Open an Explorer Window from the Command Prompt’s Current Directory

Have you ever done something on your computer without really thinking about it, but the person next to you has a surprised and confused look on their face? If so, then you might have performed a Stupid Geek Trick. Today we’ll show how to open an Explorer window from the current command prompt directory.

Let’s begin… just open up a command prompt and then type in the following (the . passes the current directory to Explorer)

explorer .

You’ll immediately see an Explorer window show up with the contents of the directory your command prompt is in.

If you want to type less characters, you can use the following instead:

start .

You can even use the full path to a folder…

explorer c:\some\folder\path

Or one of the built-in shell variables…

start %APPDATA%

Or the newer shell: operator style:

start shell:startup

And you’ll see that directory instantly show up: