I'm having an issue with one particular URL and the Open URL action. Supplying the URL to this action results in an error ("Open URL failed with URL" as per the logs), but putting the exact same URL into "Set Safari URL" works fine. Any idea why?
I unfortunately can't share the URL for privacy reasons, but it is simply letters and number. No special characters or anything that would require encoding.
In your "OPEN URL" action, what does it say below the URL, starting with the word "with"?
Also, it may be useful if you specify which version of macOS you have and which version of KM and which other browsers beside Safari you have installed.
Plus, I hope, at least one : and some /s!
What's the protocol and, as @Airy says, what happens when you explicitly tell the "Open URL" action to use Safari?
Haha, yup - definitely have those! The action is set to open the URL (which is https) in 'Default Application'. It might be worth noting that I use Browser Fairy to route a handful of URLs to Chrome, but everything else opens in Safari.
When I change the action to explicitly use Safari, it works just fine. So, I could just do that but it feels like a workaround. If I keep it at 'Default Application' and change the URL to google.com it works just fine.
So it seems like KM is having an issue with this URL in particular but I can't see why, and the log doesn't give any detail other than telling me it failed to open.
I'm running:
Sonoma 14.7
Safari 18.0.1
KM 11.0.3
What happens if you disable Browser Fairy, does it work then? That's what I'd suspect before suspecting that KM somehow has an issue with one particular URL structure, which seems highly unlikely.
-rob.
That implies (not a user) that your "default application" for https is actually BrowserFairy, which then re-routes the call to the appropriate browser. I see that it knows "where" a link was clicked -- have you added a rule for KM? What happens if you put that link into an app such as Notes, and click it there?
The plot thickens. I disabled Browser Fairy (meaning that Safari is now my default browser), but the error persists.
So, I pasted it into a new Note and clicked it. Here's where it gets weird: the URL in question has 'airtable.com' in it. I also have a Safari Web App called 'Airtable' - and that's what's opening the URL. Not Safari.
That's the missing piece of the puzzle. When you create a Safari Web App it is registered as the default app for web requests for that domain (otherwise you wouldn't be able to use Safari Web Apps if Chrome was your default browser, and vice versa).
So it sounds like something's getting confused amongst the overrides/redirects. Have you tried turning BrowserFairy on again, and adding an "Airtable" rule that opens airtable.com in your Web App? Try setting the action to use the Web App if you want to open the page in that, or if you want to use Safari then specify "Safari".
Great info, thanks for the clear explanation. I'll just set it to use Safari.
