I usually build stuff sitting in coffee shops. I just get way more locked in when I'm out of the house than at home. So this isn't some rare thing, it's basically most of my work time.
Anyway here's what kicked this off: I was at a coffee shop, on battery, working in Zen like always, and my battery just dropped off a cliff. Way faster than it should. So I switched to Safari for a bit just to see, and yeah, night and day.
Not really shocking honestly — Safari's built for Apple Silicon specifically, Zen runs on Firefox's engine, and Firefox-based browsers are known to be heavier on power on a Mac. Looked into it a bit more after:
So the fix was pretty obvious: Safari on battery, Zen when plugged in. Doesn't even matter if I'm doing light stuff or grinding on something heavy unplugged. Safari just costs less battery either way.
Only problem, macOS doesn't let you do that. Whatever your default browser is, that's what opens when you click a link anywhere - Slack, Telegram, Mail, doesn't matter. I just wanted those links to go to Safari when I'm unplugged, without having to think about it or manually change my default browser every time I sit down at a coffee shop. So I built Junction to do that for me.
What it does
Sits in your menu bar, grabs every link you click system-wide, and decides which browser actually opens it based on rules you set:
Battery-aware rules. On battery → Safari, plugged in → Zen (or whatever). Watches your power state live so it flips the second you plug/unplug, no restart needed.
Regular rules too. Match by host or regex — "anything on github.com goes to Chrome," stuff like that.
A picker when nothing matches. Small popup under the menu bar icon, pick with your keyboard or a click. Fast, not some dialog you have to fight with.
Rules run in order, so you can stack exceptions above a general rule.
Free
Junction's free, no restrictions. There's an optional one-time supporter license if you want to throw a few bucks at it
Download
You can grab the latest version here
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