Making Palemoon Portable a default browser
Posted: 2014-05-13, 15:13
Introduction
If you're using a portable build of Pale Moon as your primary browsing tool, then this guide is for you!
I always like to use a portable build of Pale Moon because it makes backing up everything so easy, and I can copy contents to a USB drive on-command and be road-ready in minutes with a properly-configured backup utility. So of course when I open a link anywhere I want it to launch Pale Moon portable, but Moonchild had made sure you cannot do this without any fancy tricks, so let's get started. This guide is for Windows systems only
Also, don't do this to somebody else's PC, only your own. I am not liable for any damages you incur performing this on other computers.
Specifying Firefox as default browser
First, find where palemoon-portable.exe is on your primary drive. Keep the full path on hand. Then if you hadn't done so in the past, install the portableapps.com build of Mozilla Firefox. (Yes, you read that right, we're installing Firefox.)
In Firefox, open about:preferences and under Advanced, click the button that says "Make Firefox the default browser" At this point, you can exit and freely uninstall the browser. What making Firefox default did was add in a bunch of FirefoxHTML and FirefoxURL entries in your registry. This is what we needed Firefox to do.
Open regedit.exe, and follow the tree below;
Under each entry labeled "command", you'll find a string called (Default); Modify each one to reflect the path of palemoon-portable.exe. An example as follows:
That's it! Pale Moon Portable will now be called upon instead of firefox.exe. You can also use this guide to change default Firefox open behavior so it redirects to firefoxportable.exe instead of firefox.exe, provided you have a Firefox user that specified to make Firefox as default, but cannot understand why Firefox opens a newly-minted profile.
Caveats
Of course, doing something that's normally considered stupid elsewhere comes with its fair share of difficulties. Pale Moon will not open on its own. Rather, you''ll get an error specifying that Pale Moon cannot find your profile. That's alright, simply open your browser, then any URL you visit will open under palemoon-portable.exe, with the request forwarded to the browser where you can then see the contents of whatever you clicked on.
If you're using a portable build of Pale Moon as your primary browsing tool, then this guide is for you!
I always like to use a portable build of Pale Moon because it makes backing up everything so easy, and I can copy contents to a USB drive on-command and be road-ready in minutes with a properly-configured backup utility. So of course when I open a link anywhere I want it to launch Pale Moon portable, but Moonchild had made sure you cannot do this without any fancy tricks, so let's get started. This guide is for Windows systems only
Also, don't do this to somebody else's PC, only your own. I am not liable for any damages you incur performing this on other computers.
Specifying Firefox as default browser
First, find where palemoon-portable.exe is on your primary drive. Keep the full path on hand. Then if you hadn't done so in the past, install the portableapps.com build of Mozilla Firefox. (Yes, you read that right, we're installing Firefox.)
In Firefox, open about:preferences and under Advanced, click the button that says "Make Firefox the default browser" At this point, you can exit and freely uninstall the browser. What making Firefox default did was add in a bunch of FirefoxHTML and FirefoxURL entries in your registry. This is what we needed Firefox to do.
Open regedit.exe, and follow the tree below;
Code: Select all
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
├───FirefoxHTML
│ └───shell
│ └───open
│ └───command
└───FirefoxURL
└───shell
└───open
└───commandCode: Select all
Before: "X:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\App\Firefox\firefox.exe" -osint -url "%1"
After: "X:\PortableApps\PaleMoonPortable\Palemoon-Portable.exe" -osint -url "%1"Caveats
Of course, doing something that's normally considered stupid elsewhere comes with its fair share of difficulties. Pale Moon will not open on its own. Rather, you''ll get an error specifying that Pale Moon cannot find your profile. That's alright, simply open your browser, then any URL you visit will open under palemoon-portable.exe, with the request forwarded to the browser where you can then see the contents of whatever you clicked on.
