How To Open A File Using Text Edit In Terminal in MacOS

Question

Another small question. I just recently migrated to ZSH and, so far I am loving it! My question is how can I open a file using TextEdit so that I can edit it using a GUI? Make no mistake, Vim is an amazing command-line tool for editing files in the terminal along with nano.

Let's say that I wanted to open the .zshrc using vim :

vim ~/.zshrc

In the same way, open the .zshrc using nano:

nano ~/.zshrc

How can I open the same ~/.zshrc file using text edit through the terminal?

Thanks a lot and I really appreciate your help :)

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 22 '20 at 08:49

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Here is the solution, I know it's a bit tedious but, you can open the ~/.zshrc using this command :

open -a TextEdit ~/.zshrc

answered Jul 22 '20 at 08:49

XtremeDevX

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what about setting an alias? like `alias textedit="open -a TextEdit"`? – Ulisses Caon Jul 22 '20 at 14:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 22 '20 at 08:43

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Text Editor (gedit) is the default GUI text editor in the Ubuntu operating system. To open a specific file: gedit filename To open multiple files: gedit file1 file2 Here's More Information

answered Jul 22 '20 at 08:43

Kushal Pandya

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that is the solution for ubuntu, not macOS ;) – XtremeDevX Jul 22 '20 at 08:50
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@KushalPandya : The question is not about `gedit`. `TextEdit` is the name of the program the OP wants to use. – user1934428 Jul 23 '20 at 11:24

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 28 '23 at 12:32

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The open utility has an option -e that opens the file in TextEdit (essentially a shorthand command).

open -e ~/.zshrc

answered Aug 28 '23 at 12:32

Lukas

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How To Open A File Using Text Edit In Terminal in MacOS

3 Answers3