Open links in the browser of your choice

Click the green Download button to the right of the page and then click the I Agree button in the licence agreement pop-up that appears. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Now locate and double-click the Browser_Chooser.msi file just downloaded. Ignore any security warnings, click Next followed by Next and then click Install and then click Yes in the User Account Control dialogue box. Once the installation is complete, click Finish.

Launch Browser Chooser by double-clicking the shortcut on the Windows Desktop. If a User Account Control dialogue box appears, click Yes, and click Yes to enable automatic updates. We now need to tell Browser Chooser how we would like it to behave. Click the Browser 1 tab and use the dropdown menu to select the first of the web browsers you have installed. The Target field should be automatically filled in with the default location of the web browser but if it has been installed in an alternative folder, click the … button to the right to select the correct location.

The title of the web browser can be changed by entering a suitable name in the Display Name field. It is also possible to choose an icon to represent each web browser. From the Image dropdown menu, the default icons for six of the most popular web browsers can be selected, but a custom image can also be used. Select the Custom option from the dropdown menu and then click the ‘ button to the right of Custom image to select a .png or .ico image file.

Work through the Browser 2 to Browser 5 tabs configuring the same options for other installed web browsers. If a particular browser is not included in the Browser dropdown menu, select Custom before using the Target field to point Browser Chooser at the relevant executable file. It is not necessary to complete all five tabs (if you have just two browsers installed, say). Move to the Miscellaneous tab, tick the boxes labelled ‘Show URL’ and ‘Reveal Shortened URLs’ and click Save. Click the Activate Browser Chooser (Make Default Browser) button and then click OK.

A Browser Chooser window will now appear: use this to launch an installed web browser. It will also appear when a link is clicked outside a browser window, such links contained in emails. With the two URL-related options enabled (see Step 4), the address of the site will be displayed at the top of the dialogue box. Just click an icon to open the site in the desired browser.

Installed web browsers can still be launched independently but whenever another program attempts to open a website, Browser Chooser will spring into action. It is also possible to specify that certain web links should always be opened in a particular browser. Click the Options button to the right of the Browser Chooser window and click the relevant browser tab. In the URLs box enter addresses for the relevant websites, separating each with a comma. Repeat for other sites and browsers and click Save.