I few months ago I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 15.10 on my laptop. I had backed up my previous home folder and restored it on top of my installation. I installed Google Chrome and set it as my default browser, but links would always open a new blank Chrome window, so I set Firefox as my default browser. Yesterday I was going to try setting Chrome back as my default, but the option does not show up.
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Chrome's settings indicates it is already the default browser.
I have tried every method under the Internet's Sun to set Google Chrome as my default browser without success, starting with doing an uninstall purge of google-chrome-stable through apt, and then reinstalling from the latest deb.
Setting the BROWSER environmental variable.
$ tail ~/.bashrc
export PATH=$PATH:/home/david/Android/Sdk/tools
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
export WORKON_HOME=~/virtualenvs
export ANDROID_HOME=/home/david/Android/Sdk
export BROWSER=`which google-chrome`
Setting x-www-browser.
$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
There are 3 choices for the alternative x-www-browser (providing /usr/bin/x-www-browser).
Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
0 /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable 200 auto mode
1 /usr/bin/firefox 40 manual mode
* 2 /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable 200 manual mode
3 /usr/bin/xlinks2 69 manual mode
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
Setting gnome-www-browser.
$ sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser
There are 2 choices for the alternative gnome-www-browser (providing /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser).
Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
0 /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable 200 auto mode
1 /usr/bin/firefox 40 manual mode
* 2 /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable 200 manual mode
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
Updating xdg-settings
$ xdg-settings set default-web-browser google-chrome.desktop
However, the Details settings window still shows Firefox, and all links from GUI applications open in Firefox.
Edit:
I've notice that in the GTK application picker, such as when you right-click a file and choose "Open With -> Other Application…" that Chrome is not showing up in the list. The .desktop file is in /usr/share/applications and I tried executing sudo update-desktop-database
, but it still doesn't show up. It does show up in the Unity dash.
If I look in /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache then I see it is registered for text/html, x-scheme-handler/http, x-scheme-hanlder/https, as well as others.