How to open windows explorer from current working directory of WSL shell?

When I type "bash" to the windows explorer address bar and hit Enter, it opens the shell in that directory. Often I find myself wanting to work on files with windows programs in the working directory I reached through shell. Is there an easy way to open explorer from the location reached through shell?

To open the current directory in Explorer - use the following (WSL sets the Windows path by itself):

explorer.exe .

You can set alias with .bashrc for a custom command:

echo 'alias explorer="explorer.exe ."' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Now just use:

explorer 

to open the current working directory in Windows Explorer.

Microsoft provides a binary wslpath for exactly this purpose.

explorer.exe `wslpath -w "$PWD"`

Cribbing from the github issue asking for usage info, there are 4 options - -a, -u, -w and -m.

wslpath usage:
    -a    force result to absolute path format
    -u    translate from a Windows path to a WSL path (default)
    -w    translate from a WSL path to a Windows path
    -m    translate from a WSL path to a Windows path, with ‘/’ instead of ‘\\’

    EX: wslpath ‘c:\users’

For WSL2 you can access to home directory from windows like this :

\\wsl$

Sorry to be late at the party!

From a WSL shell prompt, run

explorer.exe "Windows path"

such as

explorer.exe L:

If L: maps to your desired directory (any unused drive letter may be used for this). You can map to network drives within Explorer, or to a local folder with SUBST.

Problem is, your /home/USERNAME/ folder in WSL appears to Windows something like C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\rootfs\home\tester . You could use SUBST to turn this into a drive letter a la SUBST L: C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\rootfs\home\tester then use a relative path from L: for your destination.

Let's say you have a WSL folder /home/YOURUSERNAME/acme/novelties . You could get close to there with explorer.exe L: but explorer.exe L:acme or explorer.exe acme\novelties will not bring you to where you wish to be, and instead will bring you to your Windows user Documents folder, instead.

I have created a little tool called eopen to open Explorer easily. https://github.com/ko1nksm/eopen

Usage: eopen [options] [file | directory | uri]

options:
  -e, --editor      Open the file in text editor ($EOPEN_EDITOR)
  -n, --new         Open the specified directory in new instance of explorer
      --sudo        Use sudo to write the unowned file
  -v, --version     Display the version
  -h, --help        You're looking at it

note:
  The file or the directory allows linux and windows path.
  (e.g. /etc/hosts, C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts)

  The uri must start with protocol schema. (e.g http:, https:)

And here are another solution. https://github.com/4U6U57/wsl-open