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What is Re:Link?

Re:Link is a a smart desktop app that acts as a rule-based link handler. Once set as your default browser, it intercepts link clicks from email clients and other desktop apps and opens them in specific browsers based on your custom rules.

For example:

  • google.com → Chrome
  • msn.com → Edge
  • github.com → Firefox
  • youtube.com → Brave

Why it exists?

Switching between multiple browsers for different purposes is cumbersome and requires a lot of manual work and time. A few scenarios where you are forced to work with multiple browsers:

  1. Separate personal and work accounts
  2. Use apps or sites that work only with specific browsers
  3. If you’re a developer, you may want to test your sites and pages with multiple browsers
  4. You want to isolate sessions for privacy
ReLink UI
Re:Link for Windows
Re:Link for Mac

Re:Link for Windows runs on Windows 10 and above and is open source. You can download the source code and binaries from GitHub.

https://github.com/zshameel/ReLink

Re:Link for Mac runs on MacOS 10.14 and above and is open source. You can download the source code and binaries from GitHub.

https://github.com/zshameel/ReLinkForMac

How it works?

  1. User clicks on link inside apps or Email client or enters a URL in the Run dialog
  2. The operating system (Windows/Mac) sends the link to the default browser (Re:Link)
  3. Re:Links resolves the link to a browser based on Rules
  4. Re:Link opens the link using the resolved browser or the Fallback browser if link resolution fails.
Re:Link Architecture

Here is the simple rule that I use:

Edge: Social Media, Email and Collaboration, Microsoft stuff.

Firefox: Dev-related search, GitHub, StackOverflow and other Developer activities and Open Source stuff.

Chrome: General search, Storage, Documents, Testing & validation, Google stuff.

Brave: Things I wouldn’t like being tracked.

Note that Re:Link need not be running all the time for this to work. It intercepts URL requests and link clicks on the fly and opens it in your favorite browsers.

How to setup Re:Link?

Proceed to the Re:Link for Windows or Re:Link for Mac to see how to download and set up this app.