Open browser in host system from Windows Subsystem for Linux?

Question

I have a ruby script that does contains this line:

system("open '#{html_path}'")

html_path is the path to a local .html file. So the script opens a browser where I can normally inspect and view this file.

In contrast to a MacOS environment, this doesn't work in bash of WSL. Running the script nothing happens, and when I execute the open call in the console directly I get this:

sujan@LenovoX1:/mnt/c/Users/Jan/Documents/foo$ open Preview.html
Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console

I already investigated that open does something different in Ubuntu and I should use see or xdg-open to open a file.

Unfortunately these also don't work in WSL:

sujan@LenovoX1:/mnt/c/Users/Jan/Documents/foo$ see ./Preview.html
Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%{ <-- HERE (.*?)}/ at /us
r/bin/see line 528.
Couldn't find a suitable web browser!
Set the BROWSER environment variable to your desired browser.
Warning: program returned non-zero exit code #1

and

sujan@LenovoX1:/mnt/c/Users/Jan/Documents/foo$ xdg-open ./Preview.html
Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%{ <-- HERE (.*?)}/ at /us
r/bin/run-mailcap line 528.
Couldn't find a suitable web browser!
Set the BROWSER environment variable to your desired browser.
Warning: program returned non-zero exit code #1
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 771: /usr/bin/xdg-open: www-browser: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 771: /usr/bin/xdg-open: links2: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 771: /usr/bin/xdg-open: elinks: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 771: /usr/bin/xdg-open: links: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 771: /usr/bin/xdg-open: lynx: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 771: /usr/bin/xdg-open: w3m: not found
xdg-open: no method available for opening './Preview.html'

Thinking about it, this makes sense: There is no browser available inside WSL.

Can I somehow set this BROWSER variable so see works inside bash of WSL?

Bonus question: If yes, how can I make the ruby script work without changing that code? It's an external dependency :/

Pawel Zubrycki · Answer 1 · 2022-05-19T06:01:37.197

63

Install wslu and add export BROWSER=wslview to your $HOME/.bashrc (or equivalent if you use other shell)

edited May 19 '22 at 06:01

answered Oct 22 '18 at 10:54

Pawel Zubrycki

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This worked for me, thank you! :) – Param Siddharth Oct 07 '20 at 04:41
This worked for me, thanks! – Husni Jan 25 '21 at 04:24
8

This should probably be marked as the answer-- this is preinstalled on Ubuntu as a part of ubuntu-wsl and shipped by canonical engineers. You can see a blog post about it here: https://ubuntu.com/blog/new-installation-options-coming-for-ubuntu-wsl. While setting the `$BROWSER` envvar does in fact also solve this problem, using `wslview` allows for predictable bridging between the WSL and Windows environments. I usually also reference https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WSL first with anything specific to Ubuntu as it's frequently updated. – buzzedword Mar 24 '21 at 15:52
1

You still have to set `export BROWSER=wslview` in _.bashrc_ or _.profile_ or similar. You can on Ubuntu start the default browser with `wslview` or ` xdg-open`. I think the answer should make that clear but otherwise nice answer @ParamSiddharth! – dotnetCarpenter Aug 02 '21 at 19:45
2

Unfortunately this setting does not work for `xdg-open` with a file as an argument like `xdg-open index.hml`. In this case Windows' `Start` gets the Linux path in the original form: `The system cannot find the file specified.` ... `+ Start "/home/user/tmp/index.html"` – pabouk - Ukraine stay strong Oct 12 '21 at 17:04
`wslview` needs to run powershell, which is extremely slow - urls open with a delay of seconds on my computer. `explorer.exe` on the other hand is instantaneous and opens the url using your default browser as per your Windows settings. – dzz Nov 18 '21 at 13:38
@buzzedword Unfortunately since Ubuntu 22.04 `wslu` is not installed by default. https://github.com/wslutilities/wslu/issues/233 – pabouk - Ukraine stay strong May 17 '22 at 23:20
.. also attempting to install wslu on 22.04 seriously fubar'd my system. – Brian Horakh Nov 27 '22 at 22:48

score 40 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 13 '19 at 20:40

40

You can set the BROWSER variable. There is a long article explaining how to set environment variables.

