Open URL actions

In an Open URL action, PopClip will ask macOS to open a URL generated from a template that you provide.

If the URL scheme is http: or https: and the current app is a known browser, PopClip will ask the current app to open the URL.

In all other cases, PopClip will ask macOS to open the URL in the default app app for its URL scheme.

Properties

An Open URL action is defined by the presence of a url field, plus additional optional fields, as follows:

Key	Type	Description
url	String	The URL to open when the user clicks the action. Use {popclip text} as placeholder for the selected text.
alternate url	String (Optional)	An alternate URL to open if the user holds Option (⌥) when invoking the action. Same format as url.
clean query	Boolean (Optional)	If true, all runs of consecutive whitespace and newlines in the text will be collapsed to a single space before being inserted into the URL. Default is false.

Shorthand form

You can substitute *** as a shorthand for {popclip text}.

Input and output

The selected plain text will be inserted into the URL, replacing the {popclip text} placeholder if present. PopClip will always trim leading and trailing whitespace and newlines, and URL-encode the text. Optionally, PopClip will perform further whitespace cleanup with the clean query flag.

Option parameters can be inserted in the URL, in the same format as for AppleScript actions. See example.

URL actions never return any output.

Advanced behaviours

If you need to customize the generation of the URL string or specify a particular app to open the URL, don't use an Open URL action. Instead, use an AppleScript action and the popclip.openUrl() function.

Examples

Simple web search

The following snippet defines an extension with a single URL action that opens a search for the selected text on the movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes:

#popclip extension to search Rotten Tomatoes
name: Rotten Tomatoes
icon: iconify:simple-icons:rottentomatoes
url: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/search?search=***

Custom URL scheme

The following snippet opens a custom URL scheme, in this case maps: for Apple Maps:

#popclip custom URL scheme example, Apple Maps
name: Maps
icon: iconify:material-symbols:map-outline
url: maps://?q={popclip text}

Use of option parameter

The following snippet opens a Wiktionary search page, with the site domain specified as an option parameter:

yaml

#popclip Wiktionary search with subdomain option
name: Wiktionary
icon: iconify:ooui:logo-wiktionary
url: https://{popclip option subdomain}.wiktionary.org/wiki/{popclip text}
options:
- type: string
  identifier: subdomain
  label: Site subdomain
  defaultValue: en

json

#popclip Wiktionary search with subdomain option
{
  "name": "Wiktionary",
  "icon": "iconify:ooui:logo-wiktionary",
  "url": "https://{popclip option subdomain}.wiktionary.org/wiki/{popclip text}",
  "options": [
    {
      "type": "string",
      "identifier": "subdomain",
      "label": "Site subdomain",
      "defaultValue": "en"
    }
  ]
}