How can I launch Google Chrome through terminal and get the terminal back for other commands?

Question

If I launch Chrome using the command google-chrome then I can't use the terminal for any other operations until the Chrome instance is closed.

Is there any way to open Google Chrome by command line without loading the dynamic contents of Google Chrome into the terminal, so that I can use the terminal for other operations.

Solution

Just start Chrome with an ampersand & at the end of the command:

google-chrome &

This will send the process to the background giving you your terminal back.

If Chrome outputs terminal messages you don't want to see just send them to /dev/null like so:

google-chrome &>/dev/null &

If you want to be able to close the terminal while Chrome is still running you need nohup:

nohup google-chrome &

Comments

[Zanna]

see also Regain control after opening firefox via terminal

[vishnu narayanan]

You can also try the nohup command. nohup google-chrome &