Resource Centre

System Requirements

• OS: Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64-bit only)
• RAM: 4 GB minimum, 8 GB recommended
• Disk: ~250 MB free space
• GPU: Any DirectX 11 capable GPU (for hardware-accelerated rendering)

Installation Steps

1. Download CoveySetup.exe (~85 MB) from the GitHub Releases page.
2. Run the installer. Windows SmartScreen may warn you — click "More info" → "Run anyway". Covey is open source and safe.
3. Choose your installation directory (default: C:\Program Files\Covey).
4. The installer will create a desktop shortcut and start menu entry automatically.
5. Launch Covey and enjoy the elite browsing experience.

Requirements

• OS: Android 8.0 (Oreo) or later
• Architecture: ARM64
• Size: ~24 MB

Steps

1. On your phone, go to Settings → Security → Install from Unknown Sources and enable it for your browser or file manager.
2. Download Covey(release).apk from softwares.matebricks.com.
3. Open the downloaded APK and tap Install.
4. Launch Covey Mobile. You'll get Matter Mode, YouTube Cinema, and full ad-blocking out of the box.

What Are Isolated Profiles?

Unlike Chrome or Edge which share a single process tree between profiles, Covey launches each profile as a completely independent OS-level process. This means each profile has its own cookies, history, localStorage, cache, and bookmarks — with zero crossover.

How It Works Internally

When you switch profiles via covey://profiles, Covey's switch_profile() function in tabs.py spawns a brand-new Python process pointing to a different --user-data-dir. The old window closes, and the new one boots with a completely fresh Chromium engine context.

Creating a New Profile

1. Click the profile icon in the toolbar or navigate to covey://profiles.
2. Click "Add Profile" and give it a name.
3. Each profile gets its own accent color, so you can visually distinguish windows at a glance.

Exporting from Your Old Browser

1. In Chrome/Edge/Brave, go to Bookmarks → Bookmark Manager.
2. Click the three-dot menu → Export bookmarks. This creates a standard HTML file.
3. For passwords, go to Settings → Passwords → Export and save the CSV.

Importing into Covey

1. Open covey://settings in Covey.
2. Navigate to the Import section.
3. Select your exported HTML/CSV files and Covey will process them into its local database.

Your browsing history can be manually transferred by copying Chrome's History SQLite file from %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\ and placing it into Covey's profile directory.

Supported Engines

• Google — Default. Standard Google Search.
• DuckDuckGo — Privacy-focused, no tracking.
• Brave Search — Independent index, no Big Tech.
• Custom URL — Any engine that uses a ?q=%s search parameter.

How to Change

1. Navigate to covey://settings.
2. Scroll to the Search section.
3. Select your preferred engine from the dropdown, or enter a custom URL template.

The omnibox will immediately use the new engine. No restart required.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+ (with pip)
• Git
• Windows 10/11 64-bit

Build Steps

Key Dependencies

• PyQt6 + PyQt6-WebEngine — Qt6 framework with Chromium
• qtawesome — Icon library for the toolbar
• adblock — Rust-based ad-blocking engine (Python bindings)

Understanding the covey:// Internal Routing

Covey doesn't use static HTML files for internal pages. When you navigate to covey://settings, covey://history, or covey://newtab, the URL is intercepted in tabs.py and routed to a generator function in internal_pages.py that returns dynamically-constructed HTML, which is then loaded via base64 encoding.

Architecture Overview

Covey Shield operates on two layers simultaneously:

1. Network Layer: Uses the Python adblock library (Rust-based, Brave's engine) to intercept and block HTTP requests before they even reach the renderer. Filter lists (EasyList, EasyPrivacy) are loaded at startup.
2. Cosmetic Layer: After a page loads, an injected JavaScript (COSMETIC_FILTER_JS) scans the DOM and hides remaining ad elements via CSS (display:none!important). This catches ads that slip through network filtering.

Site-Specific Rules

The shield has hardcoded intelligence for major sites. For example, it recognizes Google Ads containers, Facebook sponsored posts, and YouTube overlay ads by their class names and data attributes.

Stats Counter

Covey Shield tracks how many requests and elements it blocked per session. You can see this count in the toolbar shield icon tooltip.

How It Works

When Covey detects a YouTube ad (via the .ad-showing class on the video player), it triggers a three-step kill sequence:

1. Mute: The video element's volume is set to 0 instantly.
2. Accelerate: The playbackRate is boosted to 16x, burning through the ad in a fraction of a second.
3. Skip: The script polls for the "Skip Ad" button every 50ms and clicks it the instant it appears.

After the ad ends, volume and playback speed are automatically restored to your previous settings.

Why Not Just Block?

YouTube constantly changes its ad delivery mechanism. Pure network blocking often results in a black screen or the "ad could not be loaded" freeze. The 16x speed approach is more resilient because it plays the ad's content stream legitimately, just extremely fast, avoiding YouTube's anti-adblock detection.

Activation

1. Click the Focus Mode icon in the toolbar.
2. A glassmorphic setup dialog appears. Enter the domains you need (e.g., docs.google.com, github.com).
3. Set a 4-digit PIN that will be required to exit Focus Mode.
4. Click Activate. The browser enters full-screen and locks down.

What Happens When You Try to Browse Off-List?

The navigation interceptor in tabs.py catches the request at the engine level (before the page even begins loading). It replaces the page with a branded "LOCKED OUT" internal page that explains why the site was blocked.

Exiting Focus Mode

Click the lock icon and enter your 4-digit PIN. If the PIN is correct, Focus Mode deactivates and normal browsing resumes. There is no way to bypass this without the PIN or restarting the application.

