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Last active December 8, 2023 22:00
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AppleScript to make Google Chrome open/reload a URL
(* To the extent possible under law, Rob Mayoff has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to “AppleScript to make Google Chrome open/reload a URL”. This work is published from: United States. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ *)
tell application "Google Chrome"
activate
set theUrl to "http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/timer.pl"
if (count every window) = 0 then
make new window
end if
set found to false
set theTabIndex to -1
repeat with theWindow in every window
set theTabIndex to 0
repeat with theTab in every tab of theWindow
set theTabIndex to theTabIndex + 1
if theTab's URL = theUrl then
set found to true
exit
end if
end repeat
if found then
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
if found then
tell theTab to reload
set theWindow's active tab index to theTabIndex
set index of theWindow to 1
else
tell window 1 to make new tab with properties {URL:theUrl}
end if
end tell
@haqu
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haqu commented Jul 11, 2012

thanks

@joprice
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joprice commented Oct 20, 2012

I could not get this to work without explicit string comparison:

if (theTab's URL = theUrl as string) then

@danomatika
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I had some trouble with this at first as I didn't realize that Chrome now seems to a trailing slash to it's URLS.

I was trying to reload http://localhost:4567 but the tab URL was actually http://localhost:4567/ so the comparison failed and I'd get a new tab every time. Maybe this is only happening as I'm using a URL with the port in it?

@CraigWilliams
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If you are wanting to reload the active tab, you can use.

tell application "Google Chrome" to reload active tab of window 1

@jamesraylittle
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jamesraylittle commented Jul 8, 2016

I fixed the issue with comparing URLs, I made it take an input parameter as well.

on run {targetUrl}
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        activate

        set theUrl to my remove_http(targetUrl)

        if (count every window) = 0 then
            make new window
        end if

        set found to false
        set theTabIndex to -1
        repeat with theWindow in every window
            set theTabIndex to 0

            repeat with theTab in every tab of theWindow
                set theTabIndex to theTabIndex + 1
                set theTabUrl to my remove_http(theTab's URL as string)

                if (theTabUrl contains theUrl) then
                    set found to true
                    exit repeat
                end if

            end repeat

            if found then
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat

        if found then
            tell theTab to reload
            set theWindow's active tab index to theTabIndex
            set index of theWindow to 1
        else
            tell window 1 to make new tab with properties {URL:targetUrl}
        end if
    end tell
end run

on remove_http(input_url)
    if (input_url contains "https://") then
         return trim_line(input_url, "https://")
    else
         return trim_line(input_url, "http://")
    end if
    return input_url
end remove_http

-- Taken from: http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/sbrt/sbrt-06.html --
on trim_line(this_text, trim_chars)
    set x to the length of the trim_chars
    -- TRIM BEGINNING
    repeat while this_text begins with the trim_chars
        try
            set this_text to characters (x + 1) thru -1 of this_text as string
        on error
            -- the text contains nothing but the trim characters
            return ""
        end try
    end repeat
    return this_text
end trim_line

to run it just use:

osascript name_of_script.applescript "http://google.com"

it is important to include the http:// or https://

@mohan-chinnappan-n
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@jamesraylittle do we have an equivalent (to make Google Chrome open/reload a URL)
for Windows?

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