Rule Settings

This page provides detailed information on how to set up redirect rules using Redirect Web.

Options

Type

Specify the Type option to control how the app handles redirection. You can choose from these:

• Original (Default)
  • This uses traditional Web APIs to control redirection. Additionally, it uses the Tabs API for a fallback.
  • You can use all the options other than Resource Types and Request Methods.
  • This is slower than the Declarative type and may cause extra network requests.
• DNR (Experimental):
  • This allows you to specify Resource Types and Request Methods.
  • This type works much faster than the Original type because it doesn't initiate a network request for the source URL.
  • ⚠️ If you update Redirect Web to version 7 or later, you may see an alert in Safari that disables the extension due to a new permission request for this type. Details
  • ⚠️ You can't use some options, such as Capturing Group Processing and Excluded URL Patterns.
  • ⚠️ Currently, you can't include pipes (|) in your Regular Expression pattern. Details
  • ⚠️ Since the DNR API still has some issues, we consider that is still an experimental feature. You can find the list of all the known issues here.

Redirect From

The Redirect From option allows you to specify a URL pattern of web pages you want to redirect from. You can choose either Wildcard or Regular Expression.

For example, if you specify https://example.com/* with Wildcard, it matches https://example.com/ or https://example.com/hello.

note

In the Redirect To option, You can reference the entire match using $0 or partial matches using $1, $2, ... Check the details in URL Pattern on this page.

Resource Types

The Resource Types option lets you specify the categories of web requests, such as images, JavaScripts, and style sheets, to which the rule applies. For example, if you set script, you can redirect the JavaScript files loaded by web pages.

Currently, these are available: main_frame, sub_frame, stylesheet, script, image, font, xmlhttprequest, ping, media, websocket, other

The default setting is main_frame, which is the top-level page loaded into a tab.

Please check the details of each resource type in mdn web docs.

Request Methods

The Request Methods option lets you set the target HTTP methods of the source URL.

All methods are set by default.

Please check the details of each method in mdn web docs.

warning

This option is currently not available because Apple's implementation for the DNR type doesn't seem to handle it currently. We sent feedback to Apple as FB14502272.

Redirect To

The Redirect To option specifies a destination URL you wish to redirect to, from the source URL matched with the Redirect From option. You can also substitute capturing groups with $1, $2, ... or the entire match with $0. These help you dynamically specify the destination. Check the details in URL Pattern in this page.

For example, if you set the following rule:

• Redirect From: https://google.com/* (Wildcard)
• Redirect To: https://apple.com/$1

and it matches https://google.com/hello, then the destination URL will be https://apple.com/hello.

Additionally, You can modify the texts of $1, $2, ... before making substitutions. Check the Capturing Group Processing section for the details.

tip

You can specify a custom URL scheme to open an app. These are examples of apps that support deep linking:

• Figma: figma://file/Your_Figma_ID
• Firefox: firefox://open-url?url=https://example.com/hello
• Google Chrome: googlechromes://example.com
• Microsoft Edge: microsoft-edge://example.com
• Notion: notion://www.notion.so/Your_Note_ID
• Slack: slack://open

Application

If you want to specify an app you wish to open the destination URL, use the Application combo box. This is only available on macOS.

warning

You can only open an app that supports App Sandbox. Also, make sure that the app supports opening the URL you want to open.

Capturing Group Processing

The Capturing Group Processing option allows you to specify how to process the captured groups you can substitute in the Redirect To option with $1, $2...

These are how to make capturing groups:

• Wildcard: Texts matched with * and ? are automatically captured.
• Regular Expression: Texts matched with part of the pattern inside () are captured.

You can choose one or more of the following processes:

• URL Encode/Decode: This applies percent-encoding or decoding to a capturing group. For example, if you encode https://example.com/hello, it's converted to https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fhello. Decode works in an opposite way.
• Base64 Encode/Decode: This decode/encode a text into Base64. For example, you can encode hello to aGVsbG8=, and decode it back to hello.
• Replace Occurrences: This replaces one or more characters in a group, matched by a Target, with a Replacement. For example, if the Group is hello and the Target is l and the Replacement is y, it is modified to heyyo.

note

This is for processing each capturing group and it doesn't affect which URLs are excluded by the Excluded URL Patterns. For instance, let's say you have this rule:

• Redirect From: https://example.com/(hello.*)
• Capturing Group Processing:
  • Group: $1
  • Target: .* (Regular Expression)
  • Replacement: hello
• Excluded URL Pattern: https://example.com/hello

In this case, https://example.com/hello_world will not be excluded while https://example.com/hello will be excluded.

Excluded URL Patterns

The Excluded URL Patterns option allows you to specify the URLs that are not redirected. This can be useful to avoid redirect loops or to exclude certain parts of a website from being redirected.

You can specify excluded URL patterns using either Regular Expression or Wildcard pattern types.

Examples

The Examples option allows you to test your redirect rule by providing sample URLs. By adding a sample URL, you can check if the rule works as expected before actually applying it.

Comments

The Comments option allows you to add any notes or comments about your redirect rule. This can be useful for keeping track of why you created a specific rule or for providing context for others who might view your rules.

URL Pattern

There are 3 options you can specify one or more URL patterns. Redirect From, Excluded URL Patterns and Capturing Group Processing. To specify them, you can choose either Wildcard or Regular Expression.

Wildcard

Wildcard is a simpler pattern type that allows you to use * (matches anything) and ? (matches any single character) as wildcards. Here are some examples:

• To match https://example.com/hello, you can use https://example.com/*. This will match any string after https://example.com/.
• To match https://example.com/search?q=hello, you can use https://example.com/search?q=*. This will match any value for the q parameter.
• To match any URL that contains the word blog, you can use *blog*.

You can also use substitution in Wildcard as well, which means you can reference portions of the matched URL using $1, $2, etc. For example, if you use https://example.com/*-world-*, and the URL is https://example.com/hello-world-goodbye, then $1 would be "hello" and $2 would be "goodbye". $0 is also available to reference the entire URL matched.

[!Note] Although substitution is a feature of Regular Expression, you can also use it for Wildcard because Redirect Web internally converts Wildcard to Regular Expression.

Regular Expression

Regular Expression (Regex) is a powerful tool for matching patterns in text, powered by Apple's regular expression engine which is described here. It allows you to define a specific pattern that matches a set of strings. Here are some examples.

• To match https://example.com/hello, you can use https://example.com/(.*). This will match any string after https://example.com/ and store it in a capturing group.
• To match https://example.com/search?q=hello, you can use https://example.com/search\?q=(.*). This will match the value of the q parameter and store it in a capturing group.
• To match any URL that contains the word blog, you can use .*blog.*.

You can reference the capturing groups in Redirect To or Replacement using $1, $2, ... or $0 to reference the entire match.

You can learn more about Regex syntax in resources like RegExr.