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Accepted
Mikko Rantalainen
Asked: 2019-08-16 04:29:48 +0800 CST

How to open file browser with a specific file selected by default?

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Let's assume a situation where I have a terminal emulator open on my GUI and I have changed my working directory to some specific directory. I know that current directory contains file xyz.

Is it possible to open a new file browser window with my current working directory and have the file xyz focused by default but not launched automatically?

If multiple solutions exist, I'd prefer using xdg-open, caja, nautilus or nemo with some command line flags. Basically I'm looking for command like

xdg-open --in-file-browser xyz

which obviously does not work but is there a way to make it or something similar to work?

Bonus points for having a command that allows me to open a file browser view with multiple files pre-selected so that I could write

xdg-open --in-file-browser *.png

to e.g. easily start drag and drop operation for exactly those files.

nautilus command-line xdg-open nemo caja

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Unfortunately it seems that xdg-open does not support this. Status of some specific file browsers:

    • Caja: no support, giving command line parameters does equivalent of xdg-open for each parameter.
    • Nemo: nemo --no-desktop FILE will open a new window with the FILE preselected. If multiple files are given, Nemo will open a new window for each.
    • Nautilus: nautilus --no-desktop FILE will open a new window with the FILE preselected. If multiple files are given, Nautilus will execute a new process nautilus FILE1 ... nautilus FILEx for each parameter. Note that Nautilus will create new processes, not just open multiple windows or fork itself.

    As far as I can figure out, no file browser supports opening a window with multiple files preselected.

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