Ahnii!

CLI tools that need browser authentication — like GitHub CLI, azure-cli, gcloud, or netlify-cli — often hang in WSL when they try to launch your browser. This post covers a one-line fix that works for any of them.

Why CLI Tools Hang When Opening a Browser in WSL

When a CLI tool needs to open a browser for OAuth or device authentication:

gh auth refresh -h github.com -s workflow

It prints a one-time code and tries to launch your default browser. In WSL, this often hangs with errors like:

! First copy your one-time code: XXXX-XXXX
Press Enter to open https://github.com/login/device in your browser...

ERROR:dbus/object_proxy.cc:572
  Failed to call method: org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.GetAll
  org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown:
  The name org.freedesktop.UPower was not provided by any .service files

The browser never opens, and you’re stuck hitting Ctrl+C.

This happens because WSL doesn’t have a native display server, and browser detection often fails or triggers broken xdg-open paths.

Fix WSL Browser Hangs With BROWSER=echo

Set BROWSER=echo to print the URL instead of launching it:

BROWSER=echo gh auth refresh -h github.com -s workflow

The CLI outputs the URL to your terminal. Copy it, open it in your Windows browser, complete the authentication, and the CLI continues normally.

This works with any tool that respects the BROWSER environment variable:

BROWSER=echo az login
BROWSER=echo gcloud auth login
BROWSER=echo netlify login

Set BROWSER Environment Variable Permanently in WSL

Add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

export BROWSER=echo

Every CLI tool will print URLs instead of trying to launch a browser. You copy and paste once, but authentication always completes.

If you’d rather open URLs automatically in Windows, you can point to the Windows browser directly:

export BROWSER='/mnt/c/Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe'

This launches Chrome on the Windows side. Adjust the path for your browser of choice.

Either way, you’ll land on the authentication page (or login page in my case) where you can enter your code and complete the flow:

GitHub device authorization sign-in page

Baamaapii