Release v0.8.0

bichrome v0.8.0

bichrome is a simple utility for Windows and macOS that you configure as your default browser, which then will choose which browser to open a URL in based on the configuration you specify. It also supports picking a particular Chrome profile -- either by specifying a profile name, or by specifying the "hosted domain" of your profile if you're using Google Workspace. You can read more in the

Installation

Windows

1. Download bichrome-win64.exe from this release.
2. Move it to its permanent home -- e.g. creating a directory in %localappdata%\Programs called bichrome and putting it there.
3. Run bichrome-win64.exe once by double clicking it. This will register bichrome as a potential browser.
4. Configure bichrome as your default browser by opening "Default Apps" (You can open your start menu and just type "Default Apps") and clicking the icon under "Web browser", and picking bichrome.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json next to bichrome-win64.exe (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config]

macOS

1. Download bichrome-macos.zip from this release.
2. Extract it and copy the bichrome app e.g. to /Applications
3. Open System Preferences and search for "Default Browser"
4. Pick bichrome as your default browser.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json in ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitspatter.bichrome/bichrome_config.json (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config.

Changes in v0.8.0

• Add support for Executable browser type that lets you launch arbitrary executables. (Thanks to @nixxquality for the contribution.)

See the full list of changes for other changes.

Release v0.7.0

bichrome v0.7.0

bichrome is a simple utility for Windows and macOS that you configure as your default browser, which then will choose which browser to open a URL in based on the configuration you specify. It also supports picking a particular Chrome profile -- either by specifying a profile name, or by specifying the "hosted domain" of your profile if you're using Google Workspace. You can read more in the

Installation

Windows

1. Download bichrome-win64.exe from this release.
2. Move it to its permanent home -- e.g. creating a directory in %localappdata%\Programs called bichrome and putting it there.
3. Run bichrome-win64.exe once by double clicking it. This will register bichrome as a potential browser.
4. Configure bichrome as your default browser by opening "Default Apps" (You can open your start menu and just type "Default Apps") and clicking the icon under "Web browser", and picking bichrome.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json next to bichrome-win64.exe (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config]

macOS

1. Download bichrome-macos.zip from this release.
2. Extract it and copy the bichrome app e.g. to /Applications
3. Open System Preferences and search for "Default Browser"
4. Pick bichrome as your default browser.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json in ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitspatter.bichrome/bichrome_config.json (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config.

Changes in v0.7.0

• Improved name matching support for Chrome profiles

See the full list of changes for other changes.

Release v0.6.0

bichrome v0.6.0

bichrome is a simple utility for Windows and macOS that you configure as your default browser, which then will choose which browser to open a URL in based on the configuration you specify. It also supports picking a particular Chrome profile -- either by specifying a profile name, or by specifying the "hosted domain" of your profile if you're using Google Workspace. You can read more in the

Installation

Windows

1. Download bichrome-win64.exe from this release.
2. Move it to its permanent home -- e.g. creating a directory in %localappdata%\Programs called bichrome and putting it there.
3. Run bichrome-win64.exe once by double clicking it. This will register bichrome as a potential browser.
4. Configure bichrome as your default browser by opening "Default Apps" (You can open your start menu and just type "Default Apps") and clicking the icon under "Web browser", and picking bichrome.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json next to bichrome-win64.exe (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config]

macOS

1. Download bichrome-macos.zip from this release.
2. Extract it and copy the bichrome app e.g. to /Applications
3. Open System Preferences and search for "Default Browser"
4. Pick bichrome as your default browser.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json in ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitspatter.bichrome/bichrome_config.json (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config.

Changes in v0.6.0

macOS

• Fix: Incorrect version number in app bundle.

Removes the Installation Framework (IF) entries that aren't needed or
used, and updates the version nubmer in Info.plist for the next(?)
release, 0.5.1. Ideally, the version number should be automatically
replaced by the one in Cargo.toml when we publish.

See the full list of changes.

Release v0.5.0

bichrome v0.5.0

bichrome is a simple utility for Windows and macOS that you configure as your default browser, which then will choose which browser to open a URL in based on the configuration you specify. It also supports picking a particular Chrome profile -- either by specifying a profile name, or by specifying the "hosted domain" of your profile if you're using Google Workspace. You can read more in the

Installation

Windows

1. Download bichrome-win64.exe from this release.
2. Move it to its permanent home -- e.g. creating a directory in %localappdata%\Programs called bichrome and putting it there.
3. Run bichrome-win64.exe once by double clicking it. This will register bichrome as a potential browser.
4. Configure bichrome as your default browser by opening "Default Apps" (You can open your start menu and just type "Default Apps") and clicking the icon under "Web browser", and picking bichrome.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json next to bichrome-win64.exe (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config]

macOS

1. Download bichrome-macos.zip from this release.
2. Extract it and copy the bichrome app e.g. to /Applications
3. Open System Preferences and search for "Default Browser"
4. Pick bichrome as youre default browser.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json in ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitspatter.bichrome/bichrome_config.json (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config.

Changes in v0.5.0

Windows

• Fix: Prevent a terminal window from popping up when opening a
  link.

See the full list of changes.

