Why
Browser Tamer acts as a browser proxy on your machine that catches links you click and redirects them to a browser or browser profile of your choice.
The main difference comparing to other products is that it’s tiny (~1.5mb exe, ~2mb RAM), completely free, blazing fast, and never uses more than 0% CPU or any CO2 (makes it good for the 🌎).
Installing
You have a choice how to install:
- direct download (installer or portable)
- with winget:
winget install aloneguid.BrowserTamer - with scoop:
scoop install bt
Once launched, the application is ready to use immediately, but in order for the system to recognise it as a browser, you need to register it first. All the browser applications like Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari etc. require you to do this as well when they are installed, so this step is not any different. Press “Set as Default” which will pop up Windows’ settings dialog where you can manually select Browser Tamer as you default browser application. For instance, in Windows 11 this looks like the following:
Configuring
Configuration can be as simple as you want it to be. The most trivial case:
- Select the browser you’re interested in.
- Type which links you want to open it this browser.
- Press the “Apply” button.
- Repeat for any other browsers.
All the links that do not match any configured rules will open in the default browser, which is set in “default” dropdown in the middle of the screen. This is how you can set the default browser at any point of time.
Rules
A rule is a single line in the Rules section. It simply says that if a link contains text you’ve typed in, then open the specified browser. It is case insensitive so a line mydomain will match:
- mydomain.com
- MyDomain.com
- https://blabla.mydomain.com
Picker
When holding the button or a button configured and pressing a link elsewhere, Browser Tamer will open a browser picker dialog where you can choose which browser to open!
Supported Browsers
All the browsers known to the world are supported. Out of the box Brower Tamer detects:
- Mozilla Firefox. Including private mode.
- Microsoft Edge “Edgium” (Windows 10/11 default). Including profiles and incognito mode.
- Google Chrome, including incognito mode.
- Other browsers based on Chromium or Firefox may be autodetected as well, as they register themselves in the system in a similar way.
But you can always add your own custom browser if it’s not discovered or installed in an unsupported way (like a portable install).
Browser Extensions
You can optionally install an extension for Chrome that help to redirect links from inside the browser to local instance of Browser Tamer.
Version History
| Ver | Published | Notes | Installer | Portable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5.5 | 20/05/2022 | Performance and security improvements. | 🔗 | 🔗 |
| 2.5.4 | 12/05/2022 | General stability improvements. | 🔗 | 🔗 |
| 2.5.3 | 21/03/2022 | improvement: added auto update check and link to Chrome extension. | 🔗 | |
| 2.5.2 | 18/03/2022 | bug fixed: URL picker would sometimes hang in the background. | 🔗 | |
| 2.5.1 | 16/03/2022 | bug fixed: URL picker was opening in the background so you couldn’t see it sometimes. | 🔗 | |
| 2.5 | 15/03/2022 | New: add your own browser; support for Firefox private mode; upport for x-bt protocol. Improved: picker launcher keys can be configured!; user interface is slightly more polished. | 🔗 | |
| 2.4 | 11/02/2022 | New feature! When holding ctrl and pressing a link, you can pick which browser to open. | 🔗 | |
| 2.3 | 20/01/2022 | General stability improvements. | 🔗 | |
| 2.2 | 16/01/2022 | General stability improvements. | 🔗 | |
| 2.1 | 16/11/2021 | Still called Oh Dear! due to the fact I love ImGui so much. New features: | 🔗 | |
| 2.0 | 13/11/2021 | Complete UI rewrite and new features. Due to the fact Microsoft cannot decide on what is the UI framework for programming on Windows, I’ve decided to use a completely independent third-party framework ImGui which is usually used in game development but also good for small utilities like this. It’s super small and super fast. | 🔗 | |
| 1.0 | 06/09/2021 | Sort of a first release. | 🔗 |
Thanks! You can always email me or use contact form for more questions/comments etc.