Get started with Oobee

In this tutorial, you run your first Oobee scan from the command line and open the report it produces. By the end, you have a results folder containing an HTML report of the accessibility issues found on up to five pages of a website you choose. This tutorial is for developers and testers who have not used Oobee before.

Prerequisites

• A Windows 10 (64-bit) or Windows 11 computer, or a Mac running macOS 15 Sequoia or later.
• Google Chrome installed.
• Internet access to download Oobee once and to reach the website you scan.
• The URL of a website you are allowed to scan, for example https://www.example.com.
• Your name and email address. Oobee asks for them with each scan and sends them to GovTech as usage data. To opt out, set OOBEE_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 before you scan. Refer to CLI options, environment variables and error codes for details.

Step 1: Download and open the portable Oobee

The portable download includes the tools Oobee needs, so you do not install Node.js or Java yourself.

1. Download the portable copy for your system:
   • Windows: oobee-portable-windows.zip
   • macOS: oobee-portable-mac.zip
2. Extract the zip file to a folder such as your Downloads folder.
3. Open the Oobee shell, which prepares your terminal for the session:
   • Windows: double-click oobee_shell.cmd.
   • macOS: right-click oobee_shell.command, select Open, then select Open again at the security prompt.

A terminal window opens and prints INFO lines as it sets the paths for the session. If your system blocks the script or a firewall prompt appears, refer to Install the portable Oobee for the full instructions.

Step 2: Go to the Oobee folder

In the terminal window, run:

cd oobeeCopy to clipboardErrorCopied

Your terminal prompt now ends with oobee. Oobee writes its results to a results folder inside the folder you run it from, so stay in this folder for the next steps.

Step 3: Run a scan of five pages

Run the following command. Replace the placeholder values with your own.

npm run cli -- -c website -u <WEBSITE_URL> -p 5 -k "<YOUR_NAME>:<YOUR_EMAIL>"Copy to clipboardErrorCopied

For example, -k "Alex Tan:alex@example.com". Oobee checks the URL, opens a browser in the background and scans each page. When the scan ends, the terminal prints the location of the results.

If you see the message “URL cannot be accessed. Please verify whether the website exists.”, check the URL and your internet connection, then run the command again.

Step 4: Open the report

1. Open the results folder inside the oobee folder.
2. Open the newest folder in results. Its name is the scan date, time and domain.
3. Open report.html in your browser.

The report lists the issues Oobee found, grouped as Must Fix, Good to Fix and Needs Review, with the affected pages and elements. A summary.pdf and a report.csv of the same scan are in the same folder.

What’s next

You have installed Oobee, scanned five pages and opened the report. Continue with one of these pages:

• Run a scan to scan a sitemap, a whole site, PDFs or local files, or to use the interactive prompts with npm start.
• Read and export scan reports to work through the issues in the report.
• Run Oobee in CI/CD to scan automatically.

Common issues

For other errors, refer to Troubleshooting.

Where to get help

Report problems with Oobee on the Oobee issue tracker. Include the steps you followed and the error log.