One particular painful experience I had under MacOS was that it seems not to be possible with on-board settings to configure which program / action should be used on execution of a Link.

Similar as you would choose a default Browser or Email app, this is needed for far more than just the browser.

e.g.:

  • open mailto:// links with outlook​
  • open ssh:// links with kitty-term​
  • open ftp:// with transmission​

and so on…

As usual on Mac - you have to do this the manual way - as a short howto save I wrote down how:

PrefPane: SwiftDefaultApps

Prerequisite: you have Homebrew installed. Then execute:

brew install swiftdefaultappsprefpane

(source: github.com/Lord-Kamina/SwiftDefaultApps)

Afterwards run this in a Terminal:

appDir="/Library/PreferencePanes/SwiftDefaultApps.prefPane/Contents/Resources/ThisAppDoesNothing.app"

if ! [[ -d "$appDir" ]]; then appDir="$HOME/$appDir"; fi

# Remove quanrantine flag
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$appDir"
# Open the app
open "$appDir"

Done - Ready to set via UI

After succesful installation you will find the option SwiftDefaultApps in the System Settings:

macos-protocol-handler-screenshot