Every link, in the
right browser.

WrangURL is a small macOS menu bar app that stands in as your default browser. When you click a link in Slack, Mail or anywhere else, it checks your rules and passes the link to the browser you chose for it. When one browser isn’t enough, it asks.

Download for macOS View source on GitHub

Latest release on GitHub. Free and open source under the MIT License. Requires macOS 14 or later.

You click http://localhost:3000/dashboard

Matches Local development (localhost): choose Chrome or Brave in the picker.

Rules you can read

Patterns like localhost, *.example.com or github.com/myorg/*. Regular expressions when you need them.

One browser, or a choice

A rule with one browser opens it straight away. A rule with several shows a picker by the mouse pointer.

A fallback for the rest

Links that match no rule open in your fallback browser, or show the picker if you’d rather decide each time.

Stays out of the way

Lives in the menu bar, keeps a searchable history of the links it opened, and updates itself from GitHub releases.

Install WrangURL

Download the latest release

Get WrangURL-<version>.zip from the latest GitHub release. Safari unzips it for you. In other browsers, double-click the zip in Downloads.
Move it to Applications

Drag WrangURL.app into your Applications folder before you open it. macOS remembers where your default browser lives, so moving the app later means setting it as the default again.
Allow it past Gatekeeper

The first time you open WrangURL, macOS stops it with a message saying Apple could not verify that “WrangURL” is free of malware. Click Done, not Move to Trash, then follow the steps for your macOS version.
macOS 15 Sequoia, macOS 26 Tahoe and later
1. Open System Settings and choose Privacy & Security.
2. Scroll down to the Security section. You’ll see “WrangURL” was blocked to protect your Mac.
3. Click Open Anyway and enter your password or use Touch ID.
4. In the dialog that follows, click Open Anyway again.
Security

“WrangURL” was blocked to protect your Mac. Open Anyway

If you don’t see the message, open WrangURL once more so macOS blocks it again, then come back to Privacy & Security.
macOS 14 Sonoma
1. In Finder, open your Applications folder.
2. Hold Control and click WrangURL, then choose Open from the menu.
3. In the dialog that follows, click Open.
The Privacy & Security route described for macOS 15 works on Sonoma too.
Using Terminal, on any version

Remove the quarantine flag macOS added when you downloaded the app:
```
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/WrangURL.app
```
Then open WrangURL as usual. This only changes this one app.
Why does macOS block WrangURL?

Apple only trusts apps without a warning when they’re signed with a paid Apple Developer ID and sent to Apple for notarization. WrangURL releases are signed with a self-signed certificate instead, so every release carries the same identity, but Apple can’t vouch for it.

You only need to allow it once. Updates from Check for Updates… are verified with a signing key before they’re installed and open without a warning. If you’d rather not trust a download, you can build WrangURL from source with Xcode.
Run the setup assistant

WrangURL opens a short setup assistant and adds its icon to the menu bar. The next section walks through it.

Use WrangURL

First run

The setup assistant takes four steps. You can run it again from Settings → General → Run Setup Again….

Choose a fallback browser. It opens links that no rule matches.
Decide what unmatched links do. Open them in the fallback browser, or ask each time.
Make WrangURL your default browser. It can only route links while it’s the default. macOS asks you to confirm.
Open at login, if you like, so links keep working after a restart.

Write rules

Choose Edit Rules… from the menu bar icon. Each rule has a pattern and one or more browsers. Rules are checked from top to bottom and the first match wins, so drag them into the order you want. Untick a rule to turn it off without deleting it.

The Rules tab listing six rules, each with its pattern, the apps it is limited to, and the icons of the browsers it opens. — The Rules tab. The icons show which browsers each rule opens.

The rule editor for Work docs: a simple pattern of *.atlassian.net, clicked in Slack or Mail, that opens Google Chrome. — Editing a rule. It only applies to links clicked in Slack or Mail.

Simple patterns

A simple pattern matches the host and, if you add them, the scheme, port and path. Case doesn’t matter.

