What happened?

When launching gemini-cli and asking it to authenticate using Google, it launches a browser to complete the authentication process. I have multiple browsers installed, and for some reason it doesn't just use xdg-open and instead somehow launchers Falkon instead of the default browser configured, which is a Google Chrome variant.

What did you expect to happen?

It should open Google Chrome - either the default configuration, or the custom .desktop file that is actually set as the default browser in xdg-settings.

Client information

I cannot complete the login to Gemini-cli, so I cannot run the process described in the template.

I can share this command and the result of it on, when run on my system:

$ head ~/.npm-packages/lib/node_modules/\@google/gemini-cli/package.json 
{
  "name": "@google/gemini-cli",
  "version": "0.37.1",
  "description": "Gemini CLI",
  "license": "Apache-2.0",
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "git+https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli.git"
  },
  "type": "module",

Login information

Google account

Anything else we need to know?

Running claude-code to analyze the issue, it came up with this explanation:

● Here's the finding:

The issue is in packages/core/src/code_assist/oauth2.ts:304. It uses the third-party open npm package to launch the browser, while the other two auth flows (MCP OAuth at oauth-provider.ts:465 and A2A OAuth at oauth2-provider.ts:268) correctly use the project's own openBrowserSecurely() from secure-browser-launcher.ts.

Why the wrong browser launches: The open package (v10.1.2) ships a bundled copy of xdg-open (a ~1260-line shell script) and prefers it over the system's xdg-open. This bundled script does its own desktop environment detection and browser resolution, which can differ from the system's actual default browser configuration. It falls back to a hardcoded list (x-www-browser, firefox, iceweasel, seamonkey, mozilla, epiphany, konqueror, chromium, chromium-browser, google-chrome) rather than respecting xdg-settings get default-web-browser.

The project's own openBrowserSecurely() in secure-browser-launcher.ts correctly calls the system xdg-open via execFile, which properly delegates to the user's configured default browser.

The fix is to replace the open package call in oauth2.ts with openBrowserSecurely(), consistent with the other two auth flows