Coherence & Unite - Single Site Browser creators / alternatives to Fluid.app (Another Setapp score!)

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I have used Fluid.app for several years when I want to make a “Single Site Browser” (SSB), and have been generally pleased with the results.

However, the development appears mostly stagnant, and there are some annoyances. The biggest drawback is that Fluid.app browsers, which are based on Webkit, can’t use Safari extensions.

There have been some solutions out there which would allow you to make SSBs based on Chrome, but they were always a little fidgety / twitchy, and often even required using the command line… which I use all the time, but didn’t seem the right UI for this. It seemed like a tool for people who needed to do this once and just wanted to get it done with ASAP.

However, as part of Setapp, I came across Unite and Coherence – both of which are apps which make SSBs. At first I ignored this, because I had Fluid.app, but I recently decided to take a closer look.

Unite will create SSBs based on Safari / Webkit.

Coherence will create SSBs based on Chrome or Brave which means that you can use Chrome extensions. Which is a huge win, IMO. Plus, you get Brave’s build-in ad-blocking and privacy features, which I find myself more and more interested in.

So now I have two new apps that I will be using with my Setapp subscription, for no additional cost.

The only downside to SSBs (and this is true of Fluid also) is that they are not very easy to backup or move/copy to another Mac. If you spend a lot of time creating one and customizing it, you’ll have to duplicate that work on another Mac, if you use more than one, or if you do a clean installation of macOS, you’ll have to re-create it as well.

If you want to know more about the similarities / differences between the two apps, the developer has a comparison page (they are both made by the same company):

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Thanks for sharing, @tjluoma.

I’ve used Fluid extensively in the past, but have since switched to Coherence for the reasons you mentioned. Among other things, I find it helpful to be able to use Chrome plug-ins (e.g. Grammarly) within Coherence-generated apps.

I don’t create/use as many apps as I used to; as you mentioned, Coherence apps aren’t very transportable. But, they are handy to have in some specific situations. In my case, I regularly use Brain.fm and Asana apps.

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I have Coherence Pro 1.x, never upgraded to 2.x. I didn’t like the 1.x version because it was quite clunky to create and use resulting browser-apps. Maybe it improved, I never checked.

If it now is based on Brave, and comes with Setapp, that’s a big win.

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While you can create clean-looking mobile-like title bar-less apps using Unite, you can’t with Coherence X. Do I have that right?

Sad—I need the Chromium engine for a certain webapp. Alas I will use Unite for others. (Thanks for the tip, TJ; I hadn’t noticed Unite before.)

Edit: nevermind. Even Unite still has a persistent title bar. It just happens to be white and blended in with the app I was trying to use it with. Ha.

Edit 2: Sorry. Actually, in each Unite app’s preferences, you can choose to hide the title bar. It looks stellar!

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Ok, so are you looking to hide the menu bar or the title bar?

I’m going to assume title bar, because I don’t think menu bar is even possible.

FWIW, this seems to be “as minimal as possible” with Coherence:

Coherence-X-Minimal
Coherence-X-Minimal2216×1880 316 KB

There is a titlebar to the window, but no address-bar/toolbar. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for it not.

Personally I think it would look super-weird not to have a bar at the top of the window, but maybe I’m missing something.

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Title bar, not menu bar. And yes, that’s the most you can do with Coherence.

Unite can hide the title bar, though, and it makes for a really clean look. I prefer it for some kinds of apps.

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I was excited thinking, as well, that this was another Setapp score but found the app buggy from the getgo. First off, it led me into thinking everything could be edited post-SSB-creation but I found that I could not (easily?) add extensions that were not imported from the start.

Another issue is that there is no support documentation or user forums (thats how I ended up here) and a major failing of solo indie developers in general (I also think this dev maybe spreading themselves too thin judging by the number of products they have out).

Finally and most importantly is that the app/SSB I created failed to start again after I changed its name (added two more letters) in the so-called editable settings.

So bottom line is that I won’t be investing more time in this (set)app.

I wish Setapp would implement a review system like the Apple or Chrome stores.

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I did find that it was not as a reliable over time. I eventually gave up on it.

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Good to know I’m not alone! Any SSB solutions that you’ve found to be great and stuck with? I’m back to using Chrome though I just discovered the ‘tab groups’ feature that I’d somehow missed and it seems useful though still not as much an SSB.

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Fluid.app works great, but it’s based on Safari not Chrome.

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Yes I recall it was pretty nicely done but limited partially because it was Safari-based. I’ve gotten quite attached to the features of Chrome esp since I usually don’t need the better energy management features of Safari. Reasonable tradeoff.