brosel

Select the right browser for a URL - A script and macOS wrapper app

The wrapper can be used as OS-wide Default web browser. The rules are customisable through a config file. The wrapper app is generated with

Installation

Generate the wrapper app with Platypus. You have to install only the command line tools, which you might be able to do via Homebrew. Make sure you install Platypus 5.2.

Note: Apparently Platypus profiles are not backwards compatible, so do not use a newer version of Platypus.

The profile to create the app is stored in brosel.platypus. So after downloading/cloning this repository, cd into the repo directory and issue the following command in a shell:

platypus -P brosel.platypus /Applications/brosel.app

Note 1: Paths in the the profile are relative, so you need to be in the repository directory so that Platypus finds the script brosel.py and the dependency yaml.

Note 2: You can save the application to any directory you want, /Applications/brosel.app is only the standard option.

How to configure the custom rules

brosel looks for its configuration in the file ~/.brosel and then in the file ~/Library/Application Support/brosel/brosel.yaml. The first one brosel finds, will be read as a YAML file. A sample config looks like this:

basic:
    browser_id: open -a "Google Chrome.app" %s
rules:
-   # rule for local files
    browser_id: open -a Safari.app %s
    url_pattern: '^file://'
-   # rule for urls from emacs
    browser_id: open -a Firefox.app %s
    url_pattern: ^emacs-
    url_replace: ''

In the basic section you can define the default browser to use if no rules applies. Use the key browser_id. The value is the open statement you would use on command line to open the URL with the desired browser. In this string %s stands for the position where the URL will be inserted.

In the rules section you define the rules: Each rules can contain the following keys:

key	meaning	required ?
browser_id	The browser to use	yes
url_pattern	The regular expression the URL as to match	yes
url_replace	A replacement for the URL if the URL should be changed	no

Notes: url_pattern and url_replace use the Python variant of regular expression.

How to set brosel as Default web browser

In System Preferences go to the General pane and select brosel.app. - Not: In order to appear in this list you might have run brosel.app at least once (e.g. via double-click).

Also, if you want HTML files to go through brosel when double-clicked selected, choose brosel as "Open with" application for this file type.

How to check if something doesn't work as expected

If something unexpected happens (like a URL opens not at all or in another browser than specified), you can check in brosel's log file at ~/Library/Application Support/brosel/Logs/brosel.log which action brosel chose.

Credits:

• Thanks to Sveinbjorn Thordarson for Platypus.
• Thanks to the PyYaml community for PyYaml.