Efficiency Tip: Open Nautilus From Terminal

I spend most of my time in the terminal when moving around directories and opening up files. Sometimes though it’s nice to be able to quickly open up a visual browser to look at a bunch of pictures or quickly browse through a bunch of documents from your current location within the terminal.

Edit your .bashrc or .aliases or wherever you have your shortcut commands and put in the following for Nautilus. If you are using a different file browser then figure out the associated command for your environment. Usually you can just run “name_of_browser –help” to see your options.

alias browse='nautilus'

Reload your profile by restarting terminal or run the following command:

. ~/.bashrc

Now type:

browse .

This should open up a Nautilus window with your current location since “.” refers to the current directory. If you run “browse” without any path it will open up your home directory.

If you want to open a different directory go back to the terminal and type something like the following:

browse the_dir_to_open

Or if you don’t like making shortcuts you can always just type the “nautilus” command and get the same results. “Browse” just seems more natural to me.