macOS menu bar app
Click any link. Choose the browser profile where it belongs.
Burly is a tiny macOS menu bar app that becomes your link handler. When you click a link, it lets you pick the exact browser and profile that should open it, instantly, with the keyboard.
Free · Requires macOS 13 or later · No account required
No link you click ever leaves your Mac. See the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Can Burly open a link in a specific browser profile?
Yes. Burly lists every browser profile on your Mac as its own destination, so a click can go to Safari Work, Chrome Personal, or Firefox Dev instead of whichever window happens to be in front. It finds those profiles automatically as you add, rename, or remove them.
Most link routers stop at the browser: they can send a URL to Chrome, but not to the work profile inside Chrome. Burly treats the profile as the thing you choose. Open Settings and every profile is a row you can reorder, hide, or dress up with an emoji or account photo, a petal color, and its own shortcut key, so the picker becomes a board of faces you recognize at a glance. A typical weekday looks like this: a calendar invite from work Mail goes to the Work profile, a shopping receipt from personal Messages goes to Personal, and a docs link from a side-project Slack lands in the Dev profile, with no copy-paste between windows.
Where does the Burly picker appear when you click a link?
Right under your cursor. Click a link in Mail, Slack, Messages, or anywhere else and a radial picker springs open at that spot, the URL at its center and every profile one keystroke away. It vanishes the instant you choose.
You never hunt for a window or a menu bar extra to finish the click. The picker is already in memory because Burly runs as a resident menu bar agent, so it appears immediately rather than cold-launching. Press the profile key, click a petal, or hold your bypass modifier to skip it. A designer sharing a Figma link during a call can send it to Work without the picker covering the meeting; a late-night shopper can send a store link to Personal without it landing in a work window that will be screen-shared tomorrow.
Which browsers and Safari profiles does Burly support?
Safari (including Safari profiles), Chrome and Chrome Canary, Brave, Microsoft Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Chromium, Opera, Firefox, Firefox Developer Edition, and Zen. Safari profiles are real, targeted destinations, which most other macOS link routers cannot reach.
Chromium and Firefox profiles can be launched from the command line, so several apps manage those. Safari has no public launch API for a named profile; Burly is one of the few tools that still sends a link there, by driving Safari's own "New Profile Window" menu through the Accessibility API rather than AppleScript. If your work life lives in a Safari profile, that is the difference between a router you can actually use and one that silently drops those links in the wrong place. See the full list on the supported browsers page, and the dedicated Safari profile switcher guide if that is the job you came here for.
Do you have to use the picker on every click?
No. A bare click opens the picker; hold your chosen modifier to jump straight to the last-used destination. Prefer the reverse? Invert it in one toggle so a bare click goes through and a held key brings the picker up.
The default is built for mixed days, when some links are obvious and some are not. Hold Option (or whichever modifier you pick) on the tenth Jira link in a row and it reopens Work without asking; click a personal newsletter without the modifier and the picker still asks, because that one might belong in Personal or in a shopping profile. Power users who already know where everything goes invert the gesture so the picker is opt-in. Either way, the decision lives at click time rather than in a rules file you have to keep current.
Can Burly skip the picker and always reuse your last profile?
Yes. Routing modes let Burly always ask, always reopen your last-used profile, or always take the bypass. Set it once and links just go where you want, including a fully silent mode for days when you are living in a single profile.
Focus blocks are the obvious case: you are in Work for three hours and every link from Slack, Mail, and the calendar belongs there. Flip the mode to last-used and Burly stops asking until you flip it back. The bypass-always mode is the same idea with the modifier baked in, useful if you already hold a key out of habit. None of these modes require writing host rules. When the day splits again, one toggle returns the picker.
Can you open a browser profile with a keyboard shortcut on a Mac?
Yes. A global hotkey, your chosen prefix (Hyper by default) plus the profile's own key, drops you straight into a fresh tab from anywhere, no link required. The same shortcuts live in the menu bar under Open New Tab in.
This is the other half of routing: sometimes you are not clicking a link, you just want the work browser in front of you. Press the prefix plus 1 and Work opens to a new tab; prefix plus 0 always reopens whichever profile you used last. Burly auto-assigns keys so this works the moment it is installed, and you can rebind any of them. It is the difference between hunting through Safari's profile menu or Chrome's avatar picker and having the right context appear before you have finished the thought.
Does Burly stay out of the way when you are not clicking a link?
Yes. Burly is a menu bar app, not a browser and not a Dock fixture. Launch it at login and, if you want it fully out of sight, hide the menu bar icon. It only steps in when a link needs a home.
There is no account, no window to manage, and no dashboard to check. After you set it as the default web browser in System Settings, under Desktop & Dock, every http and https click is handed to Burly first. The rest of macOS looks the same. People who already live in a crowded menu bar can hide the icon and keep the picker, the bypass, and the hotkeys. People who like a status check can leave the icon up and confirm at a glance that Burly is still the default handler.
Can you turn off the picker animation?
Yes. Turn on reduce animations and the picker appears fully expanded instead of springing open from the center. It is the same destinations and the same keys, without the motion.
This is for vestibular sensitivity, for screen recordings where a bloom is distracting, and for anyone who just prefers things still. The setting lives in Accessibility, next to nothing else you have to configure. Keyboard selection, the bypass modifier, and last-used routing all keep working. If macOS Reduce Motion is already on, you will feel at home: Burly is matching that preference for the one piece of UI it adds to a click.
New to this kind of app? Read what a macOS browser picker is and how to set one up, or the Safari profile switcher if that is the specific job you need done.
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