netgusto / bowser

⭐ Bowser - Dynamic Default Browser Switch for MacOS

⭐ Bowser - Dynamic Default Browser Switch

Bowser is a MacOS application that selects the browser to open for a URL based on rules you define.

My use case is to have 2 default browsers : one for development (Chrome), and one for surf (Safari).

Install from binary releases

Download the latest binary release (.dmg) here: https://github.com/netgusto/bowser/releases

Open the .dmg image, drag Bowser to your /Applications folder.

Then follow steps described in "Setup as default browser" below.

Install from source

The installation from source requires the Apple clang environment (XCode) and Go 1.8+

$ git clone https://github.com/netgusto/bowser
$ cd bowser
$ make install

Then follow steps described in "Setup as default browser" below.

Setup as default browser

Bowser has to be defined as default browser to operate.

Once Bowser is installed in /Applications, go to your Mac System Preferences > General tab, and choose Bowser in the list of browsers.

Configuration

During first run, bowser will create a default config file at ~/.config/bowser/config.yml.

debug: false
browsers:
- alias: Default
  app: Safari

This default config sets Safari as the default browser. You may now edit the file to add browsers and set regex rules corresponding to your likings.

Example setup:

debug: false

browsers:
- alias: Default
  app: Safari

- alias: Dev
  app: Google Chrome
  match:
  - ^https?://127.0.0.1
  - ^https?://localhost  

debug set to true will forward debug messages to the syslog. Enable only for debugging purposes.

License

See the LICENSE file.