How to Open Links in a Specific Browser Profile on macOS

Browser profiles are how most of us keep our digital lives from bleeding into each other. One profile for work email and calendars, one for personal shopping and banking, maybe a third for a side project with its own logins. The trouble starts the moment you click a link. macOS hands it to whichever browser is set as default, which usually means whichever profile happens to be in front, which is rarely the one you wanted.

The result is a familiar little dance: the link opens in the wrong profile, you copy the URL, switch windows, and paste it where it belonged. A dozen times a day that adds up, and worse, sometimes you forget to switch and end up logged into the wrong account on the wrong page.

Why can't macOS open a link in a specific profile?

macOS only lets you choose a single default browser application. It has no concept of a default profile, and no built-in way to say "open work links in my Work profile and everything else in Personal." Chrome and Edge can target a profile from the command line, Safari can only be steered through the Accessibility API, and Firefox uses named profiles with its own flag. None of that is exposed to a normal click.

So the link goes to your default browser, lands in the active profile, and you are left to sort it out by hand.

How do you route a link to a profile at click time?

The clean solution is to put a small router between the click and the browser. Instead of macOS sending links straight to Chrome or Safari, it sends them to a lightweight app that asks, or already knows, which profile each link belongs in, then launches that exact profile with the URL. That class of app is a browser picker, also called a link router: it becomes the default handler, then hands the URL onward.

This is exactly what Burly does. Setting it up takes about a minute:

1. Download Burly and move it to your Applications folder.
2. Open System Settings, then Desktop & Dock, and set Burly as your Default web browser.
3. Let Burly discover the browsers and profiles already on your Mac; there is nothing to configure by hand.
4. Click any link and pick the profile it belongs in from the radial picker. Burly opens that exact profile with the URL.

Because Burly reads your real profiles directly from each browser, the picker always reflects what you actually have installed. Add a profile in Chrome and it appears automatically.

How do you keep the picker out of the way?

A picker on every click would get old, so the routing is keyboard-first and gesture-aware. Hold a modifier key as you click to bypass the picker and reuse your last destination, or invert that behavior so a bare click goes straight through and a held key brings up the picker. The point is to spend a fraction of a second deciding only when the destination is ambiguous, and zero seconds when it is obvious.

Everything happens locally on your Mac. The links you open never leave your device, which matters when those links carry tokens, account ids, or anything you would rather not send to a server.

Can you open a link in a specific profile without an app?

Yes, one browser at a time, and it is worth knowing how, because for a single browser the built-in route may be all you need. Each browser family exposes a different mechanism, and none of them reach across to another browser.

Chrome, Brave, and other Chromium browsers accept a profile directory on the command line, so a Terminal command or a Shortcuts action can open a URL in Profile 1 rather than Default. The folder name is not the profile name you see, which trips most people up; opening links in a specific Chrome profile shows how to look it up. Firefox takes a profile name with its -P flag, with a couple of quirks around profiles that are already running, covered in opening external links in a Firefox profile.

Safari has no launch flag at all. What it offers instead is a per-website rule, Open Links With Profile, that sends links for one site to one profile. It is useful and also easy to misread, so why Open Links With Profile misfires is worth a look before you rely on it. Microsoft Edge is the one browser with a genuine setting for this: a default profile for external links, described in Brave, Edge, and Arc profiles on a Mac.

Every one of these answers stops at the edge of its own browser. If your work profile is in Safari and your personal one is in Chrome, no built-in setting can choose between them, which is the gap a router fills. The guide to browser profiles on a Mac lays out how each browser decides where external links go.

Why does a link still open in the wrong profile?

When a router is set up and a link still lands somewhere unexpected, the cause is almost always one of a handful of things. Work down this list before assuming anything is broken:

1. Check that the router is still the default. Open System Settings, then Desktop & Dock, and confirm the Default web browser is Burly. Some browsers offer to make themselves default again after an update, and one accepted prompt undoes the setup.
2. Check for a held or inverted gesture. If Invert is on with a profile pinned under What to open, a plain click goes straight to that profile by design, and holding the modifier is what brings the picker up.
3. For Safari profiles, check the Accessibility permission. Burly reaches Safari profiles through the Accessibility API, so it needs that grant in System Settings under Privacy & Security, and Safari has to be running.
4. Check whether the browser can be steered at all. Arc, Dia, and ChatGPT Atlas run a single instance and open links in whichever profile is active, so a router can hand them the link but cannot choose the profile.
5. Check that the profile still exists. Burly watches each browser's profile list and updates the picker when you add, rename, or remove a profile, so a destination that vanished usually means the profile itself was deleted or renamed in the browser.

What is the short version?

macOS will not route links to a specific browser profile on its own. Put a profile-aware router in front of the click, let it open the right profile every time, and the copy-paste-switch dance disappears. That is the entire idea behind Burly.