If you want to set the variable for the current terminal session you can use:

export BROWSER='/mnt/c/Program Files/Firefox/firefox.exe'

(assuming you want to use Firefox and have it installed in C:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox.exe)

If you want this to be persistent, you can add the above line to the file ~/.bashrc.

edited Jun 13 '19 at 20:40

Sean Allred

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answered Nov 06 '17 at 17:48

Florian_1990

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Your answer doesn't actually tell me how to open the file after setting the `BROWSER` env variable... – papiro Jan 07 '20 at 15:23
3

I had to add \ before the whitespace in the path string for this to work. – macleginn Dec 09 '20 at 10:31
2

This didn't work for me as it's directly using linux path, e.g. file:///tmp/cover688282190/coverage.html – Husni Jan 25 '21 at 04:29

score 23 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 07 '20 at 04:09

23

For some reason WSL can see the windows file explorer. If you do:

explorer.exe Preview.html

in the console it should open in the default Windows web browser.

edited Nov 07 '20 at 04:09

phuclv

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answered Apr 25 '18 at 20:38

Elizabeth Hou

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it only opens the Documents folder in Windows explorer for me – Greg Woods Oct 15 '19 at 21:48
Try to quote the link/path to the webpage like `explorer.exe "./Preview.html"` – David DIVERRES Dec 06 '21 at 16:44
At least at time of writing the path translation between WSL and explorer.exe is very finicky. In my experience it hardly works at all on WSL volumes and will arbitrarily not work on Windows volumes. – jkmartindale Sep 02 '22 at 17:19

score 19 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 05 '20 at 19:18

19

I used sensible-browser http://localhost:8001/ on Ubuntu 20.04 w/ WSL2

answered Nov 05 '20 at 19:18

Michael Cole

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This answer should get all the upvotes. No need to configure anything. It just works! – Daan van den Bergh Jan 08 '21 at 21:08
explorer.exe: command not found – Dumbo Dec 22 '21 at 11:32
This answer works. – JSVJ Feb 08 '22 at 04:30
2

This does not work in Ubuntu 22.04 / WSL2 (without setting anything): *Couldn't find a suitable web browser! Set the BROWSER environment variable to your desired browser.* – pabouk - Ukraine stay strong May 17 '22 at 21:17
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Worked for me today on WSL2 Ubuntu 20.04 installed via PowerShell `wsl --install -d Ubuntu` command – Austin D Nov 21 '22 at 09:14

score 12 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 25 '18 at 19:43

12

Combining the two answers above, the simplest solution is to set BROWSER to windows file explorer in order to use the default Windows web browser

export BROWSER='/mnt/c/Windows/explorer.exe'

answered Aug 25 '18 at 19:43

Yehonathan Sharvit

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I like that idea, but when I call `xdg-open https://www.google.com` my Firefox for Windows open two tabs with google, while it is only one tab when I execute `explorer.exe https://www.google.com`. Any idea on how to get only one tab via xdg-open? – Holger Feb 01 '19 at 09:40
I have the same problem as @Holger any updates on a fix? – Brett Jan 09 '20 at 14:47
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using `update-alternatives --install "bin/host_chrome" "chrome" "/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe" 1` followed by `export BROWSER=host_chrome` did the trick for me. – Brett Jan 09 '20 at 15:01

Xarses · Answer 6 · 2020-02-25T17:35:47.360

Building on the prior answers

export BROWSER=/some/path/to/chrome.exe is likely the solve you are looking for, however chrome's default path is /mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe (a path with spaces and parens for the shell to escape). This works fine if the application uses the a quoted version of the variable "${BROWSER}" will successfully open chrome. However if you use the variable unquoted $BROWSER, bash will consider it as individual variables. This breaks in some tools, such as xdg-open.

working around this is simple, you can symlink it to a path with out spaces.

ln -s "/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe" ~/.local/bin/chrome
export BROWSER=~/.local/bin/chrome

Alternatively, you can use update-alternatives as Brett pointed out. In the end, this is also a symlink, but has slightly more visibility for when/if you need to update where the link points.

update-alternatives --install "bin/host_chrome" "chrome" "/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe" 1
export BROWSER=host_chrome

