Opening links from an email in a browser and opening the mail composer from an email link on a website.
Andre Klapper
ak-47@gmx.net
Fran Dieguez
frandieguez@gnome.org 2009-2020.

# Opening links in and from the web browser

# Change which web browser websites are opened in

In case you use Evolution under a different environment from GNOME,

Open a terminal application.

Find out the name of the .desktop file for your preferred browser. Depending on your browser and distribution, the file might be called for example epiphany.desktop, firefox.desktop, google-chrome.desktop, konqbrowser.desktop, or opera-browser.desktop. If you are unsure you can look up most .desktop files in the folder /usr/share/applications/.

Type this command, replace browser.desktop by the actual filename, and press Enter:

xdg-settings set default-url-scheme-handler https browser.desktop

Type this command, replace browser.desktop by the actual filename, and press Enter:

xdg-settings set default-url-scheme-handler http browser.desktop

Evolution may need to be restarted for the settings to take effect.

If the error message "xdg-settings: command not found" is shown, you need to install the package xdg-utils.

Install xdg-utils

Please see the GNOME Desktop Help.

If the preferred browser is set as default application but still does not work correctly please contact your distribution via their forum or bug tracker.

If the error message "Could not open the link: Operation not supported" is shown, you need to install the package gvfs.

Install gvfs

# Change which mail application is used to write emails

Please see the GNOME Desktop Help.

# Advanced options

If you have a technical background you can also tweak these settings by defining scheme-handlers in $HOME/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list.