Is there a way to stop Dropbox from opening Firefox as its default when viewing the Dropbox webpage?

I have Dropbox installed on my Ubuntu desktop 12.10, I also have Firefox and Chrome installed. Chrome is my default browser, I have checked in my mimeapps.list and its all correct. Yet for some reason the integration of Dropbox opens Firefox when I use the "Launch Dropbox website" option from the menu, is there a file somewhere this is looking at as I would like it to open in Chrome which I mostly have already running than launching a new instance of Firefox? Or could this be a Dropbox bug?

3 Answers

Dropbox is still a gtk2 application while Unity and current Gnome are on gtk3. Gtk2 applications store their settings in gconf instead of dconf. Maybe they got out of sync.

Edit the following key:

/desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec

with the gconf-editor user interface (available as package) or with gconf command:

gconftool -s /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec -t string google-chrome

Last not least there are the debian alternatives system, use package galternatives and change key x-www-browser to your liking.

Note that google-chrome is not the same as chromium-browser.

It is also possible that dropbox keeps the browser that it encountered during install, in this case please report the bug.

I had similar problem with my Xubuntu 13.04 and I solve it with this commands.

$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------ 0 /usr/bin/opera 200 auto mode
* 1 /usr/bin/chromium-browser 40 manual mode 2 /usr/bin/firefox 40 manual mode 3 /usr/bin/opera 200 manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

x-www-browser was set right because I want to use chromium-browser but problem was with next command where for gnome-www-browser was set opera.

$ sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /usr/bin/opera 200 auto mode 1 /usr/bin/chromium-browser 40 manual mode 2 /usr/bin/firefox 40 manual mode 3 /usr/bin/opera 200 manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

So you just need to select the browser you want to use, in my case its chromium-browser, so I entered number 1 and it solve my problem with Lunch Dropbox Website in different browser.

For me, none of ways to change default browser worked. It was probably Dropbox bug that was fixed in newer version.

Use solution from Dropbox ignoring my default programs

If it does not work, you can try combining it with any of other answers.