OpenHere

Open the Finder location in the terminal or editor you choose.

Table of Contents

• About
• Features
• Supported Applications
• Requirements
• Installation
  • Homebrew
  • Manual
  • Setup
• Usage
  • Toolbar
  • Context Menu
  • Keyboard Shortcut
  • Menu Bar
  • Settings
• Building from Source
  • Signing
  • Common Tasks
  • Project Layout
• Contributing
• Changelog
• License

About

Finder shows where your files are; your terminal and editor are where you work on them. Bridging the two usually means dragging a folder onto an icon, or typing cd followed by a path that has to be escaped by hand.

OpenHere is a native macOS utility that closes that gap. It adds a toolbar button, a context menu and an optional keyboard shortcut to Finder, and opens the current folder or selection in the application you configured — Terminal, Ghostty, iTerm, Visual Studio Code, Cursor and others.

Resolution is deterministic: the selection wins, then the folder shown by the Finder window, then the Desktop. Paths are handed to applications as URLs or as discrete arguments and never pass through a shell, so unusual folder names cannot be interpreted as commands.

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Features

• 🖱 Finder toolbar button that opens your default terminal or editor instantly — or shows a menu, your choice
• 📂 Finder context menu, as a submenu or a flat list, on every mounted volume
• 🎛 Independent application selection for the context menu and the toolbar, with custom ordering
• ➕ Custom applications, launched like "Open With" or with explicit arguments
• ⌨️ Configurable shortcut (⇧⌘O by default), active only in Finder or globally
• 📋 Copy Path as POSIX, shell-escaped or relative
• 🧠 Smart menu that lists editors first when the selection contains only files
• 🔒 No shell, no interpolated scripts, no analytics
• 🔄 In-app updates, verified with an EdDSA signature
• 🌗 Light and dark mode, English and Português (Brasil)

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Supported Applications

Kind	Applications
Terminals	Terminal, iTerm, Ghostty, Warp, WezTerm, kitty, Alacritty, Tabby, Hyper
Editors	Visual Studio Code, Cursor, Zed, Xcode, Sublime Text
Custom	Any application, through a standard "Open With" or a list of arguments

Applications are detected automatically; only those installed on the machine are offered.

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Requirements

• macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later

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Installation

Homebrew

brew install --cask demartini/tap/openhere

The cask clears the quarantine flag for you, so the app opens without further steps. Updates can come from Homebrew (brew upgrade --cask openhere) or from inside the app.

Manual

1. Download the latest OpenHere-<version>.dmg from Releases and drag OpenHere to Applications.

2. The app is not notarized, so macOS blocks the first launch of a downloaded copy. Clear the quarantine flag once:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/OpenHere.app

   Alternatively, right-click the app and choose Open.

Setup

1. Launch OpenHere and follow the onboarding: pick your default applications and enable the Finder extension in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions › Finder.
2. In Finder, choose View › Customize Toolbar… and drag Open Here into the toolbar.

Later versions are installed from inside the app (Settings › General › Updates) or with Homebrew.

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Usage

Toolbar

Click Open Here to open the current folder — or the selected item — in your default terminal. The behavior is configurable under Settings › Finder › Toolbar button: open the default terminal, open the default editor, or show a menu of the applications ticked for the toolbar.

Context Menu

Right-click any item, or the background of a Finder window, and choose Open Here. The menu lists the applications enabled in Settings › Applications and adds Copy Path:

Item	Result
Copy POSIX Path	/Users/me/My Projects/App
Copy Escaped Path	/Users/me/My\ Projects/App
Copy Relative Path	Path relative to the folder of the Finder window

Terminals open folders only: a selected file opens its parent folder, and several selections open one window per unique folder. Editors receive every selected item at once.

Keyboard Shortcut

⇧⌘O opens the selection, or the current Finder folder, with the default terminal or editor. It can be rebound, restricted to Finder or made global under Settings › Shortcuts. The first use asks macOS for permission to control Finder.

Menu Bar

The menu bar item offers Open Finder Location, a submenu per application kind, and quick access to Settings and updates. It can be hidden under Settings › General.

Settings

Pane	Controls
General	Default terminal and editor, launch behavior, launch at login, menu bar icon, updates
Applications	Visibility in the context menu and toolbar, ordering, custom applications
Shortcuts	Shortcut recorder, target, Finder-only mode
Finder	Extension status, submenu, icons, Copy Path items, smart menu, toolbar behavior
Advanced	Logging level, diagnostics export, reset
About	Version, support links

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Building from Source

Building requires Xcode 26 or later; the app icon is an Icon Composer document. The project is written in Swift 6 and the shared logic lives in a local Swift package, OpenHereCore.

git clone https://github.com/demartini/openhere.git
cd openhere
open OpenHere.xcodeproj

Signing

Without configuration the project builds with an ad-hoc signature, which is enough to run the app and load the Finder extension. To give the extension a stable identity across builds, sign with your own team. Create the git-ignored local configuration and set your team:

cp Config/Local.xcconfig.example Config/Local.xcconfig

DEVELOPMENT_TEAM = YOURTEAMID
CODE_SIGN_STYLE = Automatic
CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY = Apple Development

A free personal team is sufficient: the project uses no App Group or other capability that needs a provisioning profile. Then run the OpenHere scheme and enable the extension as described in Installation.

Common Tasks

Task	Command
Run the unit tests	swift test --package-path Packages/OpenHereCore
Check formatting	swift format lint --strict -r OpenHere OpenHereFinderExtension Packages/OpenHereCore
Apply formatting	swift format -i -r OpenHere OpenHereFinderExtension Packages/OpenHereCore
Build without a signing identity	xcodebuild -project OpenHere.xcodeproj -scheme OpenHere -configuration Debug CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO build
Package a release	brew install create-dmg && scripts/build_release.sh

Project Layout

OpenHere/                 App: SwiftUI views, menu bar, shortcut, Finder queries, updates
OpenHereFinderExtension/  Finder Sync extension: renders the menu, forwards clicks to the app
Packages/OpenHereCore/    Domain, application catalog, launching, path handling, settings, tests
Config/                   Build configuration (xcconfig)
assets/dmg/               Installer window background
scripts/                  Release packaging and signing

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Contributing

If you'd like to contribute, review our contribution guidelines and open an issue or pull request.

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG for a complete and human-readable history of changes.

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License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

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