Create a Terminal command to open file with Chrome

Question

I want to create command in terminal that would allow me to use

chrome index.html

and have the the given file open in Google Chrome.

How can I get this working?

Answer 1

You can use the open command with the -a flag to open a file or location in Chrome:

open -a "Google Chrome" index.html

This also works with URLs, i.e. open -a "Google Chrome" http://www.apple.com.

Answer 2

I found this way more beautiful:

1. Edit ~/.bash_profile file and add the following line alias chrome="open -a 'Google Chrome'"
2. Save and close the file.
3. Either run source ~/.bash_profile or open a new window in Terminal.

You can now open the file, file.html, by running: chrome file.html on the command line.

Answer 3

When using this from a script or some automation tool I prefer to alias to the complete binary so I have access to all the command line options, (like --version ...)

alias chrome="/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome"
chrome --version
chrome -open index.html

Then if you want to have this alias permanently you can add it to your .bash_profile manually or using this little snippet:

echo "alias chrome=\"/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome"\" >> ~/.bash_profile

Answer 4

From anywhere

start chrome path/file.html

just type the file name with extension if you are at that folder where file reside and your default browser should be chrome.

index.html

if chrome is not default Browser for that file

start chrome index.html