Overview

This is a cross-platform version of the os.startfile function in the Python standard library.

It emulates the following actions in an operating system's UI:

which will open the default program associated with that type.

Setup

Install it directly into an activated virtual environment:

$ pip install universal-startfile

or add it to your Poetry project:

$ poetry add universal-startfile

After installation, import the startfile function:

from startfile import startfile

startfile("~/Downloads/example.png")
startfile("http://example.com")

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution for universal-startfile 0.4
File	Size	Uploaded
universal_startfile-0.4.tar.gz	3.3 kB	Oct 20, 2025	Details

Table of built distributions (wheels) for universal-startfile 0.4
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
universal_startfile-0.4-py3-none-any.whl 3.7 kB Oct 20, 2025	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 7.0 kB

Download URL	universal_startfile-0.4.tar.gz
Size	3.3 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`927546329a05e497306fd71af59e93371a8ec535c44cbbd30ce42cf10f41f422`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`347a5a79196105931ca9fef9c8c3d45de0ec33e6de6240ba17ef9b025eb4e8ec`
Upload date	Oct 20, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`poetry/2.2.1 CPython/3.13.7 Darwin/24.6.0`

Download URL	universal_startfile-0.4-py3-none-any.whl
Size	3.7 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`5de70f9773bc392fe7c93013d0c05b2cc1beec60b9220e909cf8e9411b15d262`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`263c17a8c3422aebcaa914e486983376dc6a518e205b672328568dc37b2e84b1`
Upload date	Oct 20, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`poetry/2.2.1 CPython/3.13.7 Darwin/24.6.0`