Command Line – Is There an ‘Open With’ Command?

desktop-environmentfile openingfilesfreedesktopmime-types

Does the command line have a way to get a recommended list of programs used to open a particular file, based on the file type? For example, a .pdf file would have an open with... recommendation using the programs Evince and Document Viewer.

I use the command line for most things, but sometimes I forget the name of a program that I want to use to open a particular type of file.

BTW I am using Ubuntu 13.10.

pro-tip

Thanks to @slm 's selected answer below, I made the following bash script in a file called openwith.sh:

xdg-mime query default $(xdg-mime query filetype $1)

Add as an alias or execute directly as an openwith command.

Best Answer

There isn't a command that I've ever seen that will act as "open with..." but you can use the command xdg-open <file> to open a given <file> in the application that's associated with that particular type of file.

Examples

Opening a text file:

$ xdg-open tstfile.txt
$

Resulting in the file tstfile.txt being opened in gedit:

ss of gedit

Opening a LibreOffice Writer document:

$ xdg-open tstfile.odt 
$

Resulting in the file tstfile.odt being opened in Writer:

ss of writer

What apps get used?

You can use xdg-mime to query the system to find out what applications are associated to a given file type.

$ xdg-mime query default $(xdg-mime query filetype tstfile.txt)
gedit.desktop calibre-ebook-viewer.desktop

$ xdg-mime query default $(xdg-mime query filetype tstfile.odt)
libreoffice-writer.desktop calibre-ebook-viewer.desktop

This is a 2 step operation. First I'm querying for the mime-type of a given file, xdg-mime query filetype tstfile.txt, which will return text/plain. This is then used to perform another lookup to find out the list of applications that are associated with this mime-type. As you can see above I have 2 apps associated, gedit and calibre, for .txt files.

You can use xdg-mime to change the associations too. See man xdg-mime for more details.

Related Solutions

How an application is chosen over others to open a particular filetype in Linux

I usually use the command line tool xdg-mime to determine what applications are associated with a given MIME type.

$ xdg-mime query filetype IMAGE.PNG 
image/png

$ xdg-mime query default image/png
shotwell-viewer.desktop shutter.desktop

You can make this a single command like so:

$ xdg-mime query default $(xdg-mime query filetype IMAGE.PNG)
shotwell-viewer.desktop shutter.desktop

You can change the default using mimeopen like so:

$ mimeopen -d ~/test.pdf

Please choose a default application for files of type application/pdf

    1) E-book Viewer  (calibre-ebook-viewer)
    2) Document Viewer  (evince)
    3) Xournal  (xournal)
    4) GNU Image Manipulation Program  (gimp)
    5) Xpdf PDF Viewer  (xpdf)
    6) Print Preview  (evince-previewer)
    7) Inkscape  (inkscape)
    8) calibre  (calibre-gui)
    9) Other...

use application #2
Opening "/home/saml/Downloads/test.pdf" with Document Viewer  (application/pdf)

NOTE: By the way, the semi-colons are there because there can be multiple associations for a given MIME type. So text/xml could have google-chrome.desktop;firefox.desktop; as it's value would would indicate that there are 2 apps that can handle that particular type.

References

Is there a FreeDesktop command to open an open-with dialog similar to xdg-open

mimeopen is what you're looking for. Specifically mimeopen's -a or --ask option.

From the man page:

   -a, --ask
       Do not execute the default application but ask which
       application to run.  This does not change the default
       application.

Otherwise, it depends on your desktop environment and/or file browser. For example, xfce's Thunar file browser has an `Open With" option when you right-click on a filename, which displays a menu with all apps known to be capable of opening the file's filetype. The final menu item is "Open with Other Application" (which optionally lets you change the default).