I'm using Google Chrome for work and Safari for my personal stuff (on a Mac).

That works well, but whenever I click links, the workflow breaks down, and links never open in the correct browser.

I end up copy-pasting one-time verification links from one to the other to use the correct login.

If only there were a quick way to switch the default browser!

I did some googling and found an old Applescript that didn't work on the latest MacOS 15.2, so I used Claude to fix it.

When you build it and run it, it shows you a list of available browsers and the current default:

If you want to change to chrome, it's easy as running defaultbrowser chrome. The problem is that you get this annoying pop-up.

Even more annoyingly, chrome's pop-up is different when switching back to Safari.

It's also burning my mental cycles to decipher if pressing Keep or Use will actually do the switch.

We can do better with Raycast.

I wrote about Raycast before; it's an excellent piece of software that replaces the default launcher. The power is in its ability to be extended.

So let's write a little wrapper around the defaultbrowser command that integrates with Raycast and can automatically close that annoying security pop-up.

This time with AppleScript. I added an easy way to find what the current default browser is by calling defaultbrowser --which. This just says "chrome" or "safari". Then we can do the switch, wait for the pop-up, find out what to click on, and close it to confirm.

Finally, we tie everything to a keyboard shortcut in Raycast. I'm using Hyperkey to remap my Caps Lock to Cmd+Option+Shift+Command. I use + T as the second part of the shortcut.

Now all we need to do is press Caps Lock + T and we get this fine notification.

Press again to toggle. It takes two buttons and a few hundred miliseconds.

Perfection.

If you are a bit of a masochist: https://github.com/TajPelc/defaultbrowser​

Or you can do what any sane person would do and get software that does this and more: https://sindresorhus.com/velja​

Yours,

Taj