Gatsby: [1.0] Automatically open browser when running gatsby develop (like create-react-app)

[prayash]

Is it possible to implement this feature? I find it very handy when starting up the dev server.

Looking through create-react-app scripts/start.js, it seems that they use an external openBrowser package like so:

const openBrowser = require('react-dev-utils/openBrowser')

// then open the dev server url with the package
openBrowser(urls.localUrlForBrowser);

If it's a trivial change, I'd love to take a stab at it!

[oscar-b]

Try gatsby develop --open

  Usage: develop [options]

  Start development server. Watches files and rebuilds and hot reloads if something changes

  Options:

    -h, --help         output usage information
    -H, --host <url>   Set host. Defaults to localhost
    -p, --port <port>  Set port. Defaults to 8000
    -o, --open         Open the site in your browser for you.

[prayash]

Ahh! Should've looked that up before posting this. Sorry about that and thanks for the quick response!

[KyleAMathews]

Opening the site by default is an interesting default. @prayasht do you really like this? We could change the default. I haven't used CRA much or other systems which open pages by default. Is there other tools that do this?

The only downside I see is it grabs the focus of your OS which can be annoying.

[oscar-b]

I don't like th default of CRA (you can change it with config though), it's quite annoying and you end up with a lot of tabs. As long as it's possible to configure, I think either default is fine.

[prayash]

@oscar-b On my machine (macOS + Chrome), if an instance is already open in a tab, it simply refreshes it. I've never had it open new instances every time I run the dev server.

Honestly, I like it and I just changed my npm script to gatsby develop --open so that's easy enough for me. Not sure about others though!

[KyleAMathews]

Let's leave this open for a while to see if anyone else has strong feelings about it

[VerteDinde]

Just chiming in as a create-react-app user to say that I really like the app to open as a default; gatsby develop --open works fine for me as well, though.

[secretfader]

--open should not be the default.

I share the same dislike for Gatsby taking control of my OS windows, even just to launch a browser. I changed the default behavior in CRA the moment I installed it.

This can be easily scripted. Most sites already wrap gatsby build as npm run build — my two cents? --open can be just as easily included there, in your package.json, on a project-by-project basis.

[youfoundron]

Going to chime in and say that --open should _not_ be a default.

[sebastienfi]

I too agree, -o shouldn't be default.

[KyleAMathews]

Leaving it not as the default :-)