Enjoying BrowseRouter as Browser Tamer replacement

[freiheitner]

I am glad to have found BrowseRouter. I'm enjoying it as Browser Tamer replacement. BT offers a user interface to manage which domains open to which browser, but it's starting to suffer feature creep and occasionally trips antivirus alerts. BrowseRouter is simple and does one thing well.

[nref]

Thanks for the positive feedback!

What features of Browser Tamer have turned you away? I ask because I have thought about adding a UI since only a fraction of users may be comfortable editing an INI file setting up BrowseRouter the command line. I would keep the CLI around of course.

[freiheitner]

I see aloneguid has replied on this thread and kind of covers my concerns -- I was not looking for a CPU, RAM and disk use monitor in an app which primarily runs in the background routing my browser requests. But that was okay until Windows Defender (or whatever MS calls it this month) flat out deleted Browser Tamer from my system as a virus during the night a few weeks ago. It had previously warned me about it, but I told it that BT was alright, and then it went and deleted it anyway. I was looking for something--anything--to serve the same simple purpose of launching different browsers and browser profiles by the URL without raising any fuss with anti-malware tools.

I do love BT's interface for assigning URLs to different browsers and that BT auto-detects different browser profiles. I was able to get those working via manual editing in BrowseRouter's config file.

[nref]

Interesting development: @aloneguid open-sourced Browser Tamer yesterday.

[nref]

I read your blog post about your eponymous PUA. Seems pernicious to me. Open-sourcing may be the best move if you don't want to monetize it.

[aloneguid]

No, I don't think of monetising in any way. Closed source was due to not wanting to deal with overhead of pull requests and questions. I already do feel like spending more time on community rather that enjoying implementing features. So nothing is perfect.

[sergeevabc]

How to prevent BrowseRouter from polluting the disk with logs?

[nref]

How to prevent BrowseRouter from polluting the disk with logs?

Not supported currently. Please open an issue and I will add support.

[nref]

How to prevent BrowseRouter from polluting the disk with logs?

Not supported currently. Please open an issue and I will add support.

This is now supported in the new [log] config section. See the README.

[clayissimo]

I am glad to have found BrowseRouter. I'm enjoying it as Browser Tamer replacement. BT offers a user interface to manage which domains open to which browser, but it's starting to suffer feature creep and occasionally trips antivirus alerts. BrowseRouter is simple and does one thing well.

@freiheitner - just curious - do you see any important differences between BrowserRouter and Browser Tamer now? I just stumbled across Browser Tamer and both tools seem to do the same thing.

[nref]

Here's a difference: your privacy.

According to the author, BrowserTamer had 15,000 installs in 2024. I cannot tell you how many BrowseRouter has because I do not track it. BrowseRouter has no analytics or tracking whatsoever, and it never will because I would not want to be tracked, and I treat my users the way I want to be treated.

If you'd like a browser middleware app that has a privacy commitment, a nice GUI, works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and my devoted support, try my app Linklever. It's free to try. When not licensed, it will occasionally remind you to buy, but it has no limitations.

[clayissimo]

@nref - privacy! Good point! Thank you for your input.

From what I understand (haven't checked the sources) it only tracks once per installation. If this is true, personally, I do not see any major issue with this, since it does not permanently track/collect information.

I'd like to know whether there are any major differences functionality wise.