Hands an address to whatever this desktop opens addresses with — the browser already running.

xdg-open, open and start are the same idea under three names, and the point of using them rather than launching a browser is that they land in the window that is already open, logged in, and has your tabs in it.

Detached and with its output thrown away: a desktop opener is a doorbell, not a program this session waits on, and some of them chatter on stderr while doing exactly what was asked.

import { openInBrowser } from './open-in-browser.ts';

// Defined, not invoked: it puts a window on somebody's screen.
function example() {
  return openInBrowser('https://localhost:1234'); // null once handed over
}