Privacy

Because Lynx does not support graphics, web bugs that track user information are not fetched, meaning that web pages can be read without the privacy concerns of graphic web browsers.^[8] However, Lynx does support HTTP cookies,^[4] which can also be used to track user information. Lynx therefore supports cookie whitelisting and blacklisting, or alternatively cookie support can be disabled permanently.^[21]

As with conventional browsers, Lynx also supports browsing histories and page caching,^[24] both of which can raise privacy concerns.^[25]

Configurability

Lynx supports both command-line options and configuration files. There are 142 command-line options according to its help message. The template configuration file lynx.cfg lists 233 configurable features. There is some overlap between the two approaches to configuration, although there are command-line options such as -restrict which are not matched in lynx.cfg. In addition to pre-set options by command-line and configuration file, Lynx's behavior can be adjusted at runtime using its options menu. Again, there is some overlap between the settings. Lynx implements many of these runtime optional features, optionally (controlled through a setting in the configuration file) allowing the choices to be saved to a separate writable configuration file. The reason for restricting the options which can be saved originated in a usage of Lynx which was more common in the mid-1990s, i.e., using Lynx itself as a front-end application to the Internet accessed by dial-in connections.^[26][27][21]

Accessibility

Because Lynx is a text-based browser, it can be used for internet access by visually impaired users on a refreshable braille display and is easily compatible with text-to-speech software.^[28][10][16] As Lynx substitutes images, frames and other non-textual content with the text from alt, name and title HTML attributes^[29] and allows hiding the user interface elements,^[30] the browser becomes specifically suitable for use with cost-effective general purpose screen reading software.^[31][32][33] A version of Lynx specifically enhanced for use with screen readers on Windows was developed at Indian Institute of Technology Madras.^[34]

Remote access

Lynx is also useful for accessing websites from a remotely connected system in which no graphical display is available.^[35][36][37] Despite its text-only nature and age, it can still be used to effectively browse much of the modern web, including performing interactive tasks such as editing Wikipedia.^[24][38][39]

Web design and robots

Since Lynx will take keystrokes from a text file, it is still very useful for automated data entry, web page navigation, and web scraping. Consequently, Lynx is used in some web crawlers.^{[citation needed]} Web designers may use Lynx to determine the way in which search engines and web crawlers see the sites that they develop.^[40][41][42] Online services that provide Lynx's view of a given web page are available.^[43]

Lynx is also used to test websites' performance. As one can run the browser from different locations over remote access technologies like telnet and ssh, one can use Lynx to test the web site's connection performance from different geographical locations simultaneously.^[38] Another possible web design application of the browser is quick checking of the site's links.^[44]