Pattern	Matches
`localhost`	`localhost` over http or https, on any port
`http://localhost`	`localhost` over http only
`localhost:3000`	`localhost` on port 3000 only
`*.example.com`	`example.com` and all of its subdomains
`github.com/myorg/*`	URLs on `github.com` whose path starts with `/myorg/`

Regular expressions

Switch a rule’s type to Regular Expression to match anywhere in the full URL. Regular expressions are case-sensitive. Start the pattern with (?i) to ignore case, for example (?i)^https://meet\.google\.com/.

Limit a rule to apps

Add apps under Clicked In to make a rule apply only to links clicked in those apps, for example to send links from Slack to Chrome. With apps listed, the pattern is optional: leave it empty to match every link from them. Links whose source app can’t be told, such as ones opened with open in Terminal, never match these rules.

Test before you rely on it

Paste a link into Test a URL at the bottom of the Rules tab to see which rule matches and which browser would open. When a rule is limited to apps, choose the app the link is clicked in next to the field. The rule editor has its own test field for the rule you’re working on.

Choose in the picker

The browser picker for http://localhost:3000/dashboard, offering Google Chrome, Brave Browser, Safari and Zen, numbered one to four.

When a rule lists more than one browser, the picker appears next to the mouse pointer. The app you clicked the link in stays in front, so you can keep working after you choose.

To choose for any link, hold ⌥⌘ while you click it. The picker then lists every browser, with the rule’s browsers or the fallback browser first. To use other keys, click Always ask when holding in Settings → General and press them.

`1`–`9`	Open in that browser
`←` `→` or `Tab`	Move the selection
`Return`	Open in the selected browser
`⌘C`	Copy the link and close the picker
`Esc` or click elsewhere	Cancel

Look back at your history

Choose History… from the menu bar icon to see every link WrangURL has opened, grouped by day. Each row shows the time, the app you clicked the link in, the link, the rule that matched it and the browser it went to.

The History window: links grouped under Today, Yesterday and an earlier date, each with its time, the icon of the app it was clicked in, matching rule, browser, and buttons to copy or open it. — The History window. The icon before each link shows the app it was clicked in. Rule names appear next to the browser when a rule matched.

Type in Search History to filter by link, browser, rule or the app the link came from.
Use the buttons at the end of a row to copy the link, or to open it again through your rules. Double-clicking a row also opens it again.
Right-click to open, copy or delete the selected links. Hold ⌘ or Shift to select several.
Click the trash button in the toolbar to clear the whole history.

History stays on your Mac, in history.json next to your configuration, and keeps the most recent 5,000 links. To stop recording, turn off Keep a history of opened links in Settings → General.

Menu bar and settings

The menu bar icon gives you quick access to the things you change most:

whether WrangURL is the default browser, with a button to set it again;
Recent Links. Choose one to copy it;
History…, Edit Rules…, Settings…, Open at Login and Check for Updates….

The General tab: default browser status, fallback browser, unmatched links, the keys that always show the picker (Option-Command), startup and updates. — Settings → General.

Settings → General covers the fallback browser, what happens when no rule matches and the keys that always show the picker, plus launch at login, automatic updates, whether URLs are logged, whether to keep a history, and your configuration. Use Import… and Export… to move your rules and settings between Macs as a JSON file.

Your configuration is stored in ~/Library/Containers/com.thepublicgood.wrangurl/Data/Library/Application Support/WrangURL/config.json. If you edit it by hand, click Reload in Settings → General.

If something’s not right

The menu bar icon shows ⚠︎: WrangURL is no longer the default browser, often because another browser asked to be. Choose Set as Default Browser… from the menu.
Links stopped opening after I moved the app: macOS records where the default browser lives. Open WrangURL from its new location and set it as the default again.
A browser is missing from the list: WrangURL finds browsers in /Applications, ~/Applications and the system Applications folder. Move the browser into one of those.
Removing WrangURL: Pick another default browser in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Default web browser, quit WrangURL from its menu, then drag it to the Trash.

WrangURL is open source

Read the code, report a problem or suggest a feature on GitHub.

Open the repository Report an issue All releases

Every link, in the right browser.