How to fix Chrome protocol handler "Always open these types of links" pop up when opening RV through rvlink

macbeth · December 17, 2019, 5:30am

bnyzL
Hi,

After Chrome version 77, the checkbox to always open RV when opening rvlinks is missing, making it very annoying everytime you click Play on RV as Chrome asks for confirmation, after Chrome version 79 there is a special policy (ExternalProtocolDialogShowAlwaysOpenCheckbox) that you can enable to get the checkbox back, this example is for Linux, but you can follow the same approach for win and mac. (More details for MacOS setup can be found below.)

Create the folders needed.
mkdir -p /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/

Create an empty Json file
touch /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/managed_policies.json

In this Json file, put the following content:

{
  "ExternalProtocolDialogShowAlwaysOpenCheckbox": true
}

(NOTE: the quotes in this snippet can become corrupt when copy/pasting. Should you have an issue, try @frank’s tip below of retyping them once pasted.)

That’s it! Start Chrome the checkbox should be there.

NOTE: For Chrome versions 77 and 78 there is a workaround, directly add the rvlink protocol handler as an excluded scheme in the Preferences file in ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Preferences

Like this:

"protocol_handler":{"excluded_schemes":{"rvlink":false}}

johnny.duguid · December 17, 2019, 4:13pm

Thanks for sharing this tip, @macbeth—it’ll end up helping others!

Gary · January 3, 2020, 10:07am

Thanks so much! This started popping up for us at the end of last year and we thought we’d have to swap browsers because of it.

johnny.duguid · February 25, 2020, 5:23pm

@frank—check out this thread for possible resolution on your AMI dialog issue.

frank · February 25, 2020, 9:49pm

Thanks @johnny.duguid for leading me here, and thanks @macbeth for writing this up!
Unfortunately it isn’t working for me, I’m sure I’m missing something though.
This is my json file:

[frank@spiff]$ cat /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/managed_policies.json 
{
"ExternalProtocolDialogShowAlwaysOpenCheckbox": true
}

I then restarted Chrome (v80) but when I run my AMI I get o checkbox.

macbeth · February 26, 2020, 7:08pm

Hi, that should do the trick!
Maybe some permissions issue with the folder or the file?

Check this guide for chromium I believe it has better info than the google one:

frank · February 26, 2020, 7:33pm

Thanks @macbeth, I had a look and the article doesn’t really offer any more info. I made sure the json file is readable by my user id so I have no idea what else to look for.
I copy/pasted all file paths and the json content so typos shouldn’t be the issue.
I also tried the “HomepageLocation” policy from the example page but to no avail.

I might be stuck with confirming every single AMI for now

macbeth · March 10, 2020, 8:52pm

Hi @frank did you actually managed to fix this?
It just cross to my mind (while having a similar problem in another machine), that maybe Chrome is not finding RV as an official x-scheme-handler in Gnome?

My Output of gio and xdg is as follows:

[yolo@yolo ~]$ gio mime x-scheme-handler/rvlink
Default application for “x-scheme-handler/rvlink”: rv.desktop
Registered applications:
	rv.desktop
Recommended applications:
	rv.desktop

[yolo@yolo ~]$ xdg-settings get default-url-scheme-handler rvlink
rv.desktop

To be able to get this, I used the gconfgtool-2 and added custom desktop files and mimeapps handlers for gnome.
let me know if you still have the problem I can share you my files for this.

frank · March 10, 2020, 9:43pm

Thanks @macbeth, yes, I tried everything I can think off but to no avail.
I am using kde though but maybe it uses gnome’s config for this?!
This is my gio output:

[frank@spiff ~]$ gio mime x-scheme-handler/rvlink
Default application for 'x-scheme-handler/rvlink': rv.desktop
Registered applications:
        rv.desktop
Recommended applications:
        rv.desktop

and xdg:

[frank@spiff ~]$ xdg-settings get default-url-scheme-handler rvlink
rv.desktop

macbeth · March 10, 2020, 10:16pm

Oh could be something related to KDE then? : (
And yes I read the same somewhere that Chrome stills uses the gnome config for this, I have no experience in KDE but maybe it stills has some gnome config underlying somewhere in the system.

I’m trowing rocks to the air here then cause I have no experience with KDE, and probably not all this steps are needed in gnome either, but whenever I have a problem I do all of this:

Inside my /usr/share/applications/rv.desktop I added a mimetype:

MimeType=image/jpeg;image/png ... etc  ... ;x-scheme-handler/rvlink;

I used gconfgtool2 to set the handler

gconftool-2 --set --type=string /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/rvlink/command /opt/RV/bin/rv
gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/rvlink/enabled true
gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/rvlink/need-terminal false

I added two files inside /etc/xdg
/etc/xdg/mimeapps.list
/etc/xdg/gnome-mimeapps.list

With the same content for both of them:

[Default Applications]
# URI scheme handlers
x-scheme-handler/rvlink=rv.desktop

The I updated the Desktop

sudo update-desktop-database

Maybe there some equivalents to KDE : (

macbeth · March 10, 2020, 10:28pm

Otherwise you can try the workaround in the link of my post.

: (

Which will probably not survive a chrome update

frank · March 13, 2020, 4:38am

Thanks @macbeth, will try your suggestions. I don’t even have a /usr/share/applications/rv.desktop, but I remember setting it up initially somewhere, so need to dig into it some more again.

I will report back here,
Thanks for all your advise!!

frank

hanguil · April 16, 2020, 2:12am

Have you solved this perfectly?

frank · April 16, 2020, 2:14am

no, not yet

hanguil · April 16, 2020, 8:45am

I hope this is definitely solved

Andrey · April 17, 2020, 7:37am

Enable checkbox “Always open these types of links in the associated app” in dialog for Ubuntu
/etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/managed_policies.json
{
“ExternalProtocolDialogShowAlwaysOpenCheckbox”: true,
“URLWhitelist”: [
“.zoom.us”
]
}

just add needed domain or url part
see more instruction https://cloud.google.com/docs/chrome-enterprise/policies/?policy=URLWhitelist

hanguil · April 20, 2020, 2:07am

not working . every time ask open xdg-open

frank · May 7, 2020, 7:35am

I finally got this to work. Jeeeeeeeeeeesus.
So, what worked was @macbeth’s very first solution at the top of this thread.
However, when copy pasting this line:

“ExternalProtocolDialogShowAlwaysOpenCheckbox”: true

The quotes somehow end up invalid. They show up but the file is not evaluated as expected. I only figured it out because I found another post somewhere in Google-land that offered the same solution and I just copy/pasted it again noticing that the syntax highlighting in vim changed.

So yeah, retyping the quotes, then restarting Chrome fixed it for me. Did you all hear my sigh of relief?!

Cheers,
frank

hanguil · May 7, 2020, 7:50am

wow super thank you

macbeth · May 7, 2020, 1:21pm

OMG, @johnny.duguid Can you help us and edit my post to correct the quotes on it? I use to have permissions to edit my posts, but I lost them probably because of lack of activity because of the coronavirus : D
Thanks!