CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashmacosshellgoogle-chromegrep
Gal
Gal

Reputation: 115

How can I get the default browser name in bash script on Mac OS X

I want to find out if the default browser is Google Chrome on a Mac OS X machine before the script executes.

How can I do it? thanks!

Upvotes: 7

Views: 4515

Answers (4)

Miguel Sánchez Villafán
Miguel Sánchez Villafán

Reputation: 1335

The current accepted answer converts one of the preference files to XML and then back to binary, if something fails in the middle, your file might get corrupt.

The best way to convert the file without modifying it when using plutil is setting the output to the STDIN with the -o - option.

If you have jq installed, a more accurate way to obtain the bundle ID for the default browser would be as follows:

plutil \
    -convert json -o - \
    "$HOME"'/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist' \
    | jq -r '.LSHandlers[] | select( .LSHandlerURLScheme=="https" ) | .LSHandlerRoleAll'

If what you want is the application path under /Applications, you can execute the following:

mdfind kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier = "$(
    plutil \
        -convert json -o - \
        "$HOME"'/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist' \
        | jq -r '.LSHandlers[] | select( .LSHandlerURLScheme=="https" ) | .LSHandlerRoleAll'
)" \
    | grep -E '^/Applications/'

Upvotes: 0

Björn Kahlert
Björn Kahlert

Reputation: 129

Getting Default Browser

The following command will print the ID of the default application for https:

defaults read com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure LSHandlers \
  | sed -n -e '/LSHandlerURLScheme = https;/{x;p;d;}' -e 's/.*=[^"]"\(.*\)";/\1/g' -e x

If Firefox was your default browser, you would get org.mozilla.firefox.

Explanation

The script reads the corresponding system defaults using the defaults command and extracts the ID from the above line of the https matching line (more on that can be read up at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/206886/print-previous-line-after-a-pattern-match-using-sed).

Getting Default Application

You could wrap a function around it and allow passing the scheme:

# Returns the default app for the specified scheme (default: https).
default_app() {
  local scheme=${1:-https}
  defaults read com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure LSHandlers \
    | sed -n -e "/LSHandlerURLScheme = $scheme;/{x;p;d;}" -e 's/.*=[^"]"\(.*\)";/\1/g' -e x
}

The call would now be

default_app
# or
default_app https

Interacting with Default Browser/Application

I guess you would like to do something with the ID as well.
Integrating with Apple Script can be achieved with application id.

The following shell script runs an Apple Script that activates / focusses / brings to front your default browser:

osascript <<APPLE_SCRIPT
tell application id "$(default_app)"
  activate
end tell
APPLE_SCRIPT

Same as a one-liner:

osascript -e "tell application id \"$(default_app)\"" -e 'activate' -e 'end tell'

Upvotes: 1

HereAGoat
HereAGoat

Reputation: 11

No need to convert, use this script:

plutil -p ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist | grep 'https' -b3 |awk 'NR==3 {split($4, arr, "\""); print arr[2]}'

Upvotes: 1

l&#39;L&#39;l
l&#39;L&#39;l

Reputation: 47169

You can grep/awk the launch services preferences list to find out which browser is set as default:

x=~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist; \
plutil -convert xml1 $x; \
grep 'https' -b3 $x | awk 'NR==2 {split($2, arr, "[><]"); print arr[3]}'; \
plutil -convert binary1 $x

This sets a variable (x) to the launch services preferences list, then converts it using plutil to xml format so we can grep it. We locate the string we're looking for (https) then output the result. The final step is to convert the plist back to binary format.

If chrome is set to be default you will get:

Result:

com.google.chrome

Upvotes: 9

Related Questions