OSX alternate-browser script

[ghost]

I'm on macOS Ventura, default browser is Safari.
Trying to set up Chrome as the alternate browser.

• Followed the advice to use a shell script to launch Chrome.
• But what I have so far launches Chrome (blank) but does not render the file.
• I have a shell script launch-chrome.sh
• It's content is: open -a "Google Chrome"
• Browser Path setting is ~/launch-chrome.sh
• So it launches Chrome, but blank, no rendered document.
• I assume I'm missing something in my shell script

[PeterWone]

Hi Joe.

I've been busy with working and also building a cabin in the woods so I haven't been keeping up with things. Thank you for the detailed report, I have a Mac now so I'll test this. Does the page render in Safari?

I was going to say check permissions on the bash script but if Chrome is launching it won't be that.

A URL parameter is passed to the script. You don't say whether you are passing this through to Chrome.

[DavidRawling]

@joeballard It sounds like you'll need to update your script to pass the parameters to Chrome. In this case, you'll likely want the $@ placeholder as this contains all parameters other than the script name. That might look something like this:

open -a "Google Chrome" $@

I also notice though that you're using open as your command. On my system that's an alias for xdg-open, which doesn't accept the -a parameter you've got, so I can't be sure that this is exactly what you need.

[PeterWone]

I did some research based on everything said so far.

• OSX bash supports $@
• open -a "application name" is the correct way to do this for OSX

Edit your file to contain

open -a "Google Chrome" $@

That should work. Please let me know if there are any problems.

[ghost]

Adding the '$@' worked fine. Thanks!! And good luck with the cabin in the woods.

[PeterWone]

open -a "Google Chrome" $@

Let's break this down.

• On OSX, open -a "application name" runs an application by name, which is path independent. In this case the application is "Google Chrome". The double-quotes are required when there is a space in the name.
• $@ means pass the entire command line apart from the application name. It differs from $* in that $* parses the parameters first and passes them individually, which can mess with whitespace and order. $@ passes the whole thing through as one big string.