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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?

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    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, 2011 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 1, 2022 at 10:19

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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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
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    Doesn't work for Ubuntu 16
    – The Godfather
    Jun 14, 2017 at 7:45
  • Works in CentOS 6.10 as well.
    – рüффп
    Oct 19, 2018 at 6:25
  • @TheGodfather it works it Ubuntu 18.04
    – Nino Filiu
    Apr 29, 2019 at 21:23
  • for ubuntu, uses: caja, or nautilus
    – danilo
    May 25, 2019 at 17:44
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    Works like a charm in Ubuntu 18. :) Thanks for this!
    – cbloss793
    Jun 4, 2019 at 18:14
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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 .
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  • This is the most complete one and should be the answer. Works in RedHat 7.2 x64.
    – WesternGun
    Nov 10, 2016 at 20:35
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You write nautilus [path]. for current directory - 

nautilus .
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  • 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, 2018 at 15:22
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    This is easily solved by adding & to the end like this: nautilus . &
    – Vladislav Rastrusny
    Mar 8, 2019 at 14:31
  • This is easier to remember for me.
    – Jules Colle
    Nov 3, 2019 at 13:13
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In Ubuntu 20.04, you can just say browse . to open the current directory

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  • 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)
    – Asocia
    Apr 13, 2021 at 9:47
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If you are using GNOME, you can use the gnome-open command, like so:

gnome-open .
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    To use it first install: sudo apt install libgnome2-bin
    – vidur punj
    Aug 3, 2016 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
    – The Godfather
    Jun 14, 2017 at 7:46
  • Is there a way to open gnome as sudo? I tried sudo gnome-open . with no luck.
    – Tim
    Mar 16, 2018 at 20:58
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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/
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