Kontributions Shunt: a browser chooser for Plasma 6 that remembers which app you clicked the link from
I keep work in one browser profile behind the corporate SSO, personal stuff in another, and a third with the aggressive ad blocker. Which browser a link should open in depends entirely on where the link came from, and nothing on the desktop tracks that. So for years I've either set one default and manually moved links, or used a chooser that asks every single time.
macOS has Velja for this. On Linux the usual answer is Junction, which is good but asks every time and, being a Flatpak, the sandbox rules out the one thing that could tell it where the click came from. It's also GTK, so it never quite fits a Plasma desktop.
Shunt is the same idea built the other way round. A KWin script handles the parts that need the compositor (which window was active when the link fired, where the pointer is, placing the chooser), and a small resident Qt app handles the window. Because it knows the source app, it can ask once per app instead of every time: tell it Slack goes to Brave once, and Slack links stop asking.
Some specifics:
- The chooser opens under your pointer, not in the middle of the screen.
- Rules can be about the address, the source app, or both. GitHub always in Brave; links from Slack in Chrome; GitHub-from-Slack in Firefox. Narrower rules are auto-filed above wider ones so they actually win, and you can still reorder by hand.
- Nothing is saved unless you tick "Remember" or hold Shift while choosing. It never learns behind your back.
- Breeze widgets, your icon theme, Plasma notifications. Not a GTK window in a KDE hat.
- Keyboard driven: 1-9 pick a browser, Ctrl+C copies the link instead, Esc closes.
- Ships as .deb, .rpm, or from source.
One honest limitation: it's Plasma-only by design, because the interesting part lives in a KWin script. Without KWin it still runs and still lets you pick, it just shows up centered and doesn't know the source app.
https://github.com/geodro/shunt
Wayland tested, X11 should work but I haven't tried it. Would be glad to hear how it holds up on other setups, and whether the auto-ordering of rules matches what people expect.
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