xdg-open

Open current directory in file explorer

$ xdg-open .

$ xdg-open https://example.com

$ xdg-open path/to/image.png

$ xdg-open path/to/document.pdf

$ xdg-open path/to/video.mp4

xdg-open file|URL

xdg-open opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application. It is part of the xdg-utils package and works across different desktop environments by detecting which one is running and using the appropriate method.

--help

Display help message

Display version information

xdg-open detects and uses the appropriate method for:
- GNOME (gio open or gnome-open)
- KDE (kde-open or kfmclient)
- Xfce (exo-open)
- MATE (mate-open)
- Enlightenment (enlightenment_open)
- Generic fallback (mimeopen)

The file or URL is opened asynchronously; xdg-open returns immediately. The application chosen depends on the desktop's MIME type associations. On systems without a desktop environment, it may fall back to text-based alternatives.

xdg-open is part of xdg-utils, a set of scripts for desktop integration developed by the freedesktop.org project to provide consistent behavior across different Linux desktop environments.

xdg-mime(1), xdg-settings(1), gio(1)