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OpenIn 4

Documentation - 11. FAQ

Table of content

Is the trial available?

You can get a SetApp subscription and use OpenIn 4 as part of the SetApp subscription. SetApp offers a 7-day trial. Another option is to purchase OpenIn 4 from the App Store and request a refund if you don’t like it. You can request a refund from Apple Support.

Configurations

Please take a look at Example: how author of OpenIn uses the OpenIn.

The app is rules-based. To open all other links in just one browser, you can create the last “catch-all” rule that does not have any conditions and choose it to use only one browser/application.

I created a rule, where I configured Source App, but it does not work.

For each scheme (or file type) you create multiple Rules, and they execute in order. Order matters - please take a look at Browsers -> Rules.

Also, to troubleshoot the rules, please use the History View to see what conditions were met when a link was sent to OpenIn. When you select the item from the list, you can use the toolbar to see the conditions by clicking the ladybug.

In most cases, when a link is sent to OpenIn it should detect the source app, but sometimes applications are doing something weird for various reasons. Like Dropbox - instead of sending URLs, it is actually sending HTML files.

Discounts (student, press)?

Students

We distribute OpenIn with App Store and SetApp.

With the App Store all our apps Offer a reduced price on the Apple School Manager for volume purchases. To be honest we don’t know how Apple School Manager works, but the checkbox is enabled on the App Store.

SetApp provides an education discount (50% off) - please follow the link to claim it.

Press

We can gladly provide a Promo Code for anybody who is willing to share articles, links, tutorials for a 1000+ audience. To request the promo code please send an email to support@loshadki.app. Make sure to include proof that you can reach about 1000 users (and that your audience could be interested in macOS applications).

What is the difference between App Store, Web version and Setapp?

The web version (downloaded from our website) is similar to the Setapp version - it is not a sandboxed application, which means it is not limited and all features work out of the box. The App Store version is sandboxed and has some limitations, which we work around with OpenIn Helper.

In reality, all versions are identical - they just have different ways of distribution. Choose the one that is easy for you to install and update.

Can I transfer the license from the App Store to the Web version?

Unfortunately, no. The App Store and Direct versions are separate applications, and there is no way to transfer the license.

Cannot access the OpenIn Preferences

If you have disabled showing the icon in the MenuBar, you don’t have an easy way to access the Preferences. Do the following: try to “open” (double-click) OpenIn in Finder a second time. OpenIn will recognize that you are opening it again and will show the MenuBar icon for 5 seconds, so you can access the Preferences.

How to configure OpenIn as a default Browser?

Open OpenIn preferences for Browsers. If OpenIn is not configured as the default browser you will see a warning - click Fix it.

OpenIn is not in the list of Default Web Browser in macOS’ System Preferences General, as it is not a browser. It is a tool that can handle HTTP(s) links. And Apple requires that only browsers would be visible in there. The only way to make OpenIn the default handler is from the OpenIn app itself.

How to configure OpenIn as a default Mail Application?

Open Mail.app preferences and select OpenIn.app as the default Mail application. Refer to Apple Documentation. For the App Store version, if you are using OpenIn Helper, you can do it from the app (the SetApp version supports that out of the box).

How to configure OpenIn as a default application for a file extension?

  1. Open OpenIn preferences
  2. At the bottom of File types click on add file type… and type the file extension you want to use. Alternatively you can just drop a file with a specific extension into the list.
  3. Select applications you want to use for this file extension.
  4. Open Finder and select any file with the desired file extension.
  5. In Finder, right-click to open the Get Info dialog on the file with the desired file extension.
  6. In the dialog, change the application in Open With to OpenIn and click on Change All…

For the App Store version, if you use OpenIn Helper, you can just click on Fix It for this file extension (the SetApp version supports that out of the box).

Can I configure OpenIn for Firefox profiles?

Unfortunately, not at this moment. Firefox does support the command line switch -P to start Firefox with a specific profile, but it does not work if Firefox is already running.

Can OpenIn support profiles in Browser X (Arc, …)?

A browser supporting profiles is not the same as a browser allowing links to be opened in a specific profile. I am getting asked a LOT if OpenIn can support some specific browser, and a lot of them just don’t support allowing other apps to send them links to a specific profile.

Please refer to Troubleshooting Chromium Profiles to see if your browser can support opening links in a specific profile. If it does, it is easy for me to implement that. If it does not, there is nothing OpenIn can do about it.

Note: I have contacted Arc and confirmed with them that they don’t support opening links in a specific profile - feel free to contact them.

Not really. We do not provide browser extensions, and are not planning to do so. OpenIn only handles URLs opened within macOS. Browsers don’t send links to macOS, but just open them within the browser.

You can enable the “Open in OpenIn” extension to be able to open links from one browser to another. Open System Preferences in macOS, go to Extensions, choose Share Menu and select Open in OpenIn.

In Safari, you can use Share -> Open in OpenIn.

Similarly, if you select text in Safari you can use Services -> Open in OpenIn. Unfortunately not all browsers send URLs to services - for example, that does not work in Chrome.

Not sure about OpenIn, could you recommend alternatives?

If you feel like OpenIn is not the right tool for you, please take a look at alternatives. Most of them, I believe, only support selecting browsers for URL links.

Why OpenIn cannot autodiscover Chrome profiles?

We respect other developers. In the profile directory for Chromium browsers, you can find a README file with

Google Chrome settings and storage represent user-selected preferences and information 
and MUST not be extracted, overwritten or modified except through Google Chrome defined APIs.

None of these applications have their link formats documented. Unfortunately it is not as simple as just sending the https link to the app to work. For example, for Zoom you need to convert the https link to zoommtg (see Zoom URL Schemes). Other applications expect different link formats, and usually we can find the scheme, but we know nothing about what kind of parameters we need to attach.

OpenIn at this point knows only about Zoom. But even for Zoom, that does not cover all cases. Our belief is to provide you with a tool that can do anything, and it is your job to figure out how to use it. Some other applications have built-in support for other applications, but we are not planning to add those.