How to Open a URL in Your Browser From a Python Script?

To open a URL in your standard browser (Win, macOS, Linux) from your Python script, e.g., call webbrowser.open('https://google.com') to open Google. Don’t forget to run import webbrowser first. But you don’t have to install the module because it’s already in Python’s standard library.

Example

Here’s an example Python script that opens the URL 'https://finxter.com':

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open('https://finxter.com/')

A new browser tab with your default browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave — whatever you set up as standard browser in your OS settings) opens, initialized with the URL provided as a string argument of the webbrowser.open() function:

About the Webbrowser Module

The webbrowser module is already part of the Python Standard Library, so you can import it without needing to install it first.

You can also run the module from your command line or terminal by using the following command:

python -m webbrowser -t "https://finxter.com"

Good to know if you ever want to open a URL from your operating system command line or terminal (Windows, macOS, Linux, Ubuntu) because the fact that you use Python makes it portable and operating system independent!

Webbrowser open()

You can specify additional arguments to get more control over which tab is opened by means of the new argument of the webbrowser.open() function.

webbrowser.open(url, new=0, autoraise=True)

The new argument allows you to control the browser window:

• If you set new=0 (default), you open the URL in the same browser window.
• If you set new=1, you open a new browser window.
• If you set new=2, you open a new browser tab.

The autoraise argument allows you to raise the window (default behavior).

Webbrowser Open in New Tab

A short way of opening a given URL in a new tab from your Python script is to call webbrowser.open_new_tab() and pass your URL string as a single argument.

import webbrowser
my_url = 'https://finxter.com'
webbrowser.open_new_tab(my_url)

Select the Webbrowser

You can also return a controller object for a given browser by calling webbrowser.get() and passing the browser type into it. Now, you can call the open() or open_new_tab() methods on this controller object to open the URL in your desired web browser.

import webbrowser
webbrowser.get("chrome").open("https://finxter.com")

Here are the supported browser types:

Type Name	Class Name
'mozilla'	Mozilla('mozilla')
'firefox'	Mozilla('mozilla')
'netscape'	Mozilla('netscape')
'galeon'	Galeon('galeon')
'epiphany'	Galeon('epiphany')
'skipstone'	BackgroundBrowser('skipstone')
'kfmclient'	Konqueror()
'konqueror'	Konqueror()
'kfm'	Konqueror()
'mosaic'	BackgroundBrowser('mosaic')
'opera'	Opera()
'grail'	Grail()
'links'	GenericBrowser('links')
'elinks'	Elinks('elinks')
'lynx'	GenericBrowser('lynx')
'w3m'	GenericBrowser('w3m')
'windows-default'	WindowsDefault
'macosx'	MacOSXOSAScript('default')
'safari'	MacOSXOSAScript('safari')
'google-chrome'	Chrome('google-chrome')
'chrome'	Chrome('chrome')
'chromium'	Chromium('chromium')
'chromium-browser'	Chromium('chromium-browser')

Thanks for Reading ❤️

To keep learning, feel free to check out our email academy and download our free Python cheat sheets. 🙂