What is open terminal mac os

Open or quit Terminal on Mac

Each window in Terminal represents an instance of a shell process. The window contains a prompt that indicates you can enter a command. The prompt you see depends on your Terminal and shell preferences, but it often includes the name of the host you’re logged in to, your current working folder, your username and a prompt symbol. For example, if a user named michael is using the default zsh shell, the prompt appears as:

This indicates that the user named michael is logged in to a computer named MacBook-Pro, and the current folder is his home folder, indicated by the tilde (

Open Terminal

On your Mac, do one of the following:

Click the Launchpad icon in the Dock, type Terminal in the search field, then click Terminal.

In the Finder , open the /Applications/Utilities folder, then double-click Terminal.

Quit Terminal

In the Terminal app on your Mac, choose Terminal > Quit Terminal.

Quit a shell session

In the Terminal app on your Mac, in the window running the shell process you want to quit, type exit , then press Return.

This ensures that commands actively running in the shell are closed. If anything’s still in progress, a dialogue appears.

If you want to change the shell exit behaviour, see Change Profiles Shell preferences.

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Выполнение команд и запуск инструментов в приложении «Терминал» на Mac

Среду командной строки можно использовать в интерактивном режиме, то есть вводить команду и ждать результат. Вы также можете составить shell-скрипт, который будет выполняться без Вашего непосредственного участия.

Выполнение команд в оболочке shell

В приложении «Терминал» на Mac введите полный путь к исполняемому файлу инструмента, затем введите все необходимые аргументы и нажмите клавишу Return.

Если команда находится в одной из известных папок shell, при вводе имени команды можно не указывать путь. Список известных папок хранится в переменной среды PATH оболочки shell и включает папки, содержащие большинство инструментов командной строки.

Например, чтобы выполнить команду ls в папке текущего пользователя, введите следующую команду в командной строке, затем нажмите Return:

Чтобы выполнить команду в папке текущего пользователя, введите перед командой спецификатор папки. Например, чтобы выполнить MyCommandLineProg , используйте следующую команду:

Чтобы открыть приложение, используйте команду open:

Если при вводе команды отображается сообщение command not found , проверьте правильность написания. Пример:

Прерывание команд

В приложении «Терминал» на Mac нажмите окно Терминала, где выполняется команда, которую Вы хотите завершить.

Нажмите сочетание клавиш Control-C.

Будет отправлен сигнал, который вызывает прерывание большинства команд.

Повтор ранее введенных команд

Введенные в текущем сеансе команды сохраняются, так что Вы можете повторить ранее использованную команду, не вводя ее снова.

В приложении «Терминал» на Mac нажмите клавишу со стрелкой вверх.

Последняя введенная команда отобразится в командной строке.

Продолжайте нажимать клавишу со стрелкой вверх, пока не появится нужная команда, затем нажмите клавишу Return.

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7 simple ways to open Terminal on Mac

Terminal is a handy tool for giving your Mac commands although many may be intimidated by it. After all, it’s not as easy as just typing in a sentence and your Mac responding. We have some articles listed below that can help you with common commands if you’re interested in learning to use Terminal or if you just want to enter a command or two.

Either way, before you can use it, you have to open it, right? There are various methods for opening it; here are seven simple ways to open Terminal on Mac.

Open Terminal using Spotlight Search

One of the quickest and easiest ways to open Terminal on Mac is with Spotlight Search.

1) If you have the Spotlight Search button in your menu bar, click it. Otherwise, you can use the keyboard shortcut Command + Space.

2) Type in “Terminal”.

3) You should see the Terminal application under Top Hit at the top of your results. Double-click it and Terminal will open.

Open Terminal using Finder

Open Finder or make sure that your menu bar is using Finder and not another application.

1) Click Go > Utilities from the menu bar.

2) In the Utilities folder that opens, double-click Terminal.

Open Terminal using the Applications folder

If you have a Finder window open, you can access Terminal from the Applications folder.

1) Select Applications from the left side.

2) Click the arrow to expand the Utilities folder.

3) Double-click Terminal.

If you have the Applications folder in your Dock like I do, you can open Terminal from there too.

1) Click Applications in your dock.

