Set Chrome as Default Browser from Command Line

By  on  

Whenever I see a desktop GUI to accomplish a given web-related task, I'm dying to know the underlying operating system interaction to accomplish the same feat.  Many of the GUIs I use are just a front for a command line utility for that more experienced developers would use.

I set out to find the command line script for setting the system's default browser on OS X but apparently there isn't one, but I did find a command line script for setting Chrome as the default browser:

open -a "Google Chrome" --args --make-default-browser

The script above opens Google Chrome and asks for confirmation that you'd like to make it the default browser.  I'm not aware of what command line scripts would make other browsers the default browser, and I'm a bit annoyed that there isn't a single script to do so!

Recent Features

  • By
    Send Text Messages with PHP

    Kids these days, I tell ya.  All they care about is the technology.  The video games.  The bottled water.  Oh, and the texting, always the texting.  Back in my day, all we had was...OK, I had all of these things too.  But I still don't get...

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

  1. Too bad that still prompts you to accept the make default browser action/choice. That kind of detracts from the ability to fully automate system provisioning for instance. :(

  2. Danie

    Or simply go here:

    OS X Yosemite:
    1 – From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, then click General.
    2 – Click the “Default web browser” pop-up menu and choose a web browser, like Safari.

    OS X Mavericks or earlier:
    1 – Open Safari from the Applications folder, Dock, or Launchpad.
    2 – From the Safari menu, choose Preferences.
    3 – Click the General button.
    4 – Choose a web browser from the “Default web browser” pop-up menu, like Safari.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!