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Help: Web address rules

You can create rules that are triggered by clicking on a link to a web address that matches certain criteria.

The following types of web address matching are availble:

is

Matches the whole URL exactly. Note that this includes the protocol at the start of the URL (i.e. https:// or http://)

is not

Matches any URL that is not exactly the same as the URL defined in the rule. Note that this includes the protocol at the start of the URL (i.e. https:// or http://)

contains

Matches any URL that contains the string defined in the rule. For example, if the rule was “contains facebook” matching addresses would include https://www.facebook.com/ and https://example.com/facebook

begins with

Matches any URL that begins with the string defined in the rule. Note that this includes the protocol at the start of the URL (i.e. https:// or http://). For example, if the rule was “begins with https://www.google.” matching addresses would include https://www.google.com/, https://www.google.co.uk/ and https://www.google.com/search?q=choosy

ends with

Matches any URL that begins with the string defined in the rule. For example, if the rule was “ends with .pdf” it would match URLs like https://example.com/download.pdf, but not https://example.com/download.pdf?key=123.

is like

This type of address matching allows you to define simple patterns using wildcard characters. The pattern must match the whole URL, which means you might need to add `*` character to the beginning or end of the pattern.

Character	Matches	Example
?	Any single character	The pattern a?c would match abc but not ac or abbc
*	Zero or more characters	The pattern a*c would match ac, abc and abbc

matches regular expression

This type of address matching allows you to define complex patterns using regular expressions. If you are not already familiar with regular expressions there are various web sites with indepth tutorials, several of which are linked from the Wikipedia article on regular expressions. Choosy uses the ICU version of regular expressions; you can find documentation on the ICU project web site. Your regular expression must match the whole pattern, which means you might need to add .* to the beginning or end of the expression (if you're used to working with regular expressions, you can think of the pattern as implicitly starting with ^ and ending with $).