Kairo is a tool that helps you open links in your preferred app in a smart and flexible way. It's built for people who use different browsers or browser profiles to separate work, personal, and development tasks, giving you full control over where each link goes.

When you open a link, Kairo shows a small window listing all the apps on your system that can handle it. You can see their names and icons, pick one instantly, or set Kairo to remember your choice for next time. It can also act as your system's default link handler, ensuring every link you click goes through Kairo first.

For power users, Kairo includes a CLI that provides the same features without leaving the terminal.

Kairo aims to be platform-independent, working across different desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, Hyprland, and more. It currently supports Linux, with macOS support planned for upcoming releases.

Use one of the official AUR packages:

• kairo if you prefer to build from source
• kairo-bin if you prefer to install the pre-built binaries

yay -S kairo

Download and install the provided .deb package in the latest release.

Use the following command to set kairo as your default URL handler:

xdg-mime default kairo.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
xdg-mime default kairo.desktop x-scheme-handler/https

You can integrate the kairo CLI interface with the tmux-fzf-url plugin:

# Quickly open urls using fzf
set -g @plugin 'wfxr/tmux-fzf-url'
# Open tmux-fzf-url in a popup
set -g @fzf-url-fzf-options '--tmux center,50%,50% --multi --exit-0 --no-preview --no-border'
# Open using kairo
set -g @fzf-url-open 'tmux display-popup -E kairo open'

This project was inspired by Junction. I tried it for a while on GNOME and liked the way it worked. However, I couldn’t find a similar tool that worked across other environments, so I decided to build one that would be portable, modern, and accessible to Linux and macOS users. Kairo is still a work in progress, but is growing toward that goal.

Copyright 2025 Augusto Elesbão

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.