Bouncer app icon — a yellow rounded square with a dark forking arrow symbol Bouncer

Keep work and personal links apart on one Mac

Work links open in your work profile. Everything else stays personal.

Sound familiar?

You use one Mac for work and for everything else, with a work profile and a personal one, maybe in different browsers. But macOS lets you pick only one default browser, and Chrome opens outside links in whichever profile you used last. So a link from your work Slack opens in your personal profile, and you copy it over by hand.

The short answer

Bouncer becomes your default browser, then decides for each link. A rule can match the app a link came from, down to the Slack workspace or the Mail account, or the link itself. Links from your work Slack open in Chrome “Work”, links from Messages open in Safari, and anything without a rule goes to your personal fallback.

How to set it up

  1. Install Bouncer and make it your default browser.
  2. Set your Fallback Browser to the browser and profile you use for personal browsing.
  3. Make a rule for work links. Set From... to the app you work in, like Slack, Outlook, or Mail, and choose your work browser and profile.
  4. Work and personal in the same app? Pick the Slack or Notion workspace, the Discord server, or the Mail account in the rule.
  5. Still seeing a link in the wrong place? Open the Bouncer menu and choose Create Rule from “…”. The rule editor opens with that link filled in.

Questions

Yes. Make Safari your fallback browser, then add rules that send links from your work apps to Chrome. Any supported browser or profile works on either side, including Safari profiles.

Yes. A rule can match a Slack or Notion workspace, a Discord server, or an Apple Mail account, not just the app.

Yes. Make a rule from Mail for each account, and pick the account under Account. Bouncer sees which account a message is in, even in All Inboxes. If it can’t tell, it skips those rules instead of guessing.

Yes. Make a rule for YouTube links and choose your personal profile. Put it above your work rules, so it wins even when the link comes from work Slack.

The one higher in your Rules list. Bouncer checks rules from top to bottom and stops at the first match, so put narrower rules above broader ones.

Both send links by app and by site. Bouncer can also tell apart two Slack workspaces or two Mail accounts in the same app, and it opens Safari profiles. Velja can’t do either. See the full comparison.

Coming Soon

15-day free trial. One-time purchase of $10. Requires macOS 14 or newer.

Related guides

More: all use cases · compare browser pickers