Open multiple firefox tabs from command line

Question

I'm trying to open firefox with two tabs from the command line, with two separate web addresses. So far I'm having no luck.

firefox -new-tab https://www.evernote.com/Home.action -new-tab http://www.gmail.com

Could someone point me in the right direction?

score 37 · Accepted Answer · edited May 04 '15 at 07:12

37

Oops. I just found the answer. You need to add a -url after each `-new-tab'.

firefox -new-tab -url https://www.evernote.com/Home.action -new-tab -url http://www.gmail.com

Now it works. Hope this can help somebody.

edited May 04 '15 at 07:12

muru

answered May 04 '15 at 02:05

Andy J

Cool. That would be very usefull in Chrome as well. – Augusto Sep 08 '17 at 09:09
For macOS users: /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox --new-tab https://google.com – SgtPooki Nov 04 '20 at 07:15

score 15 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 11 '20 at 16:53

15

You no longer need to add -url, simply write firefox followed by space-separated URLs.

Example:

firefox mail.google.com askubuntu.com stackoverflow.com

edited Apr 11 '20 at 16:53

holocronweaver

answered Apr 04 '18 at 05:36

Kapil Singh Rawat

This is a nice solution. Personally, I run it at startup using CTRL+R to recall the line and with a & at the end of the command to detach the firefox session from the terminal - just a suggestion. – somethis Aug 07 '19 at 09:38
1

This is not working for me. The only change that I did was that I have added a new profile in firefox and set it as the default. Now when I try the above solution, I get the following error
Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To use Firefox, you must first close the existing Firefox process, restart your device, or use a different profile.

Firefox is not stuck though. Both the new profile and the default one are working fine from the UI.
– livinston Mar 02 '21 at 03:28

score 8 · Answer 3 · edited May 04 '15 at 07:12

8

Create a file containing list of URLs called url.txt:

http://www.url1.xxx
http://www.url2.xxx
http://www.url3.xxx

Firefox uses the new-tab command, so you could pass the URLs in the file to the browser like so:

xargs -a url.txt firefox -new-tab "$line"

edited May 04 '15 at 07:12

muru

answered May 04 '15 at 06:39

Maythux

@Maythus awesome – alhelal Jul 19 '16 at 09:41
this approach generates the same popup error cited by @livinston – user2901351 Jan 19 '22 at 17:46
this approach generates the same popup error cited by @livinston
additional info: I am using firefox 96. This issue only appeared somewhere after version 90 (or with whatever ubuntu 20.04.3 updates were made in this timeframe). Not clear to me if this is a firefox issue or an ubuntu one, but the fact that I get the same error when running the equivalent command for vivaldi, brave, and opera makes me think is an issue brought upon us by GNOME or ubuntu.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1374403/after-firefox-94-update-cli-launch-half-broken
– user2901351 Jan 19 '22 at 18:40

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 27 '25 at 20:32

0

If you have a file tabs.txt with a URL on each line, you can use this command:

firefox $(cat tabs.txt) &

and it will open an instance of Firefox and a tab for each line.

Added the ampersand so it can run as a separate process.

To save the tabs, I am using a Firefox extension that copies the tabs to the clipboard. I save them in Documents to open later.

edited Apr 27 '25 at 20:32

Pablo Bianchi

answered Apr 25 '25 at 17:40

Steven Anderson

4 Answers4