit's page talk to an extension the way other browsers do, so on a Mac, Safari connects through White Rabbit Helper, a small menu bar app.

1. Open White Rabbit in Safari and select Add to Safari.
2. Copy the command it shows, paste it into Terminal, and press Return. The command works for 15 minutes. It checks that the download is signed by White Rabbit, installs White Rabbit Helper in the Applications folder in your home folder, and asks you to confirm the account it's connecting to. Then a rabbit appears in your menu bar.
3. System Settings opens at Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access. Turn on White Rabbit Helper. macOS requires this before any app can read Safari's history.
4. White Rabbit shows Safari is connected when it's done. Once you turn on Rabbit, the rabbit holes it finds show up on Home.

The Helper runs until you quit it from the menu bar. To keep it running after a restart, click the rabbit in the menu bar and choose Open at Login. It's off until you turn it on.

These are dropped before anything is stored, first in the extension and again in White Rabbit:

• Private and incognito windows. The extension doesn't run in them at all.
• Sites on your Never analyze list.
• Whole kinds of sites under Always skip: banking and money, health and medical, email, work tools, password managers, and adult sites. All of them are on by default.
• Sign-in, account, settings, checkout, cart, billing, and password pages.
• Links that are themselves the way in to something private: shared documents and folders, meeting links, invites, and magic sign-in or password-reset links.
• Anything you visit while White Rabbit is paused.

Every address it keeps is cleaned first: the part after # goes, and so does anything in it that looks like a secret, such as a sign-in token, a code, a key, or a session id. The extension doesn't read what's on the pages you visit, and it keeps its record for a week at most. Older pages are deleted automatically.

• Pause: in Settings → Capture & privacy, select Pause White Rabbit and choose 15 minutes, 1 hour, until tomorrow, or until you resume. The extension's own menu, from its icon in your browser's toolbar, has the same controls. Nothing you visit while paused is kept.
• Turn off detection: switch off Rabbit-hole detection at the top of the same page.
• Never analyze a site: add it to the Never analyze list. It's ignored completely.
• Delete what it recorded: select Delete history. This clears the extension's record in that browser too. Rabbit holes you saved or shared stay.

Remove it like any other extension, from your browser's extensions page (for example chrome://extensions in Chrome, or about:addons in Firefox). Uninstalling deletes the extension's record from your browser. Rabbit holes you saved or shared stay on your account until you delete them.

To remove White Rabbit Helper from a Mac, run the uninstall command shown when you select Disconnect next to that Mac in Settings → Capture & privacy. The uninstall command disconnects the Mac it runs on, and Disconnect all stops every Mac sending anything. Delete history deletes the Safari history already saved to your account.