[Update for Thunderbird 8 in OpenSUSE 12.1/KDE below] Thunderbird uses gconf even when running in KDE. For some reason when you tell Chrome to be your default Browser it misses out configuring gconf. Fire up a shell and type: gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command You will see something like: /usr/bin/firefox "%s" To change this over to chrome type: gconftool-2 --type string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command "google-chrome %s" Restart Thunderbird. And now http(s) links should open in Chrome. [Update] TB \> 4.x uses the xdg settings to determine the right thing to do. Unfortunately on my Opensuse 12.1/KDE Box these seem not to be set by google-chrome. I found the Solution [here][]. Aparently Google Chrome only sets the default browser for the "text/htm" Mime Type. Links seem to be clasefied "x-scheme-handler/http". To fix this add the following line line to \~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop [Update 2] Chrome 19 on OpenSuse 12.1/KDE failed to set the default Browser at all. I had to manually check the default setting in KDE System Settings-\>Default Applications