Browser_service

macOS menu contextual command to open a URL in Firefox, even if it isn't your default browser.

It lives in the Services submenu of an app's first menu, and also under services in Safari’s contextual menu.

To Build:

• You can get a built copy of BrowserService.service in a .zip file from the Releases section of this github project. Version 1 is built as a "Fat binary" so it will work on either Intel or Apple Silicon Macs.

• Open the Xcode project and in the Info panel of the BrowserService target change the com.example prefix of the bundle Identifier from com.example.${PRODUCT_NAME:rfc1034identifier} to a domain you control.

• You may choose to adjust how the code is signed, but that isn't necessary.

• In Xcode, choose Build from the Product menu

To Install:

• If you built it from source: from the Products group in Xcode's Product Navigator select BrowserService.service and right-click to Show in Finder In the Finder, put BrowserService.service in your Library/Services directory.

• If you downloaded the .zip from Releases, double-click on the zip for the Finder to extract BrowserService.service and place it in your Library/Services directory.

(Hold to the Option key on the Finder's 'Go' menu to find your Library folder.)

• In Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services in the Text section check the checkbox to enable Open in Firefox. Click on the right edge of its table row to add a command-key-equivalent.

and

Gatekeeper

Normally, I go through the process of using Xcode's Archive command, then distribute the archive. In the past, this brought up a series of dialogs to let Apple upload and inspect the binary and cryptographically sign it. This time I could not get Xcode to allow me to upload the binary.

When I tested that BrowserService.service would work correctly using the .zip from Releases, the Mac complained that Apple had not verified it for security. To fix this, in Terminal, I did the following, to remove the extended attributes that macOS puts on files it has not verified.:

cd ~/Library/Services
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine BrowserService.service 
xattr -dr com.apple.provenance BrowserService.service

Versions

1.0 Initial Release

1.1 Available in any app, not just Safari.

To Use:

Select a link then choose Open in Firefox from Services submenu of the right-click menu. You could assign a command key equivalent to make it even easier.

To Customize:

Currently, this opens default browser links in Firefox. If you want to open them in, for example, Chrome:

1.) Change the BrowserService.service Contents folder, change Info.plist Services User Data where it says org.mozilla.firefox change that to: com.google.Chrome and in Info.plist Services, change: These two occorences of Firefox to Chrome.

"Open links in Firefox";

"Open in Firefox";

License

• Apache license version 2