Open URL workflow : what's the difference with "default browser" option?

[ken luu]

Hi,

 

I have an alfred workflow that heavily utilizes the OpenURL action to interact / navigate around Ticktick.

What's nice about this is the "default browser" seems to launch the ticktick.app natively even though firefox is my default browser.

It doesn't work the other way around if I specifically set the browser to be firefox; a new firefox window would then pop up.

My question is, what is the difference with this "default  browser" option, and can I programmatically invoke it?

My goal is to replicate such open in app behaviour to interact with ticktick's tasks url on clicking them from other places, instead of hardcoding the url in the action.

 

Thank you.

[FireFingers21]

The default browser option opens the URL in the default application for that URL scheme. For example, an https scheme like "https://www.alfredforum.com" will usually open in your default browser, whereas a dict scheme like "dict://forum" will perform a search for "forum" in macOS's built-in Dictionary app. When you change the "Open With:" option to Firefox, it instead forces the URL to open in Firefox, regardless of the scheme it uses.

 

TickTick has their own URL scheme "ticktick://" for which they have some documentation here:

https://help.ticktick.com/articles/7055781515422072832#url-scheme

 

[ken luu]

@FireFingers21 thanks for chiming in. What you said make sense but the interesting part is the hardcoded url I used was actually a https based one https://ticktick.com/webapp/#p/<project_id>/tasks/<task_id> , not the ticktick scheme in their reference.

Alternatively I can hit this up with the ticktick folks; if I can just narrow down if this behaviour comes from ticktick or a unique feature from Alfred.

[FireFingers21]

@ken luu It's not an Alfred feature, it's an Apple feature of macOS and iOS called Universal links. It lets developers associate web links with a particular app. Another example you may have already seen is with App Store and iTunes links. You'll notice if you try to open the App Store page for TickTick (https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ticktick-to-do-list-calendar/id966085870?mt=12), it opens directly in the App Store rather than your browser. Or if you do paste that link directly in your browser, you'll see a popup asking if you'd like to open the link with the App Store.

 

Universal links and URL Schemes are both ways for apps to handle content rather than having the OS only load the link in a web browser.