How to Open a Website from Terminal

By  on  

Every once in a while I want to open a website from the terminal ... just because.  Maybe it's because it makes me feel just a bit more hardcore, you know, not clicking a GUI icon.  Anyways, opening a browser via the command line is dead simple:

open https://davidwalsh.name

That execution will open the URL in the system's default browser.  If your prefer a specific browser, you can so specify:

open -a "Google Chrome Canary" http://cnn.com

Open a URL from the command line -- you'll feel like a true pro.

Recent Features

  • By
    Being a Dev Dad

    I get asked loads of questions every day but I'm always surprised that they're rarely questions about code or even tech -- many of the questions I get are more about non-dev stuff like what my office is like, what software I use, and oftentimes...

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools LinkAlert

    One of my favorite Firefox plugins is called LinkAlert. LinkAlert shows the user an icon when they hover over a special link, like a link to a Microsoft Word DOC or a PDF file. I love that warning because I hate the surprise...

  • By
    Create Twitter-Style Buttons with the Dojo Toolkit

    I love that JavaScript toolkits make enhancing web pages incredibly easy. Today I'll cover an effect that I've already coded with MooTools: creating a Twitter-style animated "Sign In" button. Check out this five minute tutorial so you can take your static...

Discussion

  1. Geopelia

    Like i child…

  2. danny

    Since aliasing gitwww to open the current github repo’s home page, ive saved prob. 2 mins/day. Plus is saves my fingers a trip to the mouse!

    • Ollie

      could you share how you made the alias dynamic to access the current repo’s homepage?

  3. I thought you’re gonna use lynx :))

  4. open didnt work :(
    but start did :) in windows environment

  5. Heh, you got me there! I thought you wrote an article about lynx :-) Thanks for sharing though, it’s especially useful when grabbing stuff using curl or wget…

  6. these days in zsh on OSX you need to wrap the url in quotes

    open 'https://davidwalsh.name/open-website-terminal'
    

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!