[Bug]: Storybook launches "Microsoft Edge" within a Parallels Virtual Machine on start

[niieani]

Describe the bug

I have Parallels VM installed with a Windows VM.
Parallels creates .app shortcuts inside $HOME/Applications (Parallels)/{67e174d4-57e0-4187-a009-2219421f60ca} Applications.localized/ - this includes Microsoft Edge.app. Opening this app will launch or unsuspend the virtual machine if not started.

There is something wrong with how Storybook chooses which Microsoft Edge.app to launch when starting storybook, because it tries to launch the wrong one, ending up booting the entire virtual machine, and erroring out:

.../node_modules/.bun/storybook@10.3.5+e78db58ab89a47c7/node_modules/storybook/assets/server/openBrowser.applescript:608:626: execution error: Microsoft Edge got an error: every window doesn’t understand the “count” message. (-1708)

Storybooks runs despite the error, but having an entire Windows VM launch every time I try to start storybook is unfortunate. The workaround is to launch with --no-open argument, which is not ideal.

Reproduction link

not relevant

Reproduction steps

No response

System

│  Storybook Environment Info:
│
│  System:
│  OS: macOS 26.4
│  CPU: (10) arm64 Apple M1 Max
│  Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
│  Binaries:
│  Node: 24.7.0 - ~/.proto/shims/node
│  Yarn: 4.12.0 - ~/.proto/shims/yarn
│  npm: 11.13.0 - ~/.proto/shims/npm
│  pnpm: 10.33.2 - ~/.proto/shims/pnpm
│  Browsers:
│  Chrome: 147.0.7727.116
│  Safari: 26.4

Additional context

No response

[dosubot]

Hi @niieani! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the storybook team.

This is happening because Storybook's browser opener relies on macOS Launch Services to resolve browser names — both through AppleScript (tell application "Microsoft Edge") and the open command (open -a "Microsoft Edge") [1]. Neither of these uses an explicit path; they just pass the application name, and macOS picks whichever "Microsoft Edge.app" it finds first. On your system, it's finding the Parallels shortcut before the native one.

The browser detection itself uses ps cax | grep "Microsoft Edge" to check if Edge is running [2], but doesn't capture or pass through the actual bundle path — so even if the native Edge is the running process, the subsequent AppleScript/open call can still resolve to the Parallels wrapper.

A more robust fix would be for Storybook to resolve browsers by explicit path (e.g. /Applications/Microsoft Edge.app) or by bundle identifier (com.microsoft.edgemac) rather than by display name. There are no existing issues or PRs tracking this.

In the meantime, you can work around this without --no-open by setting the BROWSER environment variable to the full path of your native Edge:

BROWSER="/Applications/Microsoft Edge.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge" npx storybook dev

Or if you'd prefer Chrome or Safari, just set BROWSER=google-chrome or BROWSER=safari.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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