Highbrow

For users who appreciate the finer things in life, Highbrow is a lightweight, rule-based browser selector for Linux.

Features

• Rules-based URL routing: Automatically open URLs in specific browsers based on regex patterns
• Browser selector: When no rule matches, use the simple UI to select the browser

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/tradiff/highbrow.git
cd highbrow

2. Build in release mode:

cargo build --release

3. Run once to set Highbrow as your default browser:

target/release/highbrow

Use the UI prompt to set Highbrow as your default browser.

Configuration

Create a configuration file at ~/.config/highbrow.toml with the following structure:

# Optional: Set a default browser for URLs that don't match any patterns
default_browser = "_Firefox"

[[browsers]]
label = "_Firefox" # Underscore prefix creates the keyboard shortcut Alt+f
command = "firefox" # Command to launch the browser
icon_name = "firefox" # System icon name
patterns = [
    'https://facebook\.com/.*',
    'https://spotify\.com/.*',
]

[[browsers]]
label = "_Chromium"
command = "chromium-browser"
icon_name = "chromium"
patterns = [
    'https://mycompany\.com/.*',
]

• label: Browser name shown in the selector UI. Prefix a letter with underscore (_) to create an Alt+Key keyboard shortcut.
• command: The executable command to launch the browser. You can include arguments (e.g. firefox --private-window or firefox -P personal)
• icon_name: The system icon name from your icon theme.
• patterns: List of regular expressions to match URLs. When a URL matches a pattern, it automatically opens in the corresponding browser. Any URLs that do not match a rule will display the selection UI.

Example patterns

patterns = [
    # Match exact domain
    'https://example\.com(/.*)?',
    
    # Match http or https, and any subdomains
    'https?://(.*\.)?example\.com(/.*)?',
]