If you are working on the Mac Terminal and want to see the contents of a file on an external app like TextEdit (default text editor for macOS) then you can make use of the open command.
Open File in TextEdit
% open -a TextEdit ~/Desktop/sample.txt
![Open File in Sublime Text using Terminal Open File in Sublime Text using Terminal](https://code2care.org/howto/how-to-open-a-file-via-mac-terminal/images/Open File in Sublime Text using Terminal.jpg)
In a similar way if you have other Text Editors installed on your Mac you can open files with them as well,
Open File in Sublime Text
% open -a TextEdit ~/Desktop/sample.txt
![Open File in TextEdit using Mac Terminal Open File in TextEdit using Mac Terminal](https://code2care.org/howto/how-to-open-a-file-via-mac-terminal/images/Open File in TextEdit using Mac Terminal.jpg)
Open File in Default Text Editor
% open ~/Desktop/sample.txt
You do not need to pass in any options with open command to open the file in the default text editor.
Note: You can open any type of file using the open command, let's try to open an mp4 video file.
% open ~/Documents/holiday.mp4
![Open Video file from Terminal Open Video file from Terminal](https://code2care.org/howto/how-to-open-a-file-via-mac-terminal/images/Open Video file from Terminal.jpg)
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