handlr

Manage your default applications with ease using handlr!

handlr is especially useful for window managers like i3 and bspwm that don't have DE-specific utils like gvfs-open, kde-open, etc.

Features

• Set default handler by extension or mime-type
• Intelligent mime type detection from files based on extension and content
• Mime-type validation against a massive database
• List default associations
• Automatically removes invalid/wrong .desktop entries from mimeapps.list
• Helper commands like launch, get --json for your scripting needs
• Unnecessarily fast (written in Rust)
• Single compiled binary with no dependencies

Usage

# Open a file/URL
handlr open ~/.dotfiles/pacman/packages.txt
handlr open https://google.ca

# Set default handler for png files
handlr set .png feh.desktop

# Set default handler based on mime
handlr set application/pdf evince.desktop

# List default apps
handlr list

# Get the handler for a mime/extension
$ handlr get .png
feh.desktop

# Launch a handler with given path/URL
handlr launch x-scheme-handler/https -- https://google.ca

Compared to xdg-utils

• Far easier to use with simple commands like get, set, list
• Can operate on extensions, no need to look up or remember mime types
  • useful for common tasks like setting a handler for png/docx/etc files
• Superb autocomplete (currently just fish), including mimes, extensions, and .desktop files
• Optional json output for commands like get

Screenshots

Installation

While packages for distributions are pending,

1. Download the latest release binary and put it somewhere in $PATH
2. Download completions:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chmln/handlr/master/completions/handlr.fish --create-dirs -o ~/.config/fish/completions/handlr.fish

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Alternatively, you can install with cargo:

cargo install handlr

Icon Attribution

Icons made by Eucalyp from www.flaticon.com