How to open a file manager of the current directory in the terminal?

Question

When I work in terminal, sometimes I want to open the current directory in a GUI file manager. And then to click the items in the window to run the application. How can I do this?

I don't think this question is an exact duplicate. There are many similar questions with some identical answers but none of the questions have the exact same focus as this question. The closest question is How to open a directory/folder and a URL through Terminal — dv3500ea, Mar 19 '11 at 14:52
Tried all the answers below. The ones that worked on Ubuntu 20.04 are: xdg-open ., nautilus ., browse .. But gnome-open . did not work as-is (I guess either gnome is not installed or there's some other reason for that). Nonethless, this is to confirm what worked as of 01-Feb-2022. — CypherX, Feb 01 '22 at 10:19

score 316 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '11 at 14:42

316

The following works in all desktop environments by using the default file manager:

xdg-open .

You can also open files from the terminal as if you had double clicked them in the file manager:

xdg-open file

answered Mar 19 '11 at 14:42

dv3500ea

37,754

2

Doesn't work for Ubuntu 16 – okainov Jun 14 '17 at 07:45
Works in CentOS 6.10 as well. – рüффп Oct 19 '18 at 06:25
@TheGodfather it works it Ubuntu 18.04 – Nino Filiu Apr 29 '19 at 21:23
for ubuntu, uses: caja, or nautilus – danilo May 25 '19 at 17:44
1

Works like a charm in Ubuntu 18. :) Thanks for this! – cbloss793 Jun 04 '19 at 18:14
Works for me in Ubuntu 16.04 – Drazen Cika Sep 26 '19 at 08:30
This shows a deprecation warning, the newer command is gio open . (Centos 7) – chuckles Jul 13 '20 at 03:29
Is there a similar command to "Choose a file"? e.g. It will open the default file manager and you can choose/select a file and it'll return the file's absolute path? More like a "File-picker"? – zean_7 Jun 18 '21 at 13:38
Works in Ubuntu 20.04 as well – Kheersagar patel Sep 23 '24 at 06:36

score 56 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '11 at 15:07

Problem

This tip will explain How to open a file manager of the current directory in the terminal

Solution 1

The following works in all desktop environments by using the default file manager:

xdg-open .

Solution 2

You can also open files from the terminal as if you had double clicked them in the file manager:

xdg-open file

Solution 3

If you are using Gnome, you can use the gnome-open command, like so:

gnome-open .

Solution 4

You can use nautilus [path]. for current directory -

nautilus .

This is the most complete one and should be the answer. Works in RedHat 7.2 x64. — WesternGun, Nov 10 '16 at 20:35

score 45 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 19 '11 at 14:40

45

You write nautilus [path]. for current directory -

nautilus .

answered Mar 19 '11 at 14:40

MByD

655

This has the disadvantage that you have to keep terminal window alive while you are navigating. If you kill the window, the file explorer gets killed too. – gdaras Oct 23 '18 at 15:22
3

This is easily solved by adding & to the end like this: nautilus . & – Vladislav Rastrusny Mar 08 '19 at 14:31
This is easier to remember for me. – Jules Colle Nov 03 '19 at 13:13
@gdaras it works perfectly fine in Ubuntu 24.04, even if you close the terminal. – hafiz031 Feb 09 '25 at 07:39

score 16 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 04 '20 at 18:50

16

In Ubuntu 20.04, you can just say browse . to open the current directory

answered Dec 04 '20 at 18:50

dspyz

600

browse is just a symlink to xdg-open. So you can use both of them in the same way. (i.e you can also open files with browse) – sahinakkaya Apr 13 '21 at 09:47

score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 26 '12 at 20:03

6

If you are using GNOME, you can use the gnome-open command, like so:

gnome-open .

edited Aug 26 '12 at 20:03

Eliah Kagan

119,820

answered Mar 20 '11 at 04:05

MystaMax

166

1

To use it first install: sudo apt install libgnome2-bin – vidur punj Aug 03 '16 at 11:37
I wonder why isn't there common command for opening whatever the GUI is. I have tried all commands from above answers and no one worked for me. This is the only working on Ubuntu – okainov Jun 14 '17 at 07:46
Is there a way to open gnome as sudo? I tried sudo gnome-open . with no luck. – Tim Mar 16 '18 at 20:58

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 27 '18 at 05:45

You can use, nautilus . and press enter to open the current directory.

To open path specified location try the following.

E.g. If you want to open Music folder under this location:

/media/dulithdecozta/A08A64BB8A648F98/Music/

Then execute the following.

nautilus /media/dulithdecozta/A08A64BB8A648F98/Music/

How to open a file manager of the current directory in the terminal?

6 Answers6

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