Daily or several times a day, we receive email messages with links which we must open. Depending upon the situation, we may be better off opening it in one browser or another. For example, I prefer to open most links in Opera or Brave for their unique virtues. However, there are 4 specific types of links I either should (or must) open in Chrome: a Google Doc, a Cleanfeed session (covered in many other articles), an Ecamm Live Interview session or Riverside.fm session. Copying a link manually, switching to another app manually, opening a new tab and then pasting the copied link is time consuming. The ingenious OpenIn app for macOS saves the day for a very low one-time purchase of under U$10 from the Apple AppStore, as long as you use certain email apps or browsers, as we’ll discuss ahead. After that, you click and a pop-up offers clicking the desired browser among your pre-selected list.
Why use different browsers for different types of links?
Although (as stated in past articles) I love Opera (and more recently, Brave) for most of my work, there are certain types of links that either won’t work at all with a browser other than Chrome (i.e. Riverside.fm) or won’t work reliably (i.e. Cleanfeed) except with Chrome. Although Google Docs will indeed work with nearly any modern browser, certain functions like Paste without formatting only work with Chrome (in my experience with several other browsers).
Scope of this article/review
Although OpenIn does have other uses, this review article is about using it to open URL links that come in email messages.
Free trial
OpenIn offers a free trial from its website at Loshadki.app/openin/
I am still using the trial and the tech support has been great in answering questions.
OpenIn with email clients
OpenIn 3.05 (which I have been using with the free trial) and OpenIn 4 (in ßeta) work best with standard email clients like:
- Apple Mail
- Mailplane (which I used when testing)
- Outlook
- Thunderbird
Later in this article, I’ll cover how OpenIn can work (less directly) with webmail.
Basic setup of OpenIn
OpenIn detects all of your installed browsers. I have many browsers installed, but I don’t want all of them to be in the popup window every time I click a link in an email. So OpenIn lets us select which to include or exclude and even set the order of the desired ones. I set mine to show the options of Brave, Chrome and Opera.
You must also set OpenIn as the “default browser” in macOS. Even though OpenIn is not a browser, the macOS sees it as one.
General use of OpenIn for the stated purpose
After the very basic setup explained above, you just click on a link in one of the standard email clients. Even if you forgot you installed OpenIn, it pops up to offer your selected browsers. You click on it, and it does what it is supposed to do: it opens the link in the browser you clicked. It does it in many fewer clicks/keystrokes than it would take for you to right click (or control click), copy the link, Command + Tab to the desired browser, create a new tab and paste it manually.
In addition to the basic setup described above, you can also teach OpenIn to open a particular browser by type of link (i.e. the domain which is the basis). I haven’t used that feature yet, but I see how it would work with the types of links I described earlier.
OpenIn with webmail?
Because OpenIn is a macOS extension (not a browser extension), it is less adept (especially with version 3.05) with web than doing its magic with email clients. From the developer:
You can enable “Open in OpenIn” extension to be able to open links from one browser to another. Open System Preferences of macOS, go to Extensions, choose Share Menu and select Open in OpenIn.
In Safari, you can use Share -> Open in OpenIn.
Similarly, if you select a text in Safari you can use Services -> Open in OpenIn. Unfortunately not all browsers send URLs to services, for example, that does not work in Chrome.
The above feature (with the extension) will become more powerful with OpenIn version 4 (which is currently in ßeta) and only with macOS 13.x (Ventura). For a little longer, I must continue to use macOS 12.6. I’ll likely be able to upgrade to macOS 13.x after Hindenburg Pro 2 gets out of ßeta.
Conclusions
OpenIn 3.05 is extremely powerful and saves a lot of time, as long as you use a standard email client. If you are already using macOS 13.x (Ventura) and are willing to use webmail with one of the few browsers which send URLs to services, it should be nearly equally powerful with OpenIn 4. After I am able to upgrade my system to macOS 13.x (Ventura) (after Hindenburg Pro 2 gets out of ßeta), I’ll likely look for appropriate browsers which send URLs to services. For more information, visit Loshadki.app/openin/
(Re-)Subscribe for upcoming articles, reviews, radio shows, books and seminars/webinars
Stand by for upcoming articles, reviews, books and courses by subscribing to my bulletins.
In English:
- Email bulletins, bulletins.AllanTepper.com
- In Telegram, t.me/TecnoTurBulletins
- Twitter (bilingual), AllanLTepper
En castellano:
- Boletines por correo electrónico, boletines.AllanTepper.com
- En Telegram, t.me/boletinesdeAllan
- Twitter (bilingüe), AllanLTepper
Most of my current books are at books.AllanTepper.com, and also visit AllanTepper.com and radio.AllanTepper.com.
FTC disclosure
Loshadi is not paying for this review, nor has it offered Allan Tépper any discount or free version. Some of the manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur, BeyondPodcasting, CapicúaFM or TuSaludSecreta programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs. Allan Tépper’s opinions are his own. Allan Tépper is not liable for misuse or misunderstanding of information he shares.