I'm trying to write a script that launches the default application for a given mime type. For example, I would like to say my-script text/plain and have it open KWrite for me. What I know is that you can use xdg-mime to query what is the default application for a given mime type $ xdg-mime query default text/plain org.kde.kwrite.desktop However, I don't know what is the command I can use to launch KWrite given org.kde.kwrite.desktop. How can I do that? Is having the name of the desktop file enough or do I also need to find out where it is stored (/usr/share/applications, .local/share/applications, etc)? ------- By the way, I don't think I can solve my original problem using xdg-open because XDG open expects to receive a filename or URL as a parameter and I want to be able to launch my applications without needing to pass a filename. For example, I want to be able to open the text editor on a blank file buffer or open my web browser on its home page.

Getting this error as regular user:

~$ xdg-open http://www.google.com/ 
xdg-open: no method available for opening 'http://www.google.com/ '
~$
~$ xdg-mime query default text/html
~$

Code from /usr/bin/xdg-open # if BROWSER variable is not set, check some well known browsers instead if [ x"$BROWSER" = x"chromium" ]; then BROWSER=links2:elinks:links:lynx:w3m if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then BROWSER=firefox:mozilla:epiphany:konqueror:chromium:google-chrome:$BROW$ fi fi open_envvar "$1" exit_failure_operation_impossible "no method available for opening '$1'" } ---- Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04 Gnu/Linux

I've noticed that calling xdg-open from a subshell will reliably block until the launched process is closed. I suspect there may be a reason for this, but I'm not sure as to why. For example, launching Nautilus doesn't block when calling xdg-open directly from the command line: xdg-open ~/dir ; echo foo # doesn't block but invoking xdg-open from a subshell will reliably block the terminal var=$(xdg-open ~/dir ; echo foo) # blocks { xdg-open ~/dir ; echo foo ; } | cat # blocks. My understanding is that xdg-open detaches the launched process from the shell session so that it's no longer a subprocess. I'd therefore expect this to be different to e.g. invoking sleep 1 & in a subshell for which it seems reasonable that the terminating subshell will block until all subprocess have completed, i.e. var=$(sleep 1 & echo foo) # also blocks, but understandable. But if xdg-open is detaching the process, what's causing the subshell to wait? In what may (?) be a partial answer, I've noticed that running { xdg-open ; ps ; } | cat shows that depending on program launched by ``, those that block are also the ones that keep the tty as their controlling terminal. That begs the question why this happens, why this happens only in a subshell and ultimately what's a good way to a launch desktop process from the terminal that will fully and reliably detach from it? Edit: fix syntax on bash.

When I click on a file in chromium, it calls xdg-open to open the file based on its mime type. For example, if I click on a file with a .torrent extension, it opens it in my torrent client. Is it possible to disable the use of xdg-open, and instead specify which extensions should be opened in which applications?

So if I add a desktop to entry ~/.local/share/applications/something.desktop then it shows up in the "Open with..." menu in KDE straight away. I would quite like to be able to get this same information from the command line. Is there a way of querying this? I had a look an xdg-mime which can show the default application, and set the default application to this newly created desktop entry but seems unable to list them all. Obviously I could just code up something to parse all the desktop entries - but this seems besides the point. There is this stuff about mimeinfo.cache and mimeapp.list but this seems parallel to these files - since open with... lists shows the new desktop entry, but it is missing from both these files. How do I show all desktop files that can handle a mimetype from the command-line?

I would expect xdg-open command to use the same application that opens when I double-click the file in the default file manager, but this is not always true. For example my DE is XFCE, my file manager is Thunar and my default picture viewer is Ristretto. However, xdg-open example.png opens the example PNG file in Pinta. Why?

Is there a way of checking for syntax errors in ~/.config/mimeapps.list? Errors seem to be silently ignored: 1. I added fdsobojaba to the bottom of the file 2. I ran xdg-open on an existing file 3. There was no error in .xsession-errors How do I verify mimeapps.list? Or at worst, where is the definition of the file's format?

