Feb 01, 2007 Opening Mac OS X Applications from the Command Line. The Terminal command to launch OS X gui apps is appropriately called ‘open’ and here is how it works at it’s most simple: open -a ApplicationName. That will open the defined app named “ApplicationName”. But open is much more powerful than that.
To use any of these key combinations, press and hold the keys immediately after pressing the power button to turn on your Mac, or after your Mac begins to restart. Keep holding until the described behavior occurs.
Mac Os X Terminal Command
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Macos Launch App From Command Line
In some flavors of Unix, you feel as if you've been cast into an alternate universe when you open a terminal window and work on the command line. But with OS X and its Darwin core, there's often an elegant integration between the two. In this how-to I'll show you how to launch an OS X app from the command line with the open command.
[Note: A little bit of prior UNIX experience will be helpful here.]
First off, I will admit this technique is fairly geeky. In my [Mac] OS X career, I've only used this trick a handful of times. However, it's so darn cool and charming that one just aches to use it at any opportunity.
Actually, upon reflection, there are some useful scenarios for this technique.
The Man Page
The terminal app is in the Utilities folder—which is found the Applications folder. Launch it now. The BSD UNIX command we'll be using is open. Below is the manual page ('man' for short), shown by typing:
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I've printed most of the man page for the open command here for your perusal, but I'm not going to explore every argument. And feel free to jump right to the examples below to whet your appetite.
For this limited how-to, one interesting way to use the open command in this context is to use the [-a] option. Some other useful variations and arguments are in the examples below.
Mac Os Command Line Commands
Typical Examples
Here are some short and sweet examples of the open command with the -a, -e, and -t arguments. They're easy to try. [If you don't have BBEdit installed, use any other favorite a text editor in /Applications.]
Open Doors
These are just a few of the cool things you can do on the command line with the open command. To keep things simple, I haven't delved into creating a search path or other Unix tricks like aliases. All that's been left for you to explore on your own.
Mac Os X Launch App Command Line System
I think this is one of the neatest tricks in OS X.
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Mac Os X Launch App Command Line Download
Launch button via Shutterstock.
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