Ubuntu – Set Tor Browser as default browser

browserdefault-programstor

I would like Ubuntu to automatically use the Tor Browser as its default browser. As it launches from the script start-tor-browser and is perhaps not truly "installed" in the same way as Firefox or Chrome, I can't figure out how to do so even after looking at these relevant answers:

How can I set the Tor Browser as my default browser in Ubuntu and open the appropriate files as "New Window"s in Tor Browser even if the Tor Browser is already up, running, and connected?

Ubuntu 14.04

Best Answer

System-wide change

The default browser is determined by the x-www-browser alternative.

In order to add the Tor browser to the list of available options, you have to run this command:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /path/to/torbrowser/executable 1

Then, you need to select it as the default by using

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

You may also do the same for gnome-www-browser as well.

Note that this is a system-wide change. If you're looking to change it for just your user, let me know.

Change for a single user only

In order to set this is the default for a single user, a little more work may be required (but not much).

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/torbrowser.desktop

Paste the following into the file and save (be sure to use the real path of the Tor browser script):

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon[en_US]=browser
Name[en_US]=Tor Browser
Exec=/path/to/tor/browser
Name=Tor Browser
Icon=browser

Then, execute the command:

xdg-settings set default-web-browser torbrowser.desktop

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Tor Browser Bundle’s version of Firefox [Tor Browser] is recognized as the main Firefox installation [Ubuntu 12.04]

Yes this is due to torbrowser is derived from firefox and while starting your application, your desktop-environment looks for a place where to stick it - as far as i remember the standard all Linux DEs follow is xdg.

To give your system knowledge about this application, you have to put a *.desktop-file in either ~.local/share/applications/ or /usr/share/applications/.

In your case, open a terminal and cd into your tor-browser-directory from here issue cp start-tor-browser.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/start-tor-browser.desktop You can also use any file-manager for this operation.

Ubuntu – Keyboard doesn’t work with Tor Browser

You don't need to remove ibus, as this answer says, since you may need it! The correct solution is very simple and consists in:

Open start-tor-browser script file from inside the Tor package with your favorite editor. I use gedit for shell scripts, so, in terminal, you can use the following command:
```
gedit /path/to/start-tor-browser
```
Add the following line on the second line (immediately after the line containing shebang interpreter directive - #!/bin/sh):
```
export GTK_IM_MODULE="xim"
```
The above line change the default value (ibus - Intelligent Input Bus, an input method framework for multilingual input) for GTK_IM_MODULE environment variable (which specifies an input method module to use) to xim (X Input Method).
Of course, save the file and close it.
Close Tor and reopen it.

That's all (until this bug will be fixed properly)!