Release v0.4.2

bichrome

bichrome is a simple utility for Windows and macOS that you configure as your default browser, which then will choose which browser to open a URL in based on the configuration you specify. It also supports picking a particular Chrome profile -- either by specifying a profile name, or by specifying the "hosted domain" of your profile if you're using Google Workspace. (Your hosted domain is the bit after the @ in a non-"gmail dot com" address hosted by GMail.)

It was created to address the problem of clicking links in Slack and other apps and then having to relocate them to the "correct" browser window / Chrome profile where you're logged in to Facebook / JIRA / etc.

Big thanks to Krista A. Leemhuis for the amazing icon!

Installation

Windows

1. Download bichrome-win64.exe from this release.
2. Move it to its permanent home -- e.g. creating a directory in %localappdata%\Programs called bichrome and putting it there.
3. Run bichrome-win64.exe once by double clicking it. This will register bichrome as a potential browser.
4. Configure bichrome as your default browser by opening "Default Apps" (You can open your start menu and just type "Default Apps") and clicking the icon under "Web browser", and picking bichrome.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json next to bichrome-win64.exe (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config.

macOS

1. Download bichrome-macos.zip from this release.
2. Extract it and copy the bichrome app e.g. to /Applications
3. Open System Preferences and search for "Default Browser"
4. Pick bichrome as youre default browser.

That's it! Now just create a configuration file named bichrome_config.json in ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitspatter.bichrome/bichrome_config.json (see the configuration section for details) -- a good starting place is to download & edit the example config.

bichrome_config.json

Configuring bichrome involves setting up a set of profiles that define a name and a browser (and for Chrome, optionally a browser profile name or a profile's hosted domain), and setting up a list of profile selectors that pick a profile based on matching patterns against the URL you're opening.

The following snippet shows how profiles are configured. See the example config for a more complete example.

{
  "default_profile": "Personal",
  "profiles": {
    "Work": {
      "browser": "Chrome",
      "hosted_domain": "mycorp.com"
    },
    "Personal": {
      "browser": "Firefox"
    }
  },
  "profile_selection": [ ... ]
}

The format for the patterns are documented in detail on Mozilla.org or in the documentation of the webextension_pattern crate which is used to perform the matching. Some examples can be found in the the example config.

Configuring the matching is done under the profile_selection key. The browser from the first selector that matches the URL will be used to open the URL. If none of the patterns match, the URL will be opened with the profile named in default_profile, and if that doesn't exist, it will default to using Chrome with no profile specified. (Chrome's behavior in this case is to open it in the last activated window.) A profile specifying a browser of Safari, Edge, or OsDefault will use Safari on macOS and Edge on Windows.

The following snippet shows how selectors are configured. See the example config for a more complete example.

{
  "default_profile": "...",
  "profiles": { ... },
  "profile_selection": [
    {
        "profile": "Personal",
        "pattern": "*.twitter.com"
    },
    {
        "profile": "Work",
        "pattern": "*.mycorp.net"
    }
  ]
}

bichrome_config.json is expected to live next to bichrome-win64.exe on Windows, and in ~/Library/Application Support/com.bitspatter.bichrome/bichrome_config.json on macOS.

You can find an example config in example_config/bichrome_config.json.

Release v0.4.1

Bump version to 0.4.1

Hotfix for Windows build not starting when there's no log file.

Release v0.4

Bump version to 0.4

Breaking version change due to config file no longer being case
sensitive.

Release v0.3

• Upload PDBs for Windows releases
• Minor tweaks to PREVIOUS_TAG calculation
• Improve changelog generation
• Improved error handling
• Fix file:// URLs on Windows
• Improve error logging on Windows
• Support Firefox & Edge on Windows
• Improve docs & examples
• Add installation instructions
• Make Windows log append (and rotate)

Windows

Features

• Support Firefox

• Support Edge

• Append to an existing log if it exists, and rotate it if
  it exceeds 64 kilobytes.

Fixes

• Make file:// URLs work as expected by registering for
  FileAssociations. This fixes e.g. cargo doc --open. Fixes GH-3.

Improvements

• Switch to anyhow for error handling, and make the logs
  show which browser we chose.

• Mac configurations with Safari will now use Edge on
  Windows

macOS

Features

• Safari can now also be referred to as OsDefault in the
  config file

Infrastructure

Features

• Split the Windows & macOS build steps so that we can
  upload two files for Windows -- EXE and PDB.

• Add an 'internal' category changes that don't directly
  affect end-users.

• Add OS-specific categories for mac & win.

• Add a 'fix' tag and remove three unused ones.

Fixes

• Previously the changelog generation didn't correctly
  determine the previous tag -- try some minor changes to see if it
  works better.

Internal

Features

• Introduce thiserror and set up concrete error
  handling for all errors in the config and chrome_local_state
  modules, so there's no reliance on Box<dyn Error>

Documentation

Features

• Add rough but complete installation instructions for
  both macOS and Windows.

Fixes

• Clarify that there's non-Chrome support in the README

Improvements

• Add more detail in the configuration section, and link
  to the pattern match docs.

• Clearly document multi-browser support.

Release v0.2

Set up an initial release (v0.2)

Trigger an initial release so a version of the app will be archived on
GH's releases.