How to open a folder (with GUI) from terminal?

Question

I want to place a link/shortcut/launcher in my unity panel (ubuntu 12.10).

I followed this tutorial on handytutorial.com to create a custom launcher and drag it to the panel.

I just need to know which command do I have to input. Is this possible?

score 177 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 08 '13 at 21:17

177

gnome-open does not work for me on 12.04 but nautilus /path to open does work.

example: nautilus /home/john/Downloads.

edited Mar 08 '13 at 21:17

Eric Carvalho

55,453

answered Mar 08 '13 at 20:12

Themiddaysun

1,901

score 118 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 09 '13 at 02:37

If the question is how to open a file/folder, the answer is always xdg-open.

From man xdg-open:

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.

In this specific case the commmand

xdg-open folder

opens folder in your default file manager, be it Nautilus, Dolphin, Thunar or anything else.

Eric Carvalho · Answer 3 · 2013-03-08T21:19:37.973

19

A shortcut to open a folder? If this what you want, the command is:

gnome-open </path/to/folder>

For example: gnome-open /home/Tiago/Downloads.

If it isn't installed run sudo apt-get install libgnome2-bin.

edited Mar 08 '13 at 21:19

answered Mar 08 '13 at 20:06

Eric Carvalho

55,453

score 16 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 08 '13 at 20:39

Use the command nautilus <path>.

So for example: nautilus /home/oaskamay will open up my home (~) folder.

In addition, if you need to open-up the GUI with root permissions, run gksu nautilus <path>. It works with every GUI front-ends too (e.g. gksu gedit /etc/default/grub).

It's important to note that you should never start GUI apps like so sudo gedit /etc/default/grub.

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 06 '16 at 19:24

10

xdg-open works for me on ubuntu 16.04. I only made a copy of this command as open:

sudo cp /usr/bin/xdg-open /usr/bin/open
sudo chmod 775 /usr/bin/open

Now you can use it just like on mac os:

open ./

answered Jun 06 '16 at 19:24

Oleg Mikhailov

209

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Jul 17 '19 at 15:34

1

You can make a simple alias named as "open" or "o" etc... in .bashrc

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

# add personaly open alias
alias open='xdg-open ./'

log out account, sign in, open the terminal and write open

edited Jul 17 '19 at 15:34

user68186

37,461

answered Jul 17 '19 at 15:16

henks

11

score -1 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 06 '16 at 20:03

-1

Use Midori's app function. When I make an app this way it is added to launchers.

answered Jun 06 '16 at 20:03

userDepth

2,040

How to open a folder (with GUI) from terminal?

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