How to open Atom editor from command line in OS X?

Question

I have the Atom editor and was wondering how you can open a file or folder from the terminal in Atom. I am using a Mac. I am looking for a way to do this:

atom . (opens folder)

atom file.js (opens file)

atom (opens editor)

Is this possible and how do I set it up?

Answer 1

When Atom installs it automatically creates a symlink in your /usr/local/bin. However in case it hasn't, you can create it yourself on your Mac

ln -s /Applications/Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/atom.sh /usr/local/bin/atom

Now you can use atom folder_name to open a folder and atom file_name to open a file. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

In addition to @sbedulin (Greeting, lovely Windows users!)

The general path on Windows should be

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\atom\bin

If you are using a bash emulator like babun. You'd better checkout the shell files, which only available in the real app folders

/c/User/<username>/AppData/Local/atom/app-<version>/resources/cli/apm.sh # or atom.sh

Answer 3

Upgrading Atom appears to break command line functionality on the occasion. Looks like in my case it created two versions of the application instead of overwriting them. Occurs because the new file structure doesn't match file paths created by "Atom -> Install Shell Commands". In order fix the issue you'll need to do the following.

1. Move "Atom X" from Documents into Applications (why it ended up in here, I have no idea)
2. Rename "Atom X" to "Atom"
3. Might need to restart your terminal and Atom

After that everything should work just like it did before. Hopefully this saves someone 30 minutes of poking around.

Answer 4

I had problems due to atom being unable to write its logfile when starting from the commandline. This cured it.

sudo chmod 777 ~/.atom/nohup.out

Answer 5

Iv'e noticed this recently with all new macs here at my office. Atom will be installed via an image for the developers but we found the Atom is never in the Application folder.

When doing a ls on the /usr/local/bin folder the path for atom will show something like "/private/var/folders/cs" . To resolve this, we just located atom.app and copied it into the application folder, then ran the system link commands provided by nwinkler which resoled the issue. Developers can now open atom from the command line with "atom" or open the current projects from their working director with "atom ."