I have a list of URLs in a text file, for example,
http://url1
http://url2
http://url3
I wonder how to open them each in one tab in Firefox (or SeaMonkey), without the hassle of creating a new tab, copying into address bar and hitting return for each URL?
My OS is Ubuntu 10.10. Both command line and GUI solutions are welcome.
You can save the following to a HTML file:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Open Windows</title>
<script>
function openWindow(){
var x = document.getElementById('a').value.split('\n');
for (var i = 0; i < x.length; i++)
if (x[i].indexOf('.') > 0)
if (x[i].indexOf('://') < 0)
window.open('http://'+x[i]);
else
window.open(x[i]);
}
</script>
<style>
html, body
{
height : 99%;
width : 99%;
}
textarea
{
height : 80%;
width : 90%;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<textarea id="a"></textarea>
<br>
<input type="button" value="Open Windows" onClick="openWindow()">
<input type="button" value="Clear" onClick="document.getElementById('a').value=''">
</body>
</html>
Now load the file in Firefox, copy the list of URLs in the textarea and click Open Windows.
A simple
firefox $(cat file.txt)
should suffice. It will pass each link as an argument to the firefox command, as long as every link is separated by whitespace.
seamonkey $(cat urls), but only the url in the first line is opened.
– Tim
Feb 02 '12 at 17:03
env DISPLAY=:0 firefox $(cat file.txt)
– zfogg
May 31 '20 at 21:17
cat is not needed, firefox $(< example-domains.txt) is more streamlined — see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11710552/useless-use-of-cat and https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1261/remove-useless-uses-of-cat-or-not
– user198350
Jun 16 '23 at 08:35
--new-tab flag is added — firefox --new-tab $(< example-domains.txt) — Firefox only appears to open the first tab in the current window. See my answer for a potential solution (but works on my machine).
– user198350
Jun 16 '23 at 08:38
On windows you can create a batch file (named say, multiurl.bat):
@echo off
for /F "eol=c tokens=1" %%i in (%1) do "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" %%i
and then run multiurl.bat urls.txt from the command line and it will load the URLS in new tabs if FireFox is already open, or it will run it and then load the URLS.
for command.
– Oliver Salzburg
Feb 02 '12 at 16:25
%%i to just %i. The double percent signs are only for when using the for command in a batch file.
– tfitzgerald
Feb 04 '12 at 21:51
On Mac OS X, save the following script as openurls.sh, run chmod +x openurls.sh in Terminal, and then type ./openurls.sh from the same directory.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
while read line ; do
open -a Firefox "$line"
done < "/path/to/file-with-urls.txt"
Open your text file in firefox as
file:///C:/URLTextFile.txt
To expand on an existing Linux answer, personally I strongly prefer opening all pages in the same (existing, open) browser window. Unfortunately Firefox (command-line flags) appears not to accept all the input at once and I had to implement delay (sleep) between actions with xargs (source):
<example-domains.txt xargs -I "%" sh -c '{ firefox --new-tab "%"; sleep 0.25; }'
You may be able to use a significantly shorter delay than 0.25 seconds. You can try out the method with a file containing (about the reserved domains):
https://example.com/
https://example.net/
https://example.org/
https://example.edu/
firefox \cat file.txt`` (as WakiMiko wrote). Anyway using your way will work on all OS. :D – tftd Feb 02 '12 at 16:39setIntervalto iterate over the domains and cancel it once all of them have been processed. – Dennis Nov 30 '16 at 17:29for (var i = 0; i < x.length; i++)tofor (var i = x.length - 1; i >= 0; i--)so that the tab order matches the list order. I don't know if it was true in 2012, but Firefox currently opens each new tab immediately to the right of the current tab when using the page above. – cmasupra Feb 06 '24 at 23:39