Velja

Velja is a free Mac utility by Sindre Sorhus that intercepts every link you click and routes it to the right browser — automatically, silently, and without a pop-up in sight.

What is Velja?

Velja is a smart browser picker for macOS that sits between you and your default browser, applying rules you define to send each link where it actually belongs. Click a Zoom invite and it opens in the Zoom app rather than spawning a browser tab. Click a Figma link and it lands in Chrome where your work profile lives. Click a recipe blog and it glides into Safari for Reader Mode. All of that happens without any manual thought on your part after the initial setup.

It works by registering itself as your system default browser. It never shows you a page of its own — its entire job is to make a fast, invisible decision and hand the URL off.

What does Velja do best?

Velja's strongest suit is its rule engine: you can match on URL pattern, the source app that generated the link, or both. The combination makes it genuinely powerful. A link from Slack that points to a Google Doc can go to Chrome with your work Google account, while the same Google Doc URL clicked from Mail goes to your personal Chrome profile or even Firefox. No other free tool on the Mac does this with as little friction.

• Source-app rules — route links by which app sent them (Slack, Mail, Telegram, etc.)
• URL pattern rules — plain substring or full regex matching against the destination
• App-link detection — Zoom, Figma, Linear, Notion, and other deep-link apps are detected automatically and bounced straight into their native containers
• Profile routing — target specific Chrome or Edge profiles, not just the browser binary
• Quick-pick mode — optionally show a small chooser for links that don't match a rule

I use it daily in a setup where Arc handles personal browsing, Chrome hosts my work Google Workspace, and Safari stays reserved for reading. Before Velja I was constantly copying URLs and pasting them into the right window. Now I genuinely never think about it.

Is Velja free?

Velja is free to download from the Mac App Store with no feature gating on the core routing engine. A one-time paid upgrade unlocks a handful of power-user extras — most notably advanced regex rules and a few additional trigger options. For the majority of users the free tier is complete and fully functional. There is no subscription.

Who should use Velja?

Velja is purpose-built for anyone who regularly works across two or more browsers for different contexts. That typically means developers and designers juggling personal versus work Google accounts, remote workers who live in Slack and Notion, and Mac power-users who have made Arc their daily driver but still need Chrome for enterprise web apps. If you use exactly one browser for everything, Velja won't add anything to your life. If you've ever thought "this link should open somewhere else," Velja is precisely for you.

What are the best Velja alternatives?

The closest alternative is Choosy, a long-standing paid browser picker with a polished preferences pane and a loyal following. It handles URL rules and browser selection well but lacks Velja's source-app awareness. OpenIn broadens the scope beyond browsers to route files and URLs to any app, which is useful if you also want to redirect mailto links or podcasts — though the breadth means a steeper configuration burden. Browserosaurus is open-source and shows a chooser on every click; it's great if you want manual control rather than automation. And of course macOS's own browser chooser (System Settings → Default Browser) is the zero-config baseline — it just picks one browser for everything and calls it a day. Velja occupies the sweet spot between Choosy's simplicity and OpenIn's power, with the bonus of being free.

How does Velja compare to Choosy?

Choosy has a longer track record and a slightly more visual rules interface, but it costs money upfront and doesn't understand the concept of source apps — it only sees the URL. Velja's source-app dimension is the decisive advantage for anyone working heavily in Slack or other launchers where the same URL might mean very different things depending on context. Velja also integrates browser-profile targeting more cleanly, while Choosy still expects you to point at a browser binary and manage profiles manually. On Apple Silicon both are native and snappy; neither adds measurable latency to link-opening.