How can I discover the default browser from the command line?

There is no longer a user friendly command-line entry that returns the default browser name. There are two choices that I am aware of:

# from https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/313454/applescript-find-the-users-set-default-browser
defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure | awk -F'"' '/http;/{print window[(NR)-1]}{window[NR]=$2}'



which returns com.vendor.browsername (e.g. com.apple.safari) for the default browser.

Or you can put the following into a Bash or Zsh script, mark it executable, and run it from the command-line to return just the default browser name:

#!/bin/zsh

# return default browser name that would open the URL

function default_browser () {
    osascript <<-AS
    use framework "AppKit"
    use AppleScript version "2.4"
    use scripting additions

    property NSWorkspace : a reference to current application's NSWorkspace
    property NSURL : a reference to current application's NSURL

    set wurl to NSURL's URLWithString:"https://www.apple.com"
    set thisBrowser to (NSWorkspace's sharedWorkspace)'s ¬
                        URLForApplicationToOpenURL:wurl
    set appname to (thisBrowser's absoluteString)'s lastPathComponent()'s ¬
                    stringByDeletingPathExtension() as text
    return appname as text
AS
    return
}

printf '%s\n' $(default_browser)
exit 0

chmod +x dbrowser.zsh
./dbrowser.zsh
Safari