Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Jolly Roger Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: Default browser field in preferences Date: 3 Nov 2016 02:46:48 GMT Organization: People for the Ethical Treatment of Pirates Lines: 37 Message-ID: References: X-Trace: individual.net 00a66lQW04qW1kxKKPyy3QihFL7w594Ew6+aTmUBRR425pqZmu Cancel-Lock: sha1:u2CmlGtX5C1M1Oyw4JrmxkvEh5E= Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Darwin) Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.system:96408 On 2016-11-03, Ken Springer wrote: > Just discovered the field is blank, and no amount of clicking seems to > make a difference. > > Searching the web so far has yielded just one possible fix, and that > involves installing Chrome, which I'd rather not do. I suspect the "fix" you are referring to is to set *Chrome* as the default browser rather than *any* browser of your choice, which is obviously not what you want. > Not sure what info to post here that may be of help, the OS is in my > signature. > > How do I fix this? It could be that the property list (plist) preference file that stores the default browser is corrupt or malformed for some reason. To check it, open a terminal window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal), enter this command (all on one line), and let us know what it says: /usr/bin/plutil -lint ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist I would check the property list with the above command first to ensure it isn't corrupt before trying this, because attempting to set the preference with a corrupt file may have unpredictable results; but there is an open source command-line tool that lets you set the default browser outside of System Preferences: -- E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter. I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead. JR