$ xdg-open The program 'xdg-open' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install xdg-utils $ sudo apt-get install xdg-utils Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done xdg-utils is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 89 not upgraded. $ whereis xdg-open xdg-open: /usr/bin/xdg-open /usr/bin/X11/xdg-open /usr/share/man/man1/xdg-open.1.gz $ which xdg-open $ xdg-open The program 'xdg-open' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install xdg-utils No, I didn't mean "recursion". I'm on Linux Mint 15 MATE, but instead of MATE I'm using the i3 window manager. **Edit taking @slm's advice** $ type -a xdg-open type: xdg-open not found But it's in /usr/bin/xdg-open. I checked. $ dpkg -S /usr/bin/xdg-open xdg-utils: /usr/bin/xdg-open The next one was even more interesting. $ dpkg -S xdg-open git-annex: /usr/share/doc/git-annex/html/bugs/Fix_for_opening_a_browser_on_a_mac___40__or_xdg-open_on_linux__47__bsd__63____41__.html xdg-utils: /usr/bin/xdg-open xdg-utils: /usr/share/man/man1/xdg-open.1.gz The bug-fix is just a mail archive of a patch for an OSX problem. Anyway, I guess I could try using the full path: $ /usr/bin/xdg-open /usr/bin/xdg-open: No such file or directory

I use WSL2 (Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS) and need to refer to edge-browser for xdg-open. Due to the space in the path I get an error. How can I escape the space? The path is shown corrrectly in exported variable BROWSER. oliverk@KPW00WP3Q:/mnt/c/Users/E547766/Documents$ export BROWSER="/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Edge/Application/msedge.exe" oliverk@KPW00WP3Q:/mnt/c/Users/E547766/Documents$ xdg-open https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24683221 /usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: /mnt/c/Program: not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: /mnt/c/Program: not found xdg-open: no method available for opening 'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24683221 ' oliverk@KPW00WP3Q:/mnt/c/Users/E547766/Documents$ export BROWSER='/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Edge/Application/msedge.exe' oliverk@KPW00WP3Q:/mnt/c/Users/E547766/Documents$ xdg-open https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24683221 /usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: /mnt/c/Program: not found /usr/bin/xdg-open: 882: /mnt/c/Program: not found xdg-open: no method available for opening 'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24683221 ' oliverk@KPW00WP3Q:/mnt/c/Users/E547766/Documents$ $BROWSER -bash: /mnt/c/Program: No such file or directory oliverk@KPW00WP3Q:/mnt/c/Users/E547766/Documents$ export declare -x BROWSER="/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Edge/Application/msedge.exe"

I have a strange situation. In my company we use Xivo for all our call, so we have xivo-desktop-assistant installed on our desktop. Everything works fine with Firefox, when we click callto or tel link, xivo-desktop is open and compose, but we study to move on chrome alternative. Every time I want to open a callto or tel link from Google Chrome or other browser based on Chrome, xdg open firefox but not Xivo-desktop. I try in command line to do xdg-open callto:123 (to call 123) he still open Firefox (if I remove firefox from desktop, xdg try to open other apps but no Xivo-desktop). So it's look to be a xdg problem. If I do something like xdg-settings get default-url-scheme-handler callto (same with tel) the answer is xivo-desktop-assistant.desktop who looks good. But I don't understand why xdg don't want to work correctly. All file I check in ~/.local/share/applications, /usr/share/mime, /usr/share/applications looks to be good. During I make tests for this post, I see if the phone number is 6 or more digit it's working... where I can make this change ? (or internal number are on 3 digit). OS: Ubuntu 24.04 with KDE Any idea ? --- More information, if I do something like : /opt/xivo-desktop-assistant/xivo-desktop-assistant callto:123 it's working Thanks for you help

xdg-open can open urls, but only ones starting with ftp, http or https. But my browser will happily open other urls in programs that have a handler for it registered, e.g. f5-vpn:// urls (for a vpn, this launches the vpn client after authenticating in a web app). How can I open other urls like f5-vpn:// with their registered handler from the command line, just like the browser does?

I run Debian Jessie without a desktop environment (I use the tiling window manager i3) and like to use xdg-open to quickly open files using a preferred application. I have an ongoing problem setting the preferred app for PDF files though. This is my problem in a nutshell: $ xdg-mime query filetype ~/Downloads/document.pdf application/pdf $ xdg-mime query default application/pdf /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop $ xdg-open ~/Downloads/document.pdf [opens gimp!] Any ideas would be hugely appreciated - this has been plaguing me for about a year. The only way I've ever managed to (temporarily) fix it is by directly editing the mimeinfo.cache and removing the reference to gimp from the application/pdf record. And yes, /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop exists and contains the correct location of the qpdfview binary. (Indeed, this .desktop file is used when I hand-edit mimeinfo.cache.)

