QSwitch Autor: Olillin

QSwitch is a browser extension that makes it quick and snappy for you to switch between related websites using rules written in RegEx.

To configure rules, go to the Add-ons Page and find QSwitch. Then go to the Preferences tab.

Here you can add, edit and remove rules. Let's configure a rule to go from a YouTube video to the same song on YouTube music!

The Pattern is the RegEx pattern that will be matched against your current page URL when clicking the button. For our example we will set it to:

https://(?:www\.)?youtube\.com(.*)


This matches the full URL. Note the (.*) at the end, this is a capturing group which we will be able to get the value from later. Capturing groups are made by surrounding a part of your pattern with parenthesis (). However, there are
cases when we want to create a group without capturing the content, in these cases consider using a non-capturing group which open with (?:. Above we use a non-capturing group to match the optional www. prefix.

Reminder: In RegEx dots (.) is a wildcard that will match any character so be careful to escape them by typing \. if you want a literal dot.

The Template is used to create the new URL you will be redirected to. Here we will set it to:

https://music.youtube.com$1


Note that this is not a RegEx pattern so the dots do not need to be escaped.

This is mostly just a normal URL, except for the $1 at the end. This is a parameter which will be replaced with our capturing group from before.

You can have as many capturing groups and parameters as you want. Parameters are referenced by the order they appear in the pattern, starting at 1. $0 is a special parameter which will be replaced with the entire matched URL. Literal $ can be included in your template using by escaping them with backslash like \$.

Since RegEx can be difficult to read there is also a Comment field where you can provide a descriptive comment to quickly remember what a rule does.

Now you're ready to switch between pages! I would recommend pinning the extension to the toolbar so it's easily accessible. Then when you are on any website you can click on the extension icon to switch page. Your rules will be evaluated in order until a match is found. The rule will then be applied on the URL of the page you are currently on and you will be redirected to the new page.

Exporting/importing as JSON

The rules page also supports exporting and importing rules as JSON, which can be useful for copying your rules to another computer or sharing with friends. You can find these options by clicking the Import/export button on the rules page.