MacOS – “Copy URL to Clipboard.app is not available as a HTTP browser” in El Capitan

developmentmacosterminal

I came across “Copy URL to Clipboard.app” (or “CUTC” for short) in How to access a clicked URL in a URL handler application created in Automator and have been using it for some time now. However, it seems to have stopped working in OS X 10.11, and I have no idea what to do to make it work.

What I've tried

  1. I downloaded the pre-compiled app and moved it to /Applications/ and then launched it manually to clear the quarantine message (“Are you sure you want to open this file downloaded from the Internet?”)

  2. I went to System Preferences » General and clicked the dropdown for “Default Web Browser" but CUTC does not appear as one of the available browsers.

  3. I rebooted my Mac just to make sure. It still did not appear.

  4. I tried https://github.com/kerma/defaultbrowser to set my default browser from Terminal:

    % defaultbrowser -set Copy\ URL\ to\ Clipboard

    Copy URL to Clipboard is not available as a HTTP browser

    (It also listed all available HTTP browsers, which made it clear that OS X did not consider CUTC to be able to receive http/https links, as opposed to some sort of simple syntax error trying to use the defaultbrowser command.)

  5. I re-compiled the app from source in Xcode, and tried using that instead, but had the same results as with the pre-compiled version.

I have no idea where to go from here. I am not a programmer and have no idea what needs to be done for an app to register itself as able to receive http/https links.

The Problem I Am Trying to Solve

I have used CUTC as my default browser in the past so that I could process URLs using shell scripts before handing them to another browser.

If there is another app out there which is capable of receiving http/https links clicked on from other apps (mail, Tweetbot, etc), I would be equally happy to try that.

Best Answer

The CFBundleURLTypes tag in the Info.plist file just needed a wee bit of a change and now it works on OSX v10.11 El Capitan.

This following worked okay in previous versions but isn't recognised in El Capitan.

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
    <string>http</string>
    <string>https</string>
</array>

However if you change it to the following El Capitan recognises it and offers the "Copy URL to Clipboard" application in the "Default web browser" drop-down menu in System Preferences.

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleURLName</key>
        <string>Web site URL</string>
        <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
        <array>
            <string>http</string>
            <string>https</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</array>

I've submitted a pull request to houbysoft but in the meantime you can download an updated binary here.

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