How to set the Default Browser from the Command Line?

Question

Tried to set the default browser using the GUI tools but this didn't work overall. Is there a way to configure the system wide default browser from command line?

score 72 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 08 '10 at 13:48

Execute the following command in terminal,to change the default browser.

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

Sample output:

karthick@Ubuntu-desktop:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser 
There are 3 choices for the alternative x-www-browser (providing /usr/bin/x-www-browser).

  Selection    Path                    Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/bin/google-chrome   200       auto mode
* 1            /usr/bin/firefox         40        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/google-chrome   200       manual mode
  3            /usr/bin/opera           90        manual mode

Press enter to keep the default[*].
Right now I have firefox as my default web browser.
If i want google-chrome as default browser then I will type 3 and hit enter.

Note:

If you want to configure a commandline browser,then you have to configure

sudo update-alternatives --config www-browser
Alternate way is to add the following line export BROWSER=/usr/bin/firefox to your ~/.bashrc
Add the above line in the last,

Alternative GUI Method:

You can also set the default browser in Gnome applications,type the following in terminal and press Enter gnome-default-applications-properties
It will Open a Window.Now you can choose your preferred browser to set it default.

score 37 · Answer 2 · answered May 25 '16 at 08:53

37

The already suggested methods might not work for some app (e.g. HipChat).

I've had to do:

xdg-settings set default-web-browser chromium-browser.desktop

answered May 25 '16 at 08:53

stilllife

537

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 28 '20 at 17:10

Googlers, to do this fully scripted (no interaction whatsoever) in a setup script:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /usr/bin/google-chrome 500
sudo update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /usr/bin/google-chrome

…and similary for your favorite editor:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/bin/pluma 500
sudo update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/pluma

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 10:21

It depends a bit on what "default browser" exactly means, i.e. for what purpose you want to change the browser. Some programs ignore any system-wide settings and use their own settings.

That said, you can set the default browser for all programs starting the browser with the generic sensible-browser command by exporting the BROWSER variable, e.g. add a line to the file ~/.bashrc:

export BROWSER=/usr/bin/firefox

The other generic way of calling a browser is x-www-browser, this one is handled by the Debian "alternatives" system:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

If you want to configure a commandline-only browser like lynx, you have to configure www-browser instead.

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 02 '21 at 01:39

The top two answers here both look promising, yet only one of them worked for me. Have you ever wondered why? For the sake of completeness, this is an official wiki page from Debian:

Foreign applications

Default for foreign programs (system-wide)

Programs which are not designed for the user's desktop environment do not obey the browser settings of the desktop environment (GNOME or KDE). For example, Thunderbird ignores desktop environment-specific browser settings. The default browser for generic applications can be changed for the whole system by reconfiguring the x-www-browser alternative.
# update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
Default for foreign programs (user-specific)

Some applications use xdg-open (part of xdg-utils). xdg-settings can be used to both get and change the default browser. Local settings can also be found in the users' home in ~/.config/mimeapps.list.
$ xdg-settings get default-web-browser
chromium.desktop
$ xdg-settings set default-web-browser firefox-esr.desktop

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 18 '18 at 20:03

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

only shows installed application trough apt-get, for manual installation you can use

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /opt/yourapp/yourapp 200
sudo update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /opt/yourapp/yourapp

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 22 '24 at 16:03

first of all, I use Ubuntu 22.04 and wanted to set Midori as my default browser, but this was even not listed in the list of browsers.

Reading a bit discovered that the configuration file to define default browser was:

~/.config/mimeapps.list

Then as I have several browsers I discovered that In order to add to the list of browsers I needed to find which was the *.desktop Application Meta Description of Midori, those files *.desktop are located in several places of ubuntu but mainly on:

/usr/share/applications

With this information and after comparing what changes in the file after setting default browser in ubuntu/settings the following images show how I finally set midori as default browser:

Find the name *.desktop of midori, in my case was midori-ng.desktop
Edit the file ~/.config/mimeapps.list
Add entries of midori-ng.desktop in the list of available brosers.
In my case midori-ng.desktop was but defined, because didn't pass the parameter or arguments to the app so I couldn't for example open a link that was in a pdf. So I had to edit the midori-ng.desktop file to set the parameter as midori %u.

Added Midori in the combobox of default browsers. Added Midori as default browser Edit midori-ng.dekstop Added missing handler of argument or parameter %u Midori Now Appears Listed In Settings

Martin Dorey · Answer 8 · 2018-08-22T00:09:00.280

For me, today, running Gnome 3, ~/.config/mimeapps.list is what controls gnome-open <url> and Java's Desktop.getDesktop().browse(new URI(url)). This is what changes there when I run gnome-control-center (the "Details" applet in the settings application from the top right menu) and change Default Applications, Web from Google Chrome to Firefox ESR:

11c11
< x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop
---
> x-scheme-handler/http=firefox-esr.desktop`

As hoped, I could revert that from the command line with:

perl -i -wpe 's@x-scheme-handler/http(s?)=firefox-esr.desktop@x-scheme-handler/http$1=google-chrome.desktop@' ~/.config/mimeapps.list

... and put it back with:

perl -i -wpe 's@x-scheme-handler/http(s?)=google-chrome.desktop@x-scheme-handler/http$1=firefox-esr.desktop@' ~/.config/mimeapps.list

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 10:19

0

Try the following commands:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
sudo update-alternatives --config www-browser

answered Dec 08 '10 at 10:19

ddeimeke

3,149

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 12 '14 at 15:50

0

Additional to those answer google-chrome has usually a symbolic link to the channel-specific version:

/usr/bin/google-chrome -> /etc/alternatives/google-chrome -> /usr/bin/google-chrome-beta

answered Nov 12 '14 at 15:50

Wernight

1,413

score -1 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 17 '19 at 12:29

For me, sensible-browser seems to just call /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser, which symlinks to /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser, which symlinks to the browser. To change it, I needed to do this:

sudo rm /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser
sudo ln -s ~/bin/firefox /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser

You should put the full path to the browser that you want to use in place of ~/bin/firefox.

Now, when I run sensible-browser https://example.com, Firefox opens as expected.

How to set the Default Browser from the Command Line?

11 Answers11

Foreign applications

Default for foreign programs (system-wide)

Default for foreign programs (user-specific)

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