Browser Chooser

Pick which browser—and which profile—to use when opening a link.

Set Browser Chooser to your default browser and when you click on URLs in non-browsers, it will display a simple dialogue so you can choose the right browser or profile to use, and optionally remember your choice per domain.

Why use this?

• Work vs personal profiles or browsers - Open work links in a dedicated profile and personal links in another.
• Security and isolation - Use a separate browser or profile for banking, social, or untrusted sites.

Features

• Cross-platform - Works on Linux (XDG desktop entries), macOS (.app bundles), and Windows (registry-based discovery).
• Browser discovery - Detects Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Chromium, Opera, Safari (macOS), and other common browsers.
• Profile support - Lists Chrome/Chromium and Firefox profiles by name, with profile pictures for Chromium-based browsers (when available).
• Guest profiles - Buttons to open Guest profiles in browsers.
• Remember per domain - 'Do not ask again' saves your selection for the domain so the same browser/profile opens next time.
• Configurable filtering - Hide specific browsers or turn off profile listing for chosen browsers via config (e.g. Advanced/hideBrowsers, Advanced/hideProfileBrowsers). On macOS you can use bundle IDs (e.g. com.apple.Safari).
• Pre and post-launch commands - Run commands before or after launching a given browser or profile; keys are per browser (or per browser+profile).

Configuration

The configuration file is INI format. Location is platform-dependent:

OS	Location
Linux	~/.config/browserchooserrc
macOS	~/Library/Preferences/browserchooserrc
Windows	APPDATA%\browserchooserrc

Pre-launch and post-launch commands

You can run commands before and after starting a specific browser or browser/profile.

The value format is a JSON-encoded array of arrays of strings. Each inner array is one command: first element is the program and the rest are arguments. Example: [["notify-send", "Opening browser"], ["/path/to/script.sh"]]. Unfortunately the JSON must be inside double quotes and escaped properly.

Linux uses the path to the .desktop file (e.g. /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop). macOS uses the path to the .app bundle (e.g. /Applications/Firefox.app). Windows uses the path to the .exe (e.g. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe). For a profile, append a pipe (escaped as %7C) and the profile name (e.g. ...\chrome.exe%7CProfile%201 where this is 'Profile 1' but percent-encoded).

Example configuration (Linux)

[PreLaunchCommands]
; Default
usr\share\applications\google-chrome.desktop = "[[\"notify-send\",\"Chrome\"]]"
; Profile 1
usr\share\applications\google-chrome.desktop%7CProfile%201 = "[[\"notify-send\",\"Profile 1\"]]"
 
[PostLaunchCommands]
usr\share\applications\firefox.desktop = "[[\"/path/to/firefox-helper.sh\"]]"

Example configuration (macOS)

[PreLaunchCommands]
Applications\Firefox.app = "[[\"osascript\",\"-e\",\"display notification \\\"Firefox\\\" with title \\\"Browser\"\"]]"
; Profile 1
Applications\Google%20Chrome.app%7CProfile%201 = "[[\"osascript\",\"-e\",\"display notification \\\"Chrome\\\" with title \\\"Browser\\\"\"]]"

Installation

Not yet written. See CONTRIBUTING for build and development setup.