Xdg-open (1) Linux Manual Page

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:

Error in command line syntax.

One of the files passed on the command line did not exist.

A required tool could not be found.

The action failed.

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.

Authors

Kevin Krammer

Author.

Jeremy White

Author.

Copyright

Notes

1.

MIME applications associations specification

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/mime-apps-spec/

xdg-open (1) Linux Manual Page