Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@demonbane
Created July 5, 2011 20:05
Star You must be signed in to star a gist
Save demonbane/1065791 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Create a Fluid-style app launcher for single-window Chrome instances on OSX
#!/bin/sh
echo "What should the Application be called (no spaces allowed e.g. GCal)?"
read inputline
name="$inputline"
echo "What is the url (e.g. https://www.google.com/calendar/render)?"
read inputline
url="$inputline"
echo "What is the full path to the icon (e.g. /Users/username/Desktop/icon.png)?"
read inputline
icon="$inputline"
chromePath="/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
appRoot="/Applications"
# various paths used when creating the app
resourcePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Resources"
execPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/MacOS"
profilePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Profile"
plistPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Info.plist"
# make the directories
mkdir -p "$resourcePath" "$execPath" "$profilePath"
# convert the icon and copy into Resources
if [ -f "$icon" ] ; then
sips -s format tiff "$icon" --out "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" --resampleHeightWidth 128 128 >& /dev/null
tiff2icns -noLarge "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" >& /dev/null
fi
# create the executable
cat >"$execPath/$name" <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
exec "$chromePath" --app="$url" --user-data-dir="$profilePath" "\$@"
EOF
chmod +x "$execPath/$name"
# create the Info.plist
cat > "$plistPath" <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>$name</string>
<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
<string>icon</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF
@muesliq
Copy link

muesliq commented Aug 4, 2016

Great script! But how do I prevent links to open in that new app instead of the standard chrome profile? If all links I open in my new Gmail app open there instead of my browser that kind of defeats the purpose of such an app. Any ideas? Can I force links to open in my standard Chrome profile?

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment