Script making Chrome the default browser on macOS

You would think it would be fairly simple to script changing the default browser to Chrome in macOS. It’s not, as far as I can tell! I’d love to be corrected on this.

Script that changes Launch Services

I wrote up a script that changes the default browser silently, but it works well only the first time you run it.

If you run it again to switch to another browser, you may have to reboot for the change to take effect. Sometimes changing the default browser through the GUI and then running the script again will have it work again.

That means it’s a bit messy. On the other hand, in terms of practical use, you’re not likely to want to script changing the default browser multiple times on one machine—the whole point of scripting it is likely to just make an initial default the user can change later on her own should she choose to, and she can use the GUI to do that.

If you want to use this in conjunction with Outset but not have the settings change for existing users (only new ones), you can use this preinstall script to fake-run the login-once script for each existing user.

I think this is a great option (and not just because I worked hard on it), but I also outline below some other options.

cdef and defaultbrowser

cdef and defaultbrowser allow you to set the default browser. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, all that does is pop up the regular GUI “set default browser” dialogue:

Again, if someone knows of a silent option I don’t know about, please leave a comment below, and I’ll update this entry.

duti works great… but not for Chrome

In Using duti to script default applications for Macs, I detail the steps for using duti in general, which works great… in general. It just chokes on setting the default browser. If you try to use duti to set Chrome as the default browser:

com.google.chrome public.html all
com.google.chrome public.xhtml all
com.google.chrome http all
com.google.chrome https all

you will get the error:

failed to set com.google.chrome as handler for public.html (error -54)

Posted

February 22, 2017

Uncategorized

alanysiu

Tags:

cdef, chrome, defaultbrowser, duti, macos

Comments

6 responses to “Script making Chrome the default browser on macOS”

Alejandro

March 4, 2018

I’ve also browsed and a lot have the problem, but few solved it.

Reply
Søren Døygard

January 31, 2019

Have you since you wrote this article perhaps made a mobileconfig that you would share ? Or do you have a script that do the same in login-every ?

Reply
1. Alan Siu
  
  January 31, 2019
  
  There is no .mobileconfig profile that changes the default browser.
  
  And, no, there isn’t one that can change it every login. I thought I was clear about that from this sentence:
  I wrote up a script that changes the default browser silently, but it works well only the first time you run it.
  
  So, yeah, the first time you run it, it works, and then the next time, maybe not.
  
  Reply
  1. John
    
    March 28, 2019
    
    Alan, can you please share that script? We’re looking for a script to do exactly that, one time, during the OS build.
    
    Reply
    1. Alan Siu
      
      March 28, 2019
      
      It’s linked to above in the second paragraph.
      
      Reply
tep

July 19, 2019

I’ve tried implementing this script on initial provisioning, and it seems to work..but it messes with the app icons. Have you seen that at all? I’m executing via a Jamf policy, so that might be part of it.

Reply