Open a Website from Command Prompt in Windows 11 & 10

To open a website from Command Prompt on Windows 11 or 10, type start followed by the full web address — for example start https://google.com — and press Enter. If you've read an older guide (including, honestly, one we wrote ourselves back in 2016) that tells you to type start iexplore, skip it: Internet Explorer doesn't exist on current Windows builds, and typing that command today does nothing useful. The start part still works exactly as it always has — only the browser name at the end has changed.

Jake had a customer bring in a laptop where every browser icon on the desktop had quietly vanished — not uninstalled, just missing from the desktop and Start menu after a bad update. The customer assumed the browser itself was gone and was ready to pay for a reinstall. Jake opened Command Prompt, typed the address, and the site came up in ten seconds. No repair needed, no lost afternoon.

"I felt like a fraud charging him nothing," Jake told Ethan later. "He was ready to pay for a whole reinstall."

Ethan's answer was blunt: "That's not fraud, that's the job. You solved it faster than the problem deserved. Most people don't know CMD can do this at all — they think it's some hacker thing, when really it's just Windows doing what a double-click does, minus the icon."

Opening a website from CMD on Windows 11

First, open Command Prompt itself. Press Win + R to open the Run box — a small dialog Windows has used since the 1990s to launch programs by name instead of hunting through menus — type cmd, and press Enter. On Windows 11 this now opens inside Windows Terminal by default, which just means the same black command window is wrapped in a tabbed, resizable app. The commands themselves work identically either way.

The start command, explained

start is a built-in CMD command that tells Windows "open this the way you'd open it if I double-clicked it." When you give it a web address, Windows recognizes the https:// or http:// at the front and routes it to your default browser — the same way clicking a link in an email does. Type:

start https://www.google.com

and press Enter. The browser window opens (or a new tab opens, if one is already running) and loads the page. You can leave off https:// for well-known sites and Windows will usually still resolve it, but typing the full address is more reliable — some CMD versions misread a bare domain name as a local file or folder name instead.

Opening a website in a specific browser

If you want the site to open in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox regardless of what your default browser is set to, call the browser's program file directly instead of using start alone:

start chrome https://example.com
start msedge https://example.com
start firefox https://example.com

This works because chrome, msedge, and firefox are registered "app execution aliases" or are already on Windows' search path once the browser is installed — CMD knows where to find them without you typing the full install folder. If a browser doesn't launch this way, it usually just means it isn't registered on the path; you'd need the full path to its .exe instead, something like start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" https://example.com (the empty "" right after start is a quirk of the command — without it, CMD tries to use your first quoted item as a window title, not the program to run).

Ethan has a strong opinion here: "Don't memorize the full-path version unless you need it. Ninety percent of the time the short name — chrome, msedge, firefox — just works. Only fall back to the full path if CMD tells you it can't find the program."

Doing the same thing from PowerShell

Windows 11 opens PowerShell by default when you search "terminal," so it's worth knowing the equivalent command in case that's what's in front of you. PowerShell's version of start is technically Start-Process:

Start-Process "https://example.com"

start also still works inside PowerShell — it's aliased to Start-Process — so you don't strictly need to switch syntax. The quotes around the URL matter more in PowerShell than in CMD; without them, PowerShell can misinterpret certain characters in the address (an & in a URL with tracking parameters, for instance) as part of the command itself rather than part of the text.

"People treat PowerShell like it's a different universe from CMD," Ethan said, "but for something this simple, it's basically the same sentence in a different accent. Don't let the name scare you off."

Opening a website from CMD on Windows 10

These steps are the same on Windows 10 — the start command hasn't changed. The only real difference is how you get to Command Prompt: Windows 10's Start menu has a "Windows System" folder with Command Prompt listed directly, or you can still use Win + R → cmd, same as Windows 11. On Windows 10, that opens the classic standalone Command Prompt window rather than Windows Terminal — cosmetically different, functionally identical for everything in this guide.

Windows 10 reached the end of free security support on October 14, 2025. Everything in this guide keeps working with or without updates — start is a basic shell command, not something tied to security patches — but if you're still on Windows 10 without Extended Security Updates, it's worth knowing your options: enroll in consumer ESU through Settings > Windows Update for continued coverage, or check whether your PC qualifies for Windows 11 (it typically needs a CPU from around 2018 or newer with TPM 2.0). Neither is urgent for using CMD, but it's the kind of thing worth sorting before it becomes one.

Turning it into a one-click shortcut

If you're typing the same command every day, there's no reason to keep opening CMD by hand. Open Notepad, type your command exactly as you would in CMD, and save the file with a .bat extension instead of .txt — for example opensite.bat. When you make the file in Notepad's Save dialog, set "Save as type" to "All Files," otherwise Windows quietly appends .txt to the end and you get opensite.bat.txt, which won't run as a batch file.

A simple one-site version looks like this:

@echo off
start https://example.com

The @echo off line just stops CMD from printing every command it runs — purely cosmetic, doesn't change behavior. Double-click the saved .bat file and it opens the site the same way typing the command would, no CMD window needed first.

Opening several websites at once

Stack multiple start lines in the same batch file to open a set of sites together — useful for a morning routine of email, a dashboard, and a scheduling tool:

@echo off
start https://mail.example.com
start https://dashboard.example.com
start https://calendar.example.com

Each line runs independently, so all three open as separate tabs or windows without waiting on each other. Jake now runs one of these every morning to open his shop's stock dashboard, supplier order page, and card-payment terminal login in one double-click instead of hunting through bookmarks — a habit that used to cost him a couple of minutes he didn't think about until Ethan pointed out it added up to nearly an hour a month.

