Override the open command on Mac to open isolated, minimal browsers in incognito and cleanup

open

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Add $HOME/.bin to the beginning of your PATH
# Save this file in $HOME/.bin/open and make it executable

if ! echo "$@" | grep -q http; then
  /usr/bin/open $@
  exit $?
fi

BASE_TEMP_DIR=/tmp
TEMP_DIR=$(mktemp -d $BASE_TEMP_DIR/google-chome.XXXXXXX)

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome \
  --user-data-dir=$TEMP_DIR \
  --incognito \
  --disable-default-apps \
  --no-first-run $@ >/dev/null 2>&1 &

APP_PID=$!

while true; do
  if ! kill -s 0 $APP_PID 2>/dev/null; then
    rm -rf $TEMP_DIR
    break
  fi
  sleep 10
done &

If, like me, you use various tools such as aws-vault to login to different AWS accounts and want to open AWS console windows for multiple accounts at once you'll soon discover that there are various blockers. Incognito windows aren't suitable as they share a cookie store across all Windows meaning - no multiple account logins.

This script and:

# Add $HOME/.bin to the beginning of your PATH
# Save this file in $HOME/.bin/open and make it executable

Will give you a new open command. It creates a temporary Chrome user data directory, starts Chrome in incognito mode with all default apps disabled (using the temporary data directory) and runs a loop in the background which cleans up the temporary profile when the Chrome process goes away.

The while loop probably isn't really needed as /tmp gets cleaned up by the OS but I don't want anything hanging round when I no longer need it.