Browser Fairy App Reviews

Stumbled onto this just now and bought it in the blink of an eye. I literally run three instances of Firefox for work, and Safari for playing the web… I have chrome just for special occasions… Anyway, im a tab hoarder, and this is cluttering my Safari up… I also sometimes needed to drag links to specific browsers on the dock, and thats gone now. One thing thou that misses is the option to intercept clicks inside browsers, so if I open Facebook on Safari I would like it to auto move to Chrome, for example. That would be sweet! :)

Works all right and is so transparent that I have almost forgotten it is on my computer.

I would not be able to work as effectively without Browser Fairy. I have many web-based things to do as part of my work. Being able to select the browser to use either as Im working or with custom URL filters is invaluable. I have all my Google sites automatically open in Chrome where the integration is a bit better. If I decide while browsing I want to switch browswers the Browser Fairy extensions work great for opening the same page Im on in another browser. Ive been testing with the Safari Technical Preview and being able to go back and forth quickly saves so much time and I dont have to think about copying the URL, opening the right browser, pasting the URL. It just works!

You cant add Fluid or Helium to browser window which severly inhibits its use.

I have been using Browser Fairy for the past 6 months. The only feature I wanted was to have keyboard shortcuts to quickly open my browser of choice without clicking. That has now been added and it is great. Also, the new version does seem to open browsers much faster. Thanks for the improvements!

The developer should make clear before you buy that Browser Fairy must be the default browser for the app to function. That is a deal breaker for me. I am uninstalling this app.

This small app does just one thing—but it does it well. And it stays out of the way until needed. On functionality alone, it rates five stars; however the documentation is not as detailed as it I would like it to be, and for that reason only, just four stars. Having said that, the application does not require much documentation to use, and most users will find it entirely adequate.

I use Fluid to make SSBs (Single Site Browsers) for many of my frequented websites (e.g. Facebook, Trello, Google docs, etc). Browser Fairy lets me automatically open links (primarily in emails and chats) in the proper SSB. Its a great example of set it and forget it software that works without any fluff. It would be great if the browser extensions could automatically use the rules defined in the Browser Fairy app. I think thats the only thing keeping this from being feature complete (and 5 stars). Oh, and make the browser extension icons retina friendly, please! :-)

I use Safari for my personal browsing and Chrome for work, and it’s been unbelievably tedious to copy URLs to paste them into one browser or another. Browser Fairy completely solves my problem, and better yet, doesn’t require me to choose a browser every time; its ability to specify rules by URL *or* by source application makes it pretty trivial to set up a basic set of rules that means every click goes in the right browser. I was anxiously awaiting v1.6, which is now Yosemite-compatible, and I’m happy to report it’s working fine in my one day of testing so far. SUPER happy with this app - $3.99 for the time savings is a unbelievable steal!

Doesnt open any links since the last update. You click on the link and nothing happens. And then the app itself (the settings) doesnt open.

I love this little app. It works unobtrusively in the background and steers URLs to the browser of your choice. It can do that based on rules you define, via a popup selector, and also offers a default browser. It is one of those helpful apps that you get so used to that you only realize you are missing it once you work on another computer. I use different browsers for my personal and academic life. My productivity has increased, no more copy and paste orgies like before.

I had no idea that something like this even existed until I saw it in the app store today. With so many newspapers requiring a password after a certain amount of views opening up another browser is the only way to circumvent the problelm. Browser Fairy makes opening up another browser a breeze. It’s fantastic.

I like to do my work in Chrome and keep my personal life in Safari. Problem is, if I click a link in an email or a chat message from a coworker, I’m going to get sent to my system’s default web browser. Which means I have to pick one browser to handle all links, and then deal with the frustration of constantly being sent to the “wrong” browser. With so many great web browsers, why should I have to pick just one? Thankfully, with Browser Fairy, I no longer have to! I just set Browser Fairy as my system’s default browser, and then it was very easy to set up some rules to control what links go to what browser. You can also choose a fallback browser to use if none of your rules are matched, or even set it up to prompt you, which allows you to make the final decision for links that may be questionable. With this setup, if I click a link in an email that goes to my corporate Intranet, it opens up in Chrome. If a friend emails me a link to a YouTube video, that’ll go straight to Safari. Magic! I absolutely love this app. It’s such a simple concept, but makes a huge difference in my daily Mac usage. The only issue I’ve seen is that shortened links (t.co, goo.gl, etc.) circumvent any rules that are based on checking the URL, since the actual destination URL is unknown. I emailed the developer about this, and they were very responsive, replying back the same day to let me know this issue is on their radar but they have been cautious about dealing with it because any solution would also come with potential downsides (delay while determining the actual destination URL, for instance). But, hands down, a great app from a great developer!

Great alternative to the unsupported Choosy tool.

Just got it set up, so far this is a great way to automatically open links for creepy companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter in an alternate browser. I’ve tested it with links from a few apps, like Tweetbot and Mail, and it works like a charm. Since it’s rule-based, though, about my only compaint is I wish there were rule templates for some of its use cases, like being a web developer or protecting one’s privacy. Something like a rule template of “open all Google links in X browser” and all the relevant URLs are already filled in (since many of these companies have lots of sub-properties and all sorts of regular and shortened URLs). Still, this is just what I’ve been looking for. Works great.

Browser Fairy just works. You set it to be your default browser and it silently and seamlessly routes URLs to whatever browser you want based on customizable rules. The interface is simple and clean. Once Ive set up my rules, I really dont even remember its there--but my links automatically go to different browsers based on the rules Ive set up. A must for people who use different browsers for different links.

This application solves the annoying problem of having to copy and paste links out of other applications (e.g. Mail) into the particular browsers in which I want them to open. I need it because I’ve got my default browser, Firefox, locked down tight with regards to javascript, cookies, privacy add-ons, etc., and some pages just don’t work well there. Note: These guys make browser extensions that work with the application to seamlessly and easily ‘move pages from one browser to another. This turns out to be necessary for links that open in one browser, but that redirect to a site that you want to open in another browser. (The usual suspects here are listmania, mail chimp, etc.)