Take full control of your default browser with Browser Chooser

BrowserChooser - Copy

Set up a new PC and one of the first things you’ll do is install and choose a default browser, which then handles all your website-viewing needs. This mostly works fine, but you might want to open some links in different browsers: intranet in IE, YouTube in Chrome to use an extension you’ve found, your bank in a secure browser, whatever it might be.

Browser Chooser 2 is an open-source tool which helps you control the browser that’s launched in any given situation.

The program is a single executable, no installation required, and in its basic form is very simple. Run it, a toolbar appears with icons for all your installed browsers, and clicking any of those launches the relevant program.

This gets more interesting when you set Browser Chooser 2 as your default browser. Now, whenever you click a link in something or enter a URL in the search box, the program pops up and you can manually select the browser you’d like to use.

That’s an extra click, of course, but Browser Chooser offers an "Auto URL" feature which enables specific sites to be opened in different browsers.

Wildcard support makes this easy to set up. For example, you could use *youtube* to open any URL containing the word YouTube in your preferred browser, *paypal* to another, * to open all other links in something else, and Browser Chooser 2 then automatically launches the right program for the right job.

Despite the name, this isn’t just about browsers and web pages. You’re able to expand the program with support for other applications and protocols, for example to take more control over how your multimedia files are handled.

Browser Chooser works well with its default settings, but there are also lots of opportunities for fine tuning, right down to defining the grid and icon sizes and the individual images to use on your browser menu.

This can have quite a dramatic effect on your PC usage, but fortunately Browser Chooser isn’t intrusive, and doesn’t mess up your system by making a load of low-level Registry changes. We gave it control by using the standard Windows "Default Programs" dialog to make it our default browser, and we could undo its effects at any time by setting the default browser to something else.

On balance, Browser Chooser isn’t going to change your life, but its ability to route certain URLs to specific browsers is handy, and overall it’s likeable and easy to use.

Browser Chooser 2 is an open source tool for Windows 7 and later.

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