Skip the browser page when opening https URIs for Zoom, Teams, and other native apps
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Android has a convenient feature: certain https links that have associated local apps installed are opened directly in these apps, skipping the browser page. How do I achieve this in Linux?
I have Zoom installed on my computer. When someone shares a
https://zoom.us/j/NNNN
link with me and I click it in e.g. Thunderbird, this link is passed to xdg-open. Xdg-open looks at the URI schema "https" and starts the default browser. The browser navigates to this URI and displays a page whose only function is to transform this URI into a different one: zoommtg://zoom.us/join?confno=NNNN
. This new URI is in turn passed to xdg-open who launches Zoom.
I could not find a ready-made solution so far. I imagine a script that looks beyond the URI schema. For example, if it receives a parameter starting with https://zoom.us/j/
, it ensures that a handler for zoommtg
is configured, in which case it rewrites the URI by itself and passes it to the handler. There is supposedly a limited number of popular schemes, so such a script should be relatively simple to maintain.
The script could be used either as a wrapper for xdg-open or as a handler for https links.
At best I would appreciate a link to an existing software which does that. I’d hate to write a script only for my personal use. If such software doesn’t exist so far, I welcome advice on implementing this in a portable way with a goal to publish it.
Asked by Tom Adler
(181 rep)
Jul 21, 2021, 11:44 AM
Last activity: Jul 27, 2021, 01:02 PM
Last activity: Jul 27, 2021, 01:02 PM