How to make Aspire React projects launch the website when debugging, not Aspire?

[catmanjan]

When you create a blank Aspire React template in VS2026 and start debugging, Aspire opens to the dashboard, which is not very useful because 99 times out of 100 you want the react site to show, not aspire

[IEvangelist]

You can open the React site from the Dashboard. But I'd argue that usually when running Aspire — you want the Dashboard to open. But I believe that you can override the defaults from the template, by setting the BROWSER env var:

#:sdk Aspire.AppHost.Sdk@13.1.0
#:package Aspire.Hosting.JavaScript@13.1.0
#:package Aspire.Hosting.Python@13.1.0

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

var app = builder.AddUvicornApp("app", "./app", "main:app")
    .WithUv()
    .WithExternalHttpEndpoints()
    .WithHttpHealthCheck("/health");

var frontend = builder.AddViteApp("frontend", "./frontend")
    // Set to chrome, edge, or firefox - see https://github.com/sindresorhus/open#app
    .WithEnvironment("BROWSER", "chrome")
    .WithReference(app)
    .WaitFor(app);

app.PublishWithContainerFiles(frontend, "./static");

builder.Build().Run();