Ubuntu – Skype opening links in wrong browser

A user, jackwizard, over at the Skype forums found a workaround. His script is mirrored at github, and copied here for your convenience.

1. Copy it into a file called skype-single-instance
2. Make it executable. chmod +x skype-single-instance
3. Test it. pkill -9 skype, then ./skype-single-instance, then ./skype-single-instance
4. Make it available system-wide. sudo cp skype-single-instance /usr/bin/
5. Change your shortcuts to use it instead of the normal skype command.

.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import dbus
import sys
import os

try:
    # Try and set skype window to normal
    remote_bus = dbus.SessionBus()
    out_connection = remote_bus.get_object('com.Skype.API', '/com/Skype')
    out_connection.Invoke('NAME mySkypeController')
    out_connection.Invoke('PROTOCOL 5')
    #out_connection.Invoke('SET WINDOWSTATE MAXIMIZED')
    out_connection.Invoke('SET WINDOWSTATE NORMAL')
    out_connection.Invoke('FOCUS')
except:
    os.system("skype")
    sys.exit()

I'm the author of Net::DBus::Skype and skype-action-handler. That was a tool to interface with DBUS to send commands to Skype via the DBUS API. The skype-action-handler does exactly what Skype 4 will do via the --call argument

skype --call "skype:echo123"

skype-action-handler skype:echo123

Except I think I handled the URL format too which I don't think --call handles. I made this library and utility because back in 2008 the Skype for Linux was not nearly so polished. Originally, I believe it only used OSS even.