BrowserBro

Every link opens in the right browser and profile.

Website · Download

The problem

You click a work link. It opens in your personal browser. Again.

BrowserBro becomes your default browser. A rule sends each link to the right browser and profile. No rule? A picker opens at your pointer. Press a number.

Install

🍺 Homebrew	brew install --cask sergchil/tap/browserbro
⚡ Terminal	curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sergchil/browserbro/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
📦 Download	BrowserBro.dmg · BrowserBro.zip

macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple silicon and Intel (Liquid Glass look on macOS 26). Then open Settings and click Set as Default Browser…

Downloaded it? First open takes 3 steps

1. macOS says it cannot verify BrowserBro. Click Done (OK on macOS 14).
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
3. Enter your password and click Open.

Why: the app is not notarized (Apple charges $99 a year). Homebrew and the Terminal line skip this.

Keep Chrome as your default

Want Chrome to stay the default browser (for example, your company asks for it)? Use the BrowserBro extension for Chrome. Chrome opens every link, and the extension hands links from other apps to BrowserBro. Your rules and the picker still work.

1. Open BrowserBro Settings → General → Keep Chrome as the default browser.
2. Click Set Up All Profiles. A setup page opens in each Chrome profile.
3. In each one: open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, click Load unpacked, and pick the folder the page shows (~/Library/Application Support/BrowserBro/ChromeExtension). The page says Done and closes.
4. Click Make Chrome the Default….

Good to know:

• A link that belongs in another profile opens in Chrome's last profile first, then moves. One-time links (like sign-in links) can break when they move.
• Rules by source app don't work this way: Chrome doesn't say which app sent the link.
• After a BrowserBro update, click Reload on the extension in chrome://extensions in each profile.
• The extension talks only to BrowserBro on your Mac (127.0.0.1), nothing else.

Tour

Rules. Domain, wildcard, regex, source app, held key. First match wins.	Tester. Paste a link, see which rule wins and why.
Profiles. Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Firefox, Zen, Arc, Safari.	Pulse. A rule fired? A tiny note shows where the link went.
Presets. Tick a pack (Work tools, Meetings, Media…), pick a profile. Each pack is one rule you can edit.

Keys

Key	In the picker
1–9	Open there
← → Return	Move, then open
⌥	Private window
Tab	Always open this site here
⌘C	Copy the link
Esc	Never mind

Bro tip: your rules live in ~/Library/Application Support/BrowserBro/rules.json. Back it up.

Build from source

Needs Xcode 26 or Swift 6.2 (the macOS 26 SDK, for Liquid Glass). The app still runs on macOS 14. No paid Apple account.

git clone https://github.com/sergchil/browserbro.git
cd browserbro
scripts/build-app.sh --install   # build, ad-hoc sign, copy to /Applications
swift test

Path	What
Sources/RoutingCore	Rules and matching
Sources/BrowserBro	The app
Sources/bro	bro test <url> CLI
extension/	Chrome extension (Chrome stays the default browser)
site/	Website

Release: push a tag vX.Y.Z. The Release workflow publishes the DMG and ZIP. Then bump the cask in sergchil/homebrew-tap.

_{No network calls (the Chrome extension talks only to BrowserBro on your Mac), no accounts, no analytics. MIT. Built because the wrong browser kept winning. 🤙}