Dia Router

Dia Router is a small macOS menu-bar app that sends links to the right Dia profile. Its menu-bar popover contains the complete rules editor and setup UI, while the optional Chromium extension routes links you click inside Dia.

No signing identity, certificate, credentials, or machine-specific configuration is committed to the repository.

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• Dia installed with at least one profile
• Xcode Command Line Tools, or Xcode, for building the app
• ImageMagick only if you want to regenerate the checked-in Chrome extension PNG icons

How routing works

1. Dia Router receives an http or https URL as the macOS default web handler.
2. The first matching rule selects a Dia profile. Unmatched URLs use the chosen default profile.
3. Dia Router activates Dia and invokes the shortcut assigned to that profile.
4. It opens the original URL explicitly in Dia, avoiding a default-browser loop.

Dia Router reads profile names and order from Dia's local Chromium profile state. It does not read Dia's keyboard-shortcut settings, so the shortcut numbers must be aligned in both apps.

The built-in rules initially send Slack, Linear, Notion, and Google Meet to the first profile. Click the menu-bar icon to edit rules, change their target profiles, enable or disable them, or add new ones. Click a rule's favicon to change its match type, move it, or delete it. The gear opens profile, shortcut, default-browser, Accessibility, and test controls inside the same popover; Dia Router has no separate Settings window.

Favicons are loaded as consistently sized PNGs from Google's public favicon service when the rules popover is visible. If a favicon cannot be resolved, Dia Router shows a local globe fallback.

Build and install

./scripts/build-app.sh
./scripts/install-app.sh

The install script places the app at ~/Applications/Dia Router.app and launches it. The app registers its embedded login item through SMAppService, so macOS attributes background activity to Dia Router rather than to a shell or system helper.

To launch the currently installed app and let it register its login item without rebuilding, run:

./scripts/install-login-item.sh

Align Dia profile shortcuts

Dia Router detects Dia profiles automatically when the app starts and whenever Settings opens. Add, remove, or rename profiles in Dia, then reopen Dia Router Settings to sync them. There is no separate Add Profile action in Router. Dia can occasionally lag before writing a renamed profile to its Chromium metadata; if that happens, edit the detected name directly in Router. The manual name remains attached to the same Dia profile directory and routing rules.

The default mapping follows Dia's detected profile order:

Dia profile order	Expected Dia shortcut	Router setting
First profile	⌘⌥1	⌘⌥1
Second profile	⌘⌥2	⌘⌥2
Third profile	⌘⌥3	⌘⌥3
Fourth through ninth	⌘⌥4 through ⌘⌥9	Matching number

In Dia, open Settings → Shortcuts and assign each profile-switching action to Command-Option-1 through Command-Option-9 in the same order shown in Dia Router. If you later use a different number for a profile, change that profile's shortcut picker in Router to match. Dia Router supports up to nine shortcut-mapped profiles.

profile=Other selects the profile after the currently active Dia profile. With two profiles it toggles between them; with three or more it advances through the detected order.

First-run setup

1. Click the Dia Router menu-bar icon, then click the gear.
2. Confirm that the detected profile names and shortcut numbers match Dia.
3. Click Request Permission, then allow Dia Router in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
4. Click Set Dia Router as Default.
5. Use Test Routing to preview and open a URL before relying on the rules day to day.

Install the Chrome extension

The standalone Manifest V3 extension in chrome-extension provides a dedicated gesture for sending a clicked link through Dia Router's rules. Chromium Cleanup intentionally does not include this routing code, so the behavior remains isolated and optional.

1. Build and install the Dia Router macOS app first.
2. In Dia, open chrome://extensions.
3. Turn on Developer mode.
4. Click Load unpacked and select this repository's chrome-extension folder.
5. Repeat Load unpacked in every Dia profile or container that does not share data/extensions and where you want to use the gesture. Each non-sharing profile has its own extension installation; you can select the same chrome-extension folder each time.
6. On the first routed link, approve Dia's prompt to open Dia Router.app. You can select Always allow for subsequent links.

Use either of these commands on an http or https link:

• Command-Shift-click routes the link using the first matching rule, or the default profile when no rule matches.
• Right-click and choose Route link with Dia Router.

The exact Command-Shift-click modifier avoids conflicting with Dia's Option-click split-tab behavior. The extension has no settings, analytics, external requests, or profile-specific names. It only passes the clicked URL to the locally installed app using the dia-router:// protocol. Browser-internal pages do not allow content scripts, so the gesture is available on ordinary web pages only.

The app also accepts a named profile from other Chromium extensions:

dia-router://open?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com&profile=Personal

Profile names are matched case-insensitively. Use profile=Other for the next profile without hard-coding a name.

Extension icons

The checked-in PNG extension icons are generated from Resources/Dia Router.icon/Assets/dia.svg, which remains the single SVG source of truth:

brew install imagemagick
./scripts/generate-extension-icons.sh

The script produces transparent 16, 32, 48, and 128 px PNGs in chrome-extension/icons.

Signing

The repository does not contain a personal signing identity. build-app.sh automatically uses the first valid Apple Development identity in the local keychain when one is available, without writing its name or certificate ID into the repository. If no identity is available, it falls back to an ad-hoc signature so anyone can still build the app without an Apple Developer account.

For a stable local signature, first list the identities available in your keychain:

security find-identity -v -p codesigning

To override the automatically selected identity, provide a different identity for one build:

DIA_ROUTER_SIGNING_IDENTITY='Apple Development: YOUR NAME (TEAMID)' ./scripts/build-app.sh

Or create an ignored local file at scripts/signing.local.zsh:

export DIA_ROUTER_SIGNING_IDENTITY='Apple Development: YOUR NAME (TEAMID)'

The local file is excluded by .gitignore. A stable signature helps macOS preserve Accessibility permission across rebuilds. After changing the signing identity, or replacing an older build that used a different bundle identifier, remove any stale Dia Router entry from Accessibility if necessary, install the rebuilt app, and grant it once more.

The unpacked Chrome extension does not require signing, a private key, or a Chrome Web Store account.

License

Dia Router's source code and documentation are available under the MIT License. The Dia name, logo, and derived icon assets are excluded from that license and remain the property of their respective owners. This is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dia.

Development

swift test
swift build