Dr Andrew Scott G7VAV

MBCS, MIET, Member ACM, Member IEEE

Senior Lecturer
School of Computing
and Communications

D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom

November 2025
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XDG-OPEN

Section: xdg-open Manual (1)
Updated: 12/31/2010
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

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 manualpage.

--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

for client (none)

http://www.andrew-scott.uk/

Andrew Scott

http://www.andrew-scott.co.uk/