Set the default browser, system-wide, on Manjaro

Question

In Ubuntu I used

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

to set the default internet browser manually.

In Manjaro I get:

sudo: update-alternatives: command not found

I have set Firefox as the default in its settings and want it to stay so.

After installing Chromium, the default browser is now Chromium, although I reconfirmed Firefox as such and in Chromnum settings it says: "Chromium cannot determine or set the default browser".

How to make Firefox default browser?

Solution 1

For users of i3wm, in addition to editing ~/.config/mimeapps.list and ~/.i3/config, you also need to change $BROWSER from ~/.profile, set it to /usr/bin/chromium, to prevent browser sessions emerging from the terminal from opening the wrong browser.

Solution 2

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

Solution 3

This question is a bit old, but I would like to register my solution. After struggling with xdg-settings, what worked for me was xdg-mime.

So, check your default browser with:

xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/https

And change whatever browser you want to use. Make sure you use the .desktop after the browser name.

xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/https
xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/http

Then, check again:

xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/https

Solution 4

Edit your ~/.config/mimeapps.list and replace references to firefox.desktop with google-chrome.desktop.

If you use google-chrome-stable to launch chrome, use that instead, followed by .desktop.

Solution 5

In case someone else has the same issue…

Edit your config file:

nano ~/.i3/config 

and change

bindsym $mod+F2 exec …

to your browser of choice (e.g. bindsym $mod+F2 exec google-chrome-stable) Save and reload your config file (mod+Shift+R)

Should be all set…

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Comments

[Admin]

Does manjaro have the x-www-browser symlink? And to what it links? Also, is update-alternatives available in Manjaro?

[Admin]

@Braiam - No. And no, not even in AUR.

[Admin]

If your system doesn't have x-www-browser, what is “changing the linked binary” supposed to mean? Are you trying to change the default browser? That depends on the application that launches it — I don't think Manjaro has a system-wide default (and it's more of a user preference anyway). What application are you interested in?

[Admin]

@Gilles - that phrasing of the title is due to the edit made by Braiam, while I was just asking out of curiosity thinking that the ubuntu option would be available in Manjaro. If not, that's my answer. (Installing Chromium, it took over as default browser. I think I fixed it simply from the FF GUI.)

[Admin]

@cipricus Oh, I see, sorry. Your original title was misleading too. Once again, I don't think Manjaro has a system-wide or per-user default, so you'll get better help if you mention which applications you use that launch a browser.

[Admin]

@Gilles - I have now edited the question to fit the new title, which is basically what I want.

[Tom Hale]

Where chromium is whatever you'd type at the command prompt to start your preferred browser. Eg, it could be google-chrome-stable.

[Arnaud Meuret]

This seems overly i3-centric.

[Ébe Isaac]

Actually, I find that this is the only solution that solved my problem. This is a separate answer. For applications that open the default browser (such as Jupyter) changing just the key bindings won't work.

[xoryves]

Works for voidlinux with i3.

[Florian Brinker]

Does not work on Manjrao I3: xdg-settings: $BROWSER is set and can't be changed with xdg-settings, but Anas answer worked: unix.stackexchange.com/a/434465/28262

[chris.r]

Yes... it was. Now on xfce, which Tom addresses below.

[akiva]

for me removing the palemoon package was also required pacman -R palemoon-bin

[Andrei Boyanov]

Of course, nothing else worked for me. Do you know in which files this configuration is kept ? For me .config/mimeapps.list contained chrome even before xdg-mime...

[Karlo Guidoni Martins]

I think mimeapps.list is the default config file for this. Look for this file in other locations. See examples here

[apaderno]

For Google Chrome, I had to use xdg-settings set default-web-browser google-chrome.desktop. xdg-settings set default-web-browser google-chrome-stable gave a xdg-settings: invalid application name error; using the full path for google-chrome-stable gave the same error.

[li x]

Confirmed working on latest install of manjaro when opening webpage links directly from terminal and in intellij.

[ironman]

This is the best-working answer. I installed brave after having fiddled with mimeapps.list , where I already had set chromium as my default. Brave took over being the default, despite all the entries in mimeapps.list, but this set it back to chromium