Open browser based off of certain rules (like choosy for macOS)

choosy

#!/bin/bash

URL=$1
DOMAIN=$(echo "$URL" | awk -F[/:] '{print $4}')

## Domain starts with
if [[ $DOMAIN =~ $(echo ^\($(paste -sd'|' /home/your-user/.config/url-start.txt)\)$) ]]; then
    chromium-browser "$URL" & disown
elif [[ $DOMAIN =~ $(echo ^\($(paste -sd'|' /home/your-user/.config/url-is.txt)\)$) ]]; then
    firefox "$URL" & disown
else
    firefox "$URL" & disown
fi

choosy.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Choosy
GenericName=Browser Chooser
Comment=Choose what browser to use for specific links
Categories=Network;
Exec=choosy %u
Type=Application
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/unknown;x-scheme-handler/about;text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;

url-is.txt

https://www.mozilla.org

url-start.txt

drive.google.com
docs.google.com
meet.google.com
app.gotomeeting.com
hangouts.google.com

This is a very simple way of setting a different default browser, based off of certain rules. A poor man's version of https://www.choosyosx.com/ which is one of the utilities I missed the most when switching from macOS to Linux. I use Firefox as my main browser, but like to use Chromium for certain websites that work better with Chromium. With this setup if for example I click a Gotomeeting link in an email, it will automatically open in Chromium instead of Firefox.

Installation

First, edit choosy and replace your-user with your actual username. The one included here uses Chromium as an alternate browser, but it can be anything as long as you can pass a URL as argument. Copy choosy to your path and make it executable:

cp choosy ~/bin/
chmod +x ~/bin/choosy

Copy choosy.desktop to either ~/.local/share/applications/ or /usr/share/applications/

cp choosy.desktop /usr/share/applications

Log out of your session, and log back in. Your desktop environment should offer Choosy as a default browser option. For example in Gnome it will be listed under Settings - Details - Default Applications - Web.

Finally, edit url-start.txt and url-is.txt to your liking:

• url-start.txt contains a list of URLs that will match on the start of the URL. For example https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=whatever will match due to the first entry drive.google.com. Protocol is ignored.
• url-is.txt contains a list of URLs that will do exact matches only.

Copy both to your ~/.config folder:

cp url-* ~/.config

Uninstall

Simply choose a different default browser in your desktop environment and you should be good.

Hi this is not working for me on Ubuntu 22.04, when I logout from my account and log back in there is no additional entry in gnome settings. I am using wayland, could this be the issue?

I don't think wayland would interfere, but have no way of testing it myself. Verify that your choosy.desktop is located either in ~/.local/share/applications/ or /usr/share/applications/ (try the other location if the first doesn't work) and make sure permissions are right. Supposedly .desktop files don't require execute permissions but according to https://askubuntu.com/questions/419610/permission-of-a-desktop-file it is sometimes required for it to work properly. Finally I would try rebooting if simply logging out doesn't pick up the new browser option.

I made sure to follow the instructions but no entry would show up in the default apps menu of Gnome. What worked for me was to execute xdg-mime default choosy.desktop x-scheme-handler/http && xdg-mime default choosy.desktop x-scheme-handler/https in the terminal to set it manually.

I made sure to follow the instructions but no entry would show up in the default apps menu of Gnome. What worked for me was to execute xdg-mime default choosy.desktop x-scheme-handler/http && xdg-mime default choosy.desktop x-scheme-handler/https in the terminal to set it manually.

Glad you could make it work. Thanks for sharing!