Linux: command to open URL in default browser

Question

What command we have to execute (from Java, but that should not matter) on Linux (different common distributions) to open a given URL in the default browser?

score 127 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 25 '11 at 11:16

127

The most cross-distribution one is xdg-open http://stackoverflow.com

answered Feb 25 '11 at 11:16

shellholic

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Unfortunately not present in RHEL – Ondra Žižka Mar 12 '11 at 14:48
@OndraŽižka sensible-browser is debian-only too, isn't it? What would work in RHEL? – cmc Nov 15 '13 at 13:52
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It exists in RHEL, install the package 'xdg-utils'. – Tim Peters Oct 07 '14 at 02:06
Not present in my Debian 7. Have to use 'wget' instead. – estornes Feb 04 '15 at 21:26
In Debian, it's package "xdg-utlls" too, just like in RHEL. – sleske Aug 01 '15 at 17:12
Why does it always prompt `ERROR:browser_gpu_channel_host_factory.cc(120) | Failed to launch GPU process.` – Abhishta Gatya Mar 31 '18 at 05:00

score 47 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 07 '16 at 13:04

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I believe the simplest method would be to use Python:

python -m webbrowser "http://www.example.com/"

answered Apr 07 '16 at 13:04

Kevin Grant

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works like a charm. also cross platform (at least works on mac & linux) – Paul Liang Mar 09 '18 at 04:20
Also on windows if Python is installed. – Mikhail Gerasimov Apr 21 '19 at 19:20
I like this solution better for a cross-platform use case, but for Linux only, it does take ~7-8x as much time to run on my system compared to `xdg-open` for the same url. – Taylor D. Edmiston Oct 03 '19 at 16:23
Just as a note for people running this on windows: I've found it often opens up Internet Explorer. (instead of the user's configured default) But it works, I guess. – Lazerbeak12345 Sep 24 '20 at 21:29
What if there are multiple browser profiles? – sksoumik Jan 24 '22 at 06:20

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 15 '12 at 12:37

12

on ubuntu you can try gnome-open.

$ gnome-open http://www.google.com

answered Feb 15 '12 at 12:37

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 15 '12 at 12:30

8

In Java (version 6+), you can also do:

Desktop d = Desktop.getDesktop();
d.browse(uri);

Though this won't work on all Linuxes. At the time of writing, Gnome is supported, KDE isn't.

answered Feb 15 '12 at 12:30

Daniel Winterstein

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score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 25 '11 at 11:12

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At least on Debian and all its derivatives, there is a 'sensible-browser' shell script which choose the browser best suited for the given url.

http://man.he.net/man1/sensible-browser

answered Feb 25 '11 at 11:12

krtek

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score 6 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 25 '16 at 01:06

6

On distributions that come with the open command,

$ open http://www.google.com

answered Aug 25 '16 at 01:06

Anand Varma

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On Ubuntu 16.04 it doesn't work because it tries to open file. – omikron Jan 16 '17 at 10:32

JimmyLandStudios · Answer 7 · 2020-02-13T16:41:01.430

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###1     Desktop's -or- Console use:
sensible-browser $URL; # Opinion: best. Target preferred APP.
# My-Server translates to: w3m [options] [URL or filename] 
## [ -z "$BROWSER" ] && echo "Empty"
# Then, Set the BROWSER environment variable to your desired browser.

###2     Alternative 
# Desktop (if [command-not-found] out-Dated)
x-www-browser http://tv.jimmylandstudios.xyz # firefox

###3     !- A Must Know -!
# Desktop (/usr/share/applications/*.desktop)
xdg-open $URI # opens about anything on Linux (w/ .desktop file)

edited Feb 13 '20 at 16:41

answered Aug 01 '15 at 16:45

JimmyLandStudios

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Please consider adding some detail to your answer. – Shamas S Aug 01 '15 at 19:00
When using any of these commands in a Shell Script you'll need to test if they exist first (e.g. command -v $CMD ). $? = 0 – JimmyLandStudios Feb 13 '20 at 17:03

score 4 · Answer 8 · edited Aug 25 '16 at 19:30

I think using xdg-open http://example.com is probably the best choice.

In case they don't have it installed I suppose they might have just kde-open or gnome-open (both of which take a single file/url) or some other workaround such as looping over common browser executable names until you find one which can be executed(using which). If you want a full list of workarounds/fallbacks I suggest reading xdg-open(it's a shell script which calls out to kde-open/gnome-open/etc. or some other fallback).

But since xdg-open and xdg-mime(used for one of the fallbacks,) are shell scripts I'd recommend including them in your application and if calling which xdg-open fails add them to temporary PATH variable in your subprograms environment and call out to them. If xdg-open fails, I'd recommend throwing an Exception with an error message from what it output on stderr and catching the exception and printing/displaying the error message.

I would ignore the java awt Desktop solution as the bug seems to indicate they don't plan on supporting non-gnome desktops anytime soon.

score 1 · Answer 9 · edited Jul 08 '13 at 10:43

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I think a combination of xdg-open as described by shellholic and - if it fails - the solution to finding a browser using the which command as described here is probably the best solution.

edited Jul 08 '13 at 10:43

Andreas

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answered Apr 15 '12 at 14:48

alexsb

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score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 28 '20 at 09:33

For opening a URL in the browser through the terminal, CentOS 7 users can use gio open command. For example, if you want to open google.com then gio open https://www.google.com will open google.com URL in the browser.

xdg-open https://www.google.com will also work but this tool has been deprecated, Use gio open instead. I prefer this as this is the easiest way to open a URL using a command from the terminal.

XDS · Answer 11 · 2021-06-08T12:17:46.110

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If you are in Windows10 (including WSL2 *nix shells) you can try:

  explorer.exe   https://stackoverflow.com

  or

  cmd.exe /c start   https://stackoverflow.com/?foo=bar

Weird but it works!

Note: In the case of WSL there is a known bug which prohibits passing query parameters into the url. The workaround is to use "cmd.exe /c start url"

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/3832

edited Jun 08 '21 at 12:17

answered Jun 08 '21 at 11:34

XDS

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Linux: command to open URL in default browser

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