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Open a folder in the Finder from the Terminal

November 1st, 2003 by Marcos

Here’s a simple but nifty trick. Say you’re navigating around in the Terminal and you would like to see the present working directory in the Finder? Just type

% open .

and the Finder will open up the folder you’re in. This works in both xterms and the Apple Terminal.

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11 Responses to “Open a folder in the Finder from the Terminal”

  1. 1

    August Lilleaas Says

    Nice one. Having searched for a while, only finding “how to open a terminal window from the finder”. I’d expect it to be “finder .”, but I guess I can not always have my way.

  2. 2

    Thiago Says

    Very simple but great tip! Made my life easier =P

    Thanks a lot!

  3. 3

    Ankit Says

    Thanks dude… I was searching for it from quiet some time.

  4. 4

    Cainofnod Says

    You sure can have it your way:

    alias finder=’open’

  5. 5

    esaruoho Says

    thanks Cainofnod!! exactly what i needed :)

  6. 6

    Allan Says

    Brilliant trick!

  7. 7

    yaauie Says

    @Cainofnod, @esaruocho:

    I’d highly suggest against aliasing finder to the open binary. Open is a very flexible general-use bin that does a whole lot more than just open directories in the Finder. It’ll take any file or directory and open it with the default helper, or if provided an -a arg, in the Application supplied. Aliasing it for such a specific use will lead to confusion (man finder will turn up nothing).

  8. 8

    Don Smith Says

    The first hit in the search engine and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for posting!

  9. 9

    David Kanenwisher Says

    Thanks a lot for posting this. I knew there had to be an easy way to do it.

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