damoodamoo / pick-a-browser

pick-a-browser

pick-a-browser is a browser selector for Windows. It registers as a browser and when launched it runs a configurable rule set to determine the real browser to launch. If no rule matches then it prompts for the browser to launch from a configured list of browsers/profiles.

pick-a-browser was born after happily using (and contributing to) BrowserPicker. After a number of reinstallations of the operating system, I wanted an automatic way to save my browser and rules configuration. As a result, I created pick-a-browser as a way to address this (and to tweak behaviour in ways that suit my usage patterns slightly better).

Installing

• Get the binaries
• Install pick-a-browser as a browser
• Create pick-a-browser-settings.json
• Set pick-a-browser as your default browser - https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/change-your-default-browser-in-windows-10-020c58c6-7d77-797a-b74e-8f07946c5db6

Get the binaries

Currently, you can either grab the build artifact from the latest CI build and unzip, or clone and build from source.

Installing pick-a-browser

To install pick-a-browser, run pick-a-browser --install (needs elevated permissions). You can use pick-a-browser --uninstall to uninstall

Create settings file

See Configuration below.

Configuration

By default, pick-a-browser will look for pick-a-browser-settings.json in your user profile folder and then in the same folder as the app itself.

If you which to put the settings in a different location, set the PICK_A_BROWSER_CONFIG environment variable to the full path to the settings file.

Browsers

The top-level browsers property allows you to configure browsers (or browser profiles) that pick-a-browser should use.

You can run pick-a-browser --browser-scan to generate the initial browsers section of the configuration and then copy and paste this into the config file.

The browsers property is an array of objects with the following properties:

Name	Type	Description
id	string (required)	The id to use to identify the browser - used to refer to browsers in rules
name	string (required)	The name to display in the browser picker UI
exe	string (required)	The path to the app to launch for the browser
args	string (optional)	Any arguments to pass to the browser. Useful for specifying browser profiles
iconPath	string (optional)	not currently used
hidden	bool (optional)	When no rules are matched, the UI displays a list of all non-hidden browsers

Rules

The top-level rules property allows you to define rules to configure a browser to be automatically launched for certain URLs.

The browsers property is an array of objects that match one of the following rule types.

URL Prefix Match

Performs a prefix match against the full URL.

Name	Type	Description
type	string (required)	prefix
prefix	string (required)	The prefix to match
browser	string (required)	The id of the browser to launch

e.g.

{
	"type": "prefix",
	"prefix": "https://dev.azure.com/myorg",
	"browser": "work"
}

Host Suffix Match

Perfoms a suffix match against the host portion of the URL. Handy for matching.

E.g. www.github.com and github.com would both match a rule of github.com.

Name	Type	Description
type	string (required)	host
host	string (required)	The host suffix to match
browser	string (required)	The id of the browser to launch

e.g.

{
	"type": "host",
	"prefix": "https://dev.azure.com/myorg",
	"browser": "work"
}

Example configuration

{
	"browsers": [
		{
			"id": "iexplore",
			"name": "Internet Explorer",
			"exe": "C:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe",
			"iconPath": "C:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe",
			"hidden": true
		},
		{
			"id": "work",
			"name": "Microsoft Edge - Work",
			"exe": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe",
			"args": "--profile-directory=\u0022Default\u0022",
			"iconPath": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe",
			"hidden": false
		},
		{
			"id": "personal",
			"name": "Microsoft Edge - [e-mail] (MSA)",
			"exe": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe",
			"args": "--profile-directory=\u0022Profile 1\u0022",
			"iconPath": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe",
			"hidden": false
		}
	],
	"rules": [
		{
			"type": "prefix",
			"prefix": "https://dev.azure.com/myorg",
			"browser": "work"
		},
		{
			"type": "host",
			"host": "github.com",
			"browser": "work"
		},
		{
			"type": "host",
			"host": "whatsapp.com",
			"browser": "personal"
		}
	]
}