What Are Memory Anchors?

Memory Anchors are AI-generated summaries of web pages you visit. When you click the "Generate Brief" button in the sidebar, Covey's summary_generator.py extracts clean text from the current page, strips HTML noise, and sends it to the Pollinations AI API for intelligent synthesis.

Pipeline

1. Text Extraction: The page's main content is isolated using readability heuristics (stripping navs, footers, ads).
2. Cleaning: HTML entities, excess whitespace, and boilerplate are removed.
3. AI Synthesis: The cleaned text is sent to text.pollinations.ai with a system prompt instructing it to produce a factual, concise research brief.
4. Output: A markdown-formatted brief appears in the sidebar panel, which you can copy or save.

Design Philosophy

Matter Mode is not just a "dark theme." It's a carefully designed visual system built on a palette of ultra-dark surfaces (#09090b, #18181b, #27272a) with glassmorphic blur effects (backdrop-filter: blur) for floating panels and dialogs.

Per-Profile Accent Colors

Each profile in Covey gets its own accent color. The entire toolbar, tab strip, and active indicators shift to match — so you can visually distinguish your Work, Personal, and Dev profiles at a glance without reading a single label.

Web Content Dark Mode

Covey injects the Chromium flag --force-dark-mode to automatically darken web pages that don't natively support dark mode. This is handled at the engine level for maximum coverage.

What Is the Nuclear Bypass?

In main.py, before the Qt application even initializes, Covey injects a series of Chromium command-line flags that disable all forms of telemetry, reporting, and automation detection:

Why This Matters

Many websites detect embedded Chromium engines (like Selenium or Puppeteer) via the navigator.webdriver flag or other automation fingerprints. Covey strips all of these to ensure sites treat the browser as a normal user browsing session, not a bot.

Symptoms

• YouTube shows a black screen or "Something went wrong" error
• Video freezes but audio continues
• Live streams fail to load but regular videos work fine

Root Cause

Your GPU driver's D3D11 shader cache has become corrupted or stale. Chromium's hardware video decoder reads from this cache and crashes silently when it encounters bad data. This is especially common after a GPU driver update.

Fix

1. Completely exit Covey (check the system tray — right-click and quit).
2. Open File Explorer and navigate to:
   %LOCALAPPDATA%\Matebricks\Covey\GPUCache
3. Delete all contents inside the GPUCache folder (not the folder itself).
4. Relaunch Covey. The cache will be regenerated cleanly.

What Is the Fabulous Crash Handler?

When Covey's Python engine encounters an unrecoverable exception, it catches it globally (via sys.excepthook in main.py) and displays a premium glassmorphic crash dialog showing:

• The exception type (e.g., RuntimeError, SegmentationFault)
• The full Python traceback with file names and line numbers
• Your OS information (Windows version, architecture)

Finding the Log File

The crash report is automatically saved to a file in your Covey installation directory. Look for error.log or a timestamped crash file. If the log appears empty, it means no crashes have been recorded during that session.

Reporting a Bug

1. Copy the traceback text from the crash dialog (there's a copy button).
2. Go to GitHub Issues.
3. Create a new issue, paste the traceback, and describe what you were doing when the crash occurred.

Symptoms

• Search suggestions take 10-20+ seconds to appear
• AI Memory Anchors time out
• Initial page loads are slow but subsequent ones are fast

Root Cause

Covey uses Python's urllib.request for internal API calls (autocomplete suggestions, AI summaries). By default, urllib respects your system proxy settings. If your system is configured to use a proxy (common in corporate/school networks), the SSL negotiation through the proxy can add 10-20 seconds of latency.

Fix

This is handled automatically in newer versions of Covey by using ProxyHandler({}) to bypass the system proxy for internal API calls. If you're running from source, ensure your summary_generator.py uses this pattern:

Why Some Media Fails

Covey's Chromium engine supports most open-source codecs (VP8, VP9, Opus, WebM) out of the box. However, proprietary codecs like H.265 (HEVC) and certain AAC profiles may require system-level decoder support.

Fix for Windows 10/11

1. Open the Microsoft Store.
2. Search for "HEVC Video Extensions" (or install the free version from the device manufacturer).
3. Install the extension. Covey will automatically use the system-level decoder.

Fix for Audio Issues

If audio plays on some sites but not others, check if the site uses Web Audio API or autoplay policies. Covey respects Chromium's autoplay policy — click anywhere on the page first, then try playing again.

Via Settings

1. Navigate to covey://settings.
2. Scroll to the Privacy section.
3. Select what to clear: Cookies, Cache, History, or All Data.
4. Click Clear. Changes take effect immediately.

Manual Nuclear Wipe

For a complete reset (useful if something is deeply broken):

1. Close Covey completely.
2. Navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Matebricks\Covey\Profiles\.
3. Delete the entire profile folder (e.g., Default).
4. Relaunch Covey. A fresh profile will be created automatically.

What SSL Warnings Mean

When you see a security warning page, it means the website's TLS/SSL certificate is invalid, expired, or self-signed. Covey uses custom certificate error handling in tabs.py to show you a clear warning before you proceed.

Should I Proceed?

• Yes — if it's a local development server (e.g., localhost, 192.168.x.x) using a self-signed cert.
• No — if it's a public website you're logging into with a real password. An invalid certificate means the connection may be intercepted.

How Covey Handles HTTPS

Covey automatically upgrades HTTP connections to HTTPS wherever possible, similar to "HTTPS Everywhere." This is enforced at the engine level via Chromium's built-in upgrade mechanisms.