Open Files From the Command Line in OSX
· 1 min read
On your Mac, you have files that can be opened by certain applications. For instance .pdf files by the Preview.app, .pages by the Pages.app etc. Did you know that you can open these files using the command line as well? This has been around since NextStep.
Files can have a default app to open them with. macOS keeps a database about which app opens what type of files through LaunchServices. So PDFs are open by the Preview app by default.
So, to use the command line:
$ open MyFile.pdf
The open program is very versatile – just glance at its man page. If you don’t want to use Preview but PDFExpert.app, just use the -a flag:
$ open -a /Applications/PDFExpert.app MyFile.pdf
You can also use open to launch a URL:
$ open https://apple.com
and even open a directory in the Finder:
open /Path/To/Folder
or reveal a file in Finder:
open -R /path/to/file