Starting the default associated Windows program on WSL

Learn the simple command to open files like PDFs and HTML from your WSL Linux console using their default Windows application - powershell.exe.

December 27, 2023 · 2 min read

View raw

Christophe

Markdown, WSL and Docker lover ~ Insatiable curious.

Cet article existe aussi en français — lire la version française.

This article is over a year old but was reviewed on July 30, 2026 — the content is still accurate.

This article is part of the WSL2 - Install, move and use it series:

Opening an RDP connection to the Linux local instance
Move WSL to another location
Open your Linux folder in Windows Explorer
Starting the default associated Windows program on WSL
Ubuntu - Install from scratch
Discovering Zorin

Starting the default associated Windows program on WSL

⚡

TL;DR

This article shares a quick WSL trick: running powershell.exe <filename> (e.g. powershell.exe guide.pdf) from the Linux console opens that file with its default Windows application, without needing to browse to it in Windows Explorer first. xdg-open is mentioned as an alternative for opening the default browser.

Very often, I'm in my Linux console and I'd like to open a pdf file that I've just generated or, more simply, to open an html file. But how can I do this?

Without knowing the tip that is the subject of this article, at the moment I launch Windows Explorer from my console, I then get the well-known file explorer interface and there I double-click on the file I want to open and leave it to Windows, which knows which program to launch to open this or that extension.

In fact, it's much simpler...

The tip: start powershell.exe followed by the filename to open like powershell.exe guide.pdf or powershell.exe index.html.

A typical use case: you've just generated a PDF with Quarto in Docker and want to check the result without leaving your console.

Not available in Bash

powershell.exe only works in the console. You can't use it in a Bash script (.sh), it won't be recognized there.

`xdg-open`

You can also use xdg-open to start your default browser so xdg-open index.html will open the file in your Windows browser.

If you get the error below, you'll find a solution in the article Windows Explorer

Powershell

Start : This command cannot be run due to the error: The system cannot find the file specified.
At line:1 char:1
+ Start "readme.html"
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) [Start-Process], InvalidOperationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvalidOperationException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.StartProcessCommand
▋

This article is part of the WSL2 - Install, move and use it series: