xdg-open not open default browser

Question

I have the following scenario: Ubuntu 16.04 machine with firefox and chrome installed, chrome being my default browser.

I check this actions in the shell :

cat /usr/share/applications/defaults.list
cat /etc/mailcap
cat /.config/mimeapps.list
cat /.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

x-www-browser-> chrome is launch
xdg-mime query default text/html
response:
google-chrome.desktop

And does not appear firefox by any side, always chrome. This is fine. Also check:

Click on a desktop file file.html -> chrome is launch

And now comes the strange, if I run:

xdg-open "http://www.example.com"

For some strange reason it always opens firefox. I do not know why, could anyone help me?

Answer 1

To set a default browser, make sure that a .desktop file exists for your preferred browser. I'll be setting Mozilla Iceweasel for this example:

$ ls /usr/share/applications/iceweasel.desktop
iceweasel.desktop

Assured you have the file, run:

$ xdg-settings set default-web-browser iceweasel.desktop
# Test that it works
$ xdg-open "http://example.com"

If you don't have a .desktop file:

I use the program surf, which doesn't have a .desktop file. To set this as your web browser, first create the file ~/.local/share/applications/surf.desktop with this following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=surf
Comment=Surf minimal web browser
Terminal=false
Exec=surf
Categories=Network;WebBrowser

While not all of this content is required, it helps categorize the file for any future use.

Set the default browser like normal:

$ xdg-settings set default-web-browser surf.desktop

And now you're good to go!

Answer 2

text/html is for html files, i.e. if you open a html file then it would open in google chrome. For opening urls, you need to have the x-scheme-handler/https and x-scheme-handler/http entries.

you can set that either with xdg-mime. For example to set google chrome as the default browser for xdg-open:

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

Or you can put the following lines in ~/.config/mimeapps.list

x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/https=google-chrome.desktop

The above command basically insert these lines to that file.

Note: you should obviously have the google-chrome.desktop file under ~/.local/share/applications or the systemwide alternative location - /usr/share/applications.

For changing the default browser overall, you also have to use xdg-settings as shown by Nolan Akash. xdg-settings changes the value of $BROWSER so another way to change it is to explicitly assign the program ( not the .desktop file) to $BROWSER environment variable and export it.

export BROWSER=google-chrome

you usually would want to keep this like in ~/.bashrc (or the equivalent for the shell you use) or in ~/.profile and log out and log in to have the environment updated and available for other programs to see.