{"id":1684,"date":"2015-07-10T13:15:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T17:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/?p=1684"},"modified":"2015-07-10T13:21:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T17:21:47","slug":"thunderbird-links-open-in-chrome-chromium-in-incognito-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/thunderbird-links-open-in-chrome-chromium-in-incognito-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunderbird links open in Chrome \/ Chromium in incognito mode"},"content":{"rendered":"

Important!<\/strong><\/p>My tech articles—especially Linux ones—are some of the most-viewed on The Z-Issue. If this one has helped you, please consider a small donation to The Parker Fund<\/a> by using the top widget at the right. Thanks!<\/div>\n

For quite some time, I have tried to get links in Thunderbird<\/a> to open automatically in Chrome<\/a> or Chromium<\/a> instead of defaulting to Firefox<\/a>. Moreover, I have Chromium start in incognito mode<\/a> by default, and I would like those links to do the same. This has been a problem for me since I don’t use a full desktop environmen<\/a>t like KDE<\/a>, GNOME<\/a>, or even XFCE<\/a>. As I’m really a minimalist, I only have my window manager<\/a> (which is Openbox<\/a>), and the applications that I use on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

One thing I found, though, is that by using PCManFM<\/a> as my file manager, I do have a few other related applications and utilities that help me customise my workspace and workflows. One such application is libfm-pref-apps<\/a>, which allows for setting preferred applications. I found that I could do just what I wanted to do without mucking around with manually setting MIME types<\/a>, writing custom hooks for Thunderbird, or any of that other mess.<\/p>\n

Here’s how it was done:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Execute \/usr\/bin\/libfm-pref-apps<\/code> from your terminal emulator<\/a> of choice<\/li>\n
  2. Under “Web Browser,” select “Customise” from the drop-down menu<\/li>\n
  3. Select the “Custom Command Line” tab<\/li>\n
  4. In the “Command line to execute” box, type \/usr\/bin\/chromium --incognito --start-maximized %U<\/code><\/li>\n
  5. In the “Application name” box, type “Chromium incognito” (or however else you would like to identify the application)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Voilà! After restarting Thunderbird, my links opened just like I wanted them to. The only modification that you might need to make is the “Command line to execute” portion. If you use the binary of Chrome instead of building the open-source Chromium browser, you would need to change it to the appropriate executable (and the path may be different for you, depending on your system and distribution). Also, in the command line that I have above, here are some notes about the switches used:<\/p>\n