How to open WebStorm from the terminal on MacOS

If you prefer using a code editor plus separate terminal over a full IDE, opening WebStorm from the CLI isn’t as straightforward as with Atom or VSCode.

To set up a shortcut to open WebStorm:

1. Open WebStorm
2. Press `⇧` twice to open the search window
3. Type “Create Command Line Launcher…” and press Enter

You’ll see this dialog box:

Whatever you type in there, your computer will run it as a script. You’re saying to it: “hi please store this thing webstorm inside my local binary files”. Binary files are computer-readable but not human-readable, and when the computer reads a binary file, it executes it. (Actually, in this instance it’s a python script, it’s not a true binary file, but whatever. /bin can just hold executable files).

To create the shortcut itself,

4. Type /usr/local/bin/{your-shortcut-here} and press Enter
5. In the terminal, you’ll now be able to use the shortcut as a command, eg webstorm .

Eventually, I shortened my filename to /usr/local/bin/web because the keys were ever so slightly too close together when typing webstorm . or even ws . — typing just web . was a lot easier.

Enjoy!