Burly

About Burly

Every link has a home. Burly gets it there.

Most people don't run one browser anymore. They run several, split across profiles. Safari for personal, Chrome for work, a separate Chrome profile for development, maybe Firefox for testing. Each profile is its own world of logins, history, and extensions.

macOS never got the memo. Click a link in Mail, Slack, or Terminal and it opens in one fixed default browser, usually the wrong one. So you copy the URL, switch browsers, find the right profile, and paste. All day. Burly exists to delete that little tax.

When Burly is your default link handler, every external link pauses for a fraction of a second to ask one question: where does this belong? A compact, keyboard-first picker lists your browser profiles as the destinations, not just browsers, so the link lands in exactly the right context.

How it works

Profiles are first-class

Burly discovers your installed browsers and every profile inside them, then lists each one as a destination you can pick directly.

Fast and keyboard-first

The picker appears the instant a link arrives. Choose with number keys, arrows, or the mouse. It vanishes the moment you decide.

A bypass for the common case

Hold a modifier while clicking to skip the picker entirely. Skipped links go to your last-used profile, or to one you pin, and the gesture inverts if you would rather pin a profile and hold the key to choose.

Private by default

All routing happens locally on your Mac. No account, no backend, no browsing data ever leaves the device.

Why this was harder than it looks

“Open this link in that profile” sounds like one API call. On a Mac it is three different problems, one per browser family, and none of them is documented as a feature.

Safari has no way to launch a profile. There is no command line flag, no URL scheme, and no AppleScript verb for “open this in my Work profile”. The only reliable path is the one a person would take: Burly uses the macOS Accessibility API to press Safari's own New Work Window menu item, waits for that window, then hands it the link. Scripting Safari through System Events looked simpler and failed on a separate Automation permission that proved unreliable to obtain, and on macOS 15 Apple moved those menu items into a submenu, so the lookup has to descend one level. Burly matches those items by identifiers Safari never translates, not by their titles, so it works in any macOS language. That path is also why Safari profile routing needs the Accessibility permission.

Chrome wants a folder name, not the profile name you see. Chromium browsers open a profile by its directory, like Profile 1, not by the “Work” label in the profile menu. Burly reads each browser's own profile list from disk to map one to the other, and watches those files so a profile you add in Chrome shows up in the picker without a refresh.

A held key has to be read the instant the link arrives. The modifier bypass works by checking which keys are down when macOS delivers the link. An app that cold-launches on every click would often miss a quick Option-click, which is one reason Burly stays resident in the menu bar rather than starting fresh each time.

Signed, notarized, and kept current

An app that sits in front of every link you click should be easy to trust. Every Burly release is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS checks it before it first runs and Gatekeeper opens it without warnings. Updates arrive through Sparkle, and each one is cryptographically signed and verified before it installs, so the app can only ever replace itself with a build I signed.

Routing happens entirely on your Mac. Burly has no account, no server that sees your links, and no browsing history to leak.

How Burly got here

  • June 2026, version 1.0. The radial picker, automatic profile discovery across Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, and the modifier bypass. The point releases that followed within days added per-profile emoji and colors, global hotkeys that open a profile with no link at all, and more browsers, listed on the supported browsers page.
  • June 2026, version 1.1. Signed in-app updates, so a new version installs from the menu bar instead of a fresh download.
  • September 2026, version 1.3. A pinned destination, so every link can always open in one browser profile until you hold a key, and Arc links that arrive reliably.

Join the Burly community on Discord

Ask questions, report bugs, share your profile setups, and hear about new releases first. It's free to join and open to everyone.

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“Private by default” is a promise, not a slogan, so it is written down: the Privacy Policy spells out exactly what Burly does and does not collect, and the Terms of Use cover how the app is licensed.

Built by Matt Senter

Burly is made by Matt Senter, an independent founder and developer who designs, builds, and ships small, focused products end to end. Burly is one of them, a tool he wanted on his own Mac and decided to make properly. No team, no investors, no roadmap by committee: just software built with care and shipped when it's ready.

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