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How to Open an App from Anywhere on Mac Command Line

By David Walsh on January 31, 2023

Many engineers like myself live in the command line, and perform actions from command line that most others would click an icon for. I've always found opening apps from command line on Macs painful. You need to references the Applications directory, add .app to the name, etc. I just want to open apps by name.

To open an app from any directory by its simple name, you can use the -a argument to open:

open -a  Cyberduck

# Works regardless of case as well
open -a CyBeRdUcK

I love -a for a command like open. Being able to open any app by name is exactly what I want!

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How to Open an App from Anywhere on Mac Command Line

Recent Features

Create Spinning Rays with CSS3: Revisited

Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

Incredible Demos

Use Custom Missing Image Graphics Using jQuery

Create Custom Events in MooTools 1.2

Discussion