Name

xdg-open — opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application

Synopsis

xdg-open { file | URL }

xdg-open { --help | --manual | --version }

Description

xdg-open opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application. If a URL is provided the URL will be opened in the user's preferred web browser. If a file is provided the file will be opened in the preferred application for files of that type. xdg-open supports file, ftp, http and https URLs.

xdg-open is for use inside a desktop session only. It is not recommended to use xdg-open as root.

Options

--help
Show command synopsis.
--manual
Show this manual page.
--version
Show the xdg-utils version information.

Exit Codes

An exit code of 0 indicates success while a non-zero exit code indicates failure. The following failure codes can be returned:

1
Error in command line syntax.
2
One of the files passed on the command line did not exist.
3
A required tool could not be found.
4
The action failed.

See Also

xdg-mime(1), xdg-settings(1), MIME applications associations specification

Examples

xdg-open 'http://www.freedesktop.org/'

Opens the freedesktop.org website in the user's default browser. 

xdg-open /tmp/foobar.png

Opens the PNG image file /tmp/foobar.png in the user's default image viewing application.