This helped me, but I needed to set the absolute path to the link target `/home/username/.local/bin/chrome` to be able to launch the browser. Now I'm able to launch Chrome from Hyper and from the terminal in VS Code. Also see this post regarding chrome tmp files: might be useful if you are running karma tests: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54090298/karma-use-windows-chrome-from-wsl — herrklaseen, May 22 '20 at 07:59
did not work for me. It complains that "alternative link is not absolute as it should be". So it is missing a forward-slash for `"bin/host_chrome"`. Should be `"/bin/host_chrome"`. However the browser opens, but it does not open the URL in question. Just the blank start page. — pmdci, May 17 '21 at 20:11

John Douthat · Answer 7 · 2019-10-02T22:34:39.590

Here is a "poor man's" open from macOS for WSL:

alias open="powershell.exe /c start"

Add that to your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc as appropriate, or run it in your WSL shell, and then the following things will work:

open . # opens current folder in Explorer as e.g. \\wsl$\Ubuntu\home\john\myapp
open foobar.txt # opens in notepad.exe
open README.md # opens in VSCode in Windows, for example
open http://example.com # opens in your default web browser in Windows
open Preview.html # opens in your default web browser in Windows, as file://wsl%24/Ubuntu/home/john/Preview.html

Downside: this only seems to work with relative paths, not absolute paths

It would be nice if someone made a shell script to emulate the macOS version, like -a for application, -e for editor, -R to reveal in explorer.exe, etc... and make it work with absolute paths

to convert between Windows and WSL path simply use `wslpath` — phuclv, Jul 25 '22 at 03:11

Alexander Braekevelt · Answer 8 · 2022-05-23T12:30:28.953

x-www-browser

Set the default browser of x-www-browser like this:

$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
There are 3 choices for the alternative x-www-browser (providing /usr/bin/x-www-browser).

  Selection    Path                           Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable   200       auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/firefox                40        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable   200       manual mode
* 3            /usr/bin/wslview                30        manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

Source: https://askubuntu.com/a/16626

Then you can update the browser priorities like this:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser <browser-path> <priority_as_integer>

Source: https://askubuntu.com/a/620983/1507914

xdg-open

Set the default browser of xdg-open by creating a file /usr/share/applications/wslview.desktop with this content:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=WSLview
Exec=wslview %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;

and then running this:

xdg-settings set default-web-browser wslview.desktop

Source: https://github.com/wslutilities/wslu/issues/214#issue-1069341444

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 15 '21 at 17:18

1

Under WSL2, you only need to install xdg-utils:

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y xdg-utils

Then open any page you want with:

xdg-open https://superuser.com/

answered Nov 15 '21 at 17:18

ixe013

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Sumith · Answer 10 · 2022-11-07T02:06:13.893

Run following commands in WSL

sudo yum install yum-utils
sudo yum install wslu
export BROWSER=wslview

If your default browser is not firefox then you will have to create a symbolic link to make it work.

ln -s "/mnt/c/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe" ~/.local/bin/firefox
export BROWSER=~/.local/bin/firefox

Persist this setting, add the following line to ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile at the end.

Use vim, vi or nano editor of your choice.

export BROWSER=~/.local/bin/firefox

plpepin · Answer 11 · 2023-01-26T02:20:47.023

1

After reading different solutions here and other forums, having the same issue with error

xdg-open: no method available for opening [url]

to my amazement, what worked for me under my Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS install on WSL2 is

sudo apt install wslu
sudo apt upgrade

then tried the "open" (xdg-open) command one more time and it just worked. In other words, it opened the default browser on my windows 10

edited Jan 26 '23 at 02:20

answered Jan 26 '23 at 02:19

plpepin

11
2

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Dec 04 '21 at 07:31

There is a way to do this without installing anyhting.

First open your browser and open file://wsl.localhost/ and lets just say you want to open Ubuntu-20.04 then you can change that URL to file://wsl.localhost/Ubuntu-20.04/

you can take a list of what you can access with file://wsl.localhost/ and its name on powershell or cmd with command wslconfig /l.

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 25 '22 at 02:33

The following procedure helps you in WSL2:

Open ~./bashrc

nano ~./bashrc

Add the following command to the end of the file.

If you use Firefox:

export BROWSER='/mnt/c/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe'

If you use Google Chrome:

 export BROWSER='/mnt/c/Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe'

Now, save the file and close it. Then run the following command:

source ~./bashrc

Open browser in host system from Windows Subsystem for Linux?

13 Answers13

x-www-browser

xdg-open