I would like xdg-open to open a new terminal when I run it on a file from the terminal and it opens, for example, nvim. My default text editor for text/plain is set to nvim.desktop. When I open a text/plain file from dolphin, it correctly opens nvim in a new terminal. But when I run xdg-open on that same file from a terminal, it opens nvim in the current terminal instead of starting a new one. How can I force xdg-open to open programs with a Terminal=true flag in their .desktop file in a new terminal when I run xdg-open from a terminal? I already tried { cat | xdg-open ~/file.txt 2>&1 >>/dev/null ; } & disown (file.txt is present in the home directory) but nothing happens, nvim is not even running if I type pgrep nvim after... My terminal is konsole, I am using Hyprland as window manager. Edit: I found out gio open does this correctly, so for now I will just use that. (I'll consider making it the answer, but I'll just wait a couple of days to see if I get an answer for xdg-open.)

How can I tell xdg-open to open, say, YouTube URLs in a specific app, but use my default browser for all other URLs?

I just can't find the command to display a *.png image! I tried xdg-open command but it failed: [student@seqpapl1 Images]$ xdg-open adapter_content.png xdg-open: no method available for opening 'adapter_content.png' I am currently running ubuntu linux on the server.

Suppose I launch Firefox from my apps. Is the stdout and stderr redirected to a specific file or is it redirected to /dev/null? If it is indeed redirected to a specific file, I'd also like to know how to how to run applications from the terminal (e.g. nohup, & disown) without knowing where to redirect stdout and stdin. In other words, how would I tell the desktop to launch an app, instead of launching it from terminal myself as a detached process. Of course, if the redirection is to /dev/null, then nohup APP >/dev/null 2>&1 and & disown is sufficient.

I've installed some app under /opt/myapp, which has a /opt/myapp/share directory. As I finish installing, it tells me: Note that '/opt/myapp/share' is not in the search path set by the XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variables, so applications may not be able to find it until you set them. The directories currently searched are: - /usr/share/gnome - /home/joeuser/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share - /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share - /usr/local/share - /usr/share What's the right way to add directories to that list - system-wide and as a single user?

I would like to register a URL scheme (or protocol) handler for my own custom URL protocol, so that clicking on a link with this custom protocol will execute a command on that URL. Which steps do I need to take to add this handler? Example: I want to open URLs like ddg://query%20terms in a new DuckDuckGo browser search. If this protocol already exists, I assume that the steps to override a handler don't differ much from the steps to create a new one. Yes, technically, this is just a URL scheme, not a protocol.

Usually, a double dash separates options from filenames, but xdg-open does not care:

❯ xdg-open -headlinesAfter.epub
xdg-open: unexpected option '-headlinesAfter.epub'
Try 'xdg-open --help' for more information.
❯ xdg-open -- -headlinesAfter.epub
xdg-open: unexpected option '--'
Try 'xdg-open --help' for more information.

Is there any other way?

I'd like to be able to open text and source code files in neovim (or any other terminal-based text editor) when an XDG-compatible GUI application asks with which application to open that file. For now, I'd be targetting xfce and cinnamon as DE/session provider. For that, I'd write a neovim-in-default-terminal-emulator.desktop file, and start the configured default terminal emulator with the appropriate editor command. What do I need to do to launch the DE-configured default terminal emulator from a application .desktop file with arguments of my choosing? - It doesn't seem update-alternatives on modern non-debian systems (fedora38, and others) provides x-terminal-emulator (anymore?) - gsettings-based aproaches: not my go-to, since DE-dependent, which technically is a no-go for a .desktop file which is supposed to be DE-agnostic - I was first hoping for default-url-scheme-handler and then DEs registering their preferred terminal emulator for some console:// or similar URL, but xdg-settings get default-url-scheme-handler is all xdg-settings: default-url-scheme-handler not implemented for xfce on me (does that mean I can't open, say, skype:// URLs from a browser when operating under XFCE?!) - :-(