Is it possible to make a shell script to open browser tabs like Plasma search does?

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1

hii! im new here(and a bit new to linux :D) just wanted to know if its possible to replicate the Plasma ability to open browser tabs:

Screenshot_20260801_141657
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is it possible for me to make a command on a file that opens a tab if I give it a string like open-tab.sh "youtube" "``https://www.youtube.com/``" and it tries to find that tab open in the background, & if not it opens aa new one?

I’m only now starting to learn this but at least I know I can open links like this :stuck_out_tongue:
❯ xdg-open "https://www.youtube.com/`"`

Thanks in advance.

2

Yes, and you already answered your own question. xdg-open.
What’s the exact logic you wanna achieve?

3

The Plasma search can detect tabs you have open already on the browser and bring them up, I wanna replicate that
if i run “xdg-open https://discuss.kde.org/t/is-it-possible-to-make-a-shell-script-to-open-browser-tabs-like-plasma-search-does/49077” on the console its gonna open a new tab instead of bring up this one that is already open

so I wanted to know how plasma search finds and activates browser tabs like it shows on the second screenshot.

4

Interesting. I didn’t know that that’s a thing. I was actually looking for a way to do that myself: open a tab but only if it’s not open already (e.g. automated bash script that starts a vite server and opens it in the browser if the tab is not already open). I haven’t found any solutions to this but if Plasma Search already offers that then I’d be interested to know how it does that

5

All this functionality, also with history and some other stuff is handled by Plasma Browser Integration. Given it’s a combo of host daemon and a browser extension, I fear it’s going to be hard to replicate or even integrate with only a shell script.

6

I see. Yes, when I did my research to achieve what I wanted I did find that one possible solution is to write a custom extension that exposes currently open tabs in a json file or similar but yeah you’d have to write an extension

7

a bit late but thanks for the reply, I guess the next step for me is to look at the that extentions source code to see if I can replicate it somehow.