Running it automatically on a schedule

To have a site open at a set time — say, a dashboard that should be up before your shop opens — save the batch file somewhere permanent, then use Task Scheduler (search for it in the Start menu) to create a basic task pointing at that .bat file, with a daily trigger at whatever time you want. Task Scheduler is a built-in Windows tool for running programs unattended; it doesn't need CMD open to work, it just launches your batch file the same way double-clicking it would.

"I've seen customers panic when their antivirus flags a batch file," Jake said. Ethan's take was matter-of-fact: "Good. That's the antivirus doing exactly what it should. The fix isn't to disable the warning — it's to know what's actually inside the file before you run it."

When it doesn't work

"'start' is not recognized as an internal or external command"

This almost never means start itself is missing — it's a built-in command that ships with every version of CMD. It usually means the URL was typed without http:// or https:// and CMD misread part of it, or there's a stray character (a smart quote pasted from a document instead of a plain one, for example) breaking the line. Retype the command by hand rather than pasting from a source that might use curly quotes.

Nothing happens when you press Enter

If the CMD window just returns to a blank prompt with no error and no browser opens, check whether a browser window opened behind your current one, or minimized on the taskbar — this is common if you have several browser windows already open and the new tab loaded into an existing window instead of a visibly new one. Also check Windows' default apps setting (Settings > Apps > Default apps > search for your browser) — if no default browser is set at all, start has nothing to hand the address to.

The wrong browser opens

This means your Windows default is set to a browser other than the one you expected. Change it at Settings > Apps > Default apps, or use the browser-specific version of the command (start chrome, start msedge, and so on) shown earlier, which ignores the default entirely.

It opens, but antivirus or the network blocks the page

If the browser opens but the page itself won't load or gets blocked with a warning, that's your network or security software doing its job, not a CMD problem — the command's only responsibility is handing the address to the browser. Check the site address for typos, and if it's a work network, ask whether the site is filtered before assuming something's broken.

Frequently asked questions

Can I open a website in CMD without a browser at all?

Not in a way you'd want to read normally. CMD itself has no rendering engine — it can't display a formatted web page. Tools like curl (built into modern Windows 10 and 11) can fetch a page's raw HTML text into the command window, but that's the underlying code, not a readable page. For actually reading a site, you need the browser handoff described above.

Does this work the same in Windows Terminal as in classic CMD?

Yes. Windows Terminal is just a window that hosts CMD, PowerShell, or other shells in tabs — it doesn't change how start behaves inside a CMD tab.

Why does adding quotes around the URL sometimes matter?

If a URL contains an & symbol (common in links with tracking parameters after a ?), CMD can misread it as "run this command, then run another command after the &." Wrapping the whole address in double quotes, like start "" "https://example.com/page?id=1&ref=2", keeps it as one piece of text.

Can I open a website in private/incognito mode from CMD?

Yes, by calling the browser directly with its private-mode flag: start chrome --incognito https://example.com for Chrome, or start msedge --inprivate https://example.com for Edge. Firefox uses start firefox -private-window https://example.com.

Will this work over Remote Desktop?

Yes — the command runs on whichever machine's CMD session you're typing into, and the site opens in that machine's default browser, exactly as it would locally.

Is there a way to close CMD automatically after the site opens?

Add exit as the last line of your batch file, right after the start line. CMD will close its own window once it's finished handing off the address — you generally don't need this for one-off commands typed directly, only for batch files where you don't want a leftover window.

Does this open the site for other users on a shared PC too?

No — it only opens the site in the browser of the account currently signed in and running that CMD session. Task Scheduler tasks can be set to run for a specific user or "any user," if you need it to trigger regardless of who's logged in.

What's the difference between start and just double-clicking a shortcut?

Functionally, nothing — both ask Windows to hand the address to its registered handler. The advantage of the CMD or batch-file version is that it can be scripted, scheduled, combined with other commands, or triggered from situations where a normal desktop icon isn't available.

Can I make a batch file ask which website to open?

Yes, using the set /p command to collect typed input: set /p site="Enter website: " followed by start %site% on the next line. Typing a full address (including https://) when prompted is safest.

Is this different from opening a website via Run (Win+R) directly?

Typing a URL straight into the Run box also works and skips CMD entirely — it's the fastest option for a single one-off site. CMD becomes worth it once you want to script, combine, or schedule the action, which Run can't do.

Does antivirus software ever block the start command itself?

Not the command in isolation — start is a core part of Windows. What gets flagged is an unfamiliar .bat file containing it, especially one downloaded from somewhere else, because the pattern resembles how malicious scripts redirect a browser. A batch file you wrote yourself, on your own machine, won't trigger this.

Can I use this to set a website as my Windows startup page automatically when the PC boots?

Yes — place a shortcut to your batch file (or the batch file itself) inside the Startup folder, reachable by typing shell:startup into the Run box and pressing Enter. Anything in that folder launches automatically when you sign in.

Revision note. Originally published July 2016. Rewritten August 2026 for Windows 11 and Windows 10 — our original guide pointed readers at Internet Explorer, which Microsoft has since retired from current builds; the underlying start command hasn't changed at all, only the browser name at the end of it. If you landed here because your browser icons disappeared or a shortcut broke, this trick will get you back online in the time it takes to type one line — hope it saves your afternoon the way it saved Jake's customer's.