2) Select Utilities.

3) Choose Terminal.

Open Terminal using Launchpad

You can open Terminal using Launchpad two ways, depending on if you have organized Launchpad a different way or not.

By default, Launchpad contains a folder labeled Other that contains Terminal.

1) Open Launchpad from your Dock or with the keyboard shortcut Fn + F4.

2) Locate the Other folder and click.

3) Choose Terminal.

If you have arranged your Launchpad items differently and removed the Other folder, you can still find Terminal easily.

1) Open Launchpad from your Dock or with the keyboard shortcut Fn + F4.

2) Type “Terminal” into the search box at the top.

3) When the Terminal icon displays, click it.

Open Terminal using Siri

Thanks to a helpful comment from one of our readers, there is one more super simple to way to open Terminal on Mac; using Siri.

1) Click the Siri button from your menu bar or open Siri from your Applications folder.

2) Using your microphone, simply say “Open Terminal.”

Create a Terminal shortcut

If you decide that you want to start using Terminal more often, creating a shortcut for it in your Dock is convenient.

With the Terminal icon in your Dock already, from recently opening it, do the following.

1) Hold Control and click the Terminal icon in the Dock or right-click it.

2) Mouse over Options in the pop-up menu.

3) Click Keep in Dock.

Terminal commands and tips

As mentioned above, here are some of our articles with commands you can use for Terminal that may come in handy.

You can also head to the Terminal section of our website for additional tips and tutorials for Terminal.

Wrapping it up

Terminal is a terrific tool for doing things quickly on your Mac. And once you get the hang of it, and bookmark some useful commands, it’s not as intimidating anymore.

Have you tried to use Terminal yet or are you interested in learning more about it so that you can use it? Let us know your thoughts below and if you have any tips you’d like to share with our readers for using Terminal, feel free to comment!

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How to use the Terminal command line in macOS

Before we start

Having spent some years coding applications for macOS we’ve created a tool that everybody can use. The all-round problem fixer for Mac.

So here’s a tip for you: Download a free version of CleanMyMac to quickly fix some of the issues mentioned in this article. But to help you do it all by yourself, we’ve gathered our best ideas and solutions below.

Features described in this article refer to the MacPaw site version of CleanMyMac X.

The Terminal app allows you to control your Mac using a command prompt. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps because you’re used to working on a command line in a Unix-based system and prefer to work that way. Terminal is a Mac command-line interface. There are several advantages to using Terminal to accomplish some tasks — it’s usually quicker, for example. In order to use it, however, you’ll need to get to grips with its basic commands and functions. Once you’ve done that, you can dig deeper and learn more commands and use your Mac’s command prompt for more complex, as well as some fun, tasks.

Curated Mac apps that keep your Mac’s performance under control. Avoid Terminal commands; avoid trouble.

How to open Terminal on Mac

The Terminal app is in the Utilities folder in Applications. To open it, either open your Applications folder, then open Utilities and double-click on Terminal, or press Command-space to launch Spotlight and type «Terminal,» then double-click the search result.

You’ll see a small window with a white background open on your desktop. In the title bar are your username, the word «bash,» and the window’s dimensions in pixels. Bash stands for «Bourne again shell.» There are a number of different shells that can run Unix commands, and on the Mac, Bash is the one used by Terminal.

If you want to make the window bigger, click on the bottom right corner and drag it outwards. If you don’t like the black text on a white background, go to the Shell menu, choose New Window and select from the options in the list.

If Terminal feels complicated or you have issues with the setup, let us tell you right away that there are alternatives. MacPilot allows getting access to over 1,200 macOS features without memorizing any commands. Basically, a third-party Terminal for Mac that acts like Finder.

For Mac monitoring features, try iStat Menus. The app collects data like CPU load, disk activity, network usage, and more — all of which are accessible from your menu bar.

Basic Mac commands in Terminal

The quickest way to get to know Terminal and understand how it works is to start using it. But before we do that, it’s worth spending a little time getting to know how commands work. To run a command, you just type it at the cursor and hit Return to execute.

Every command comprises three elements: the command itself, an argument that tells the command what resource it should operate on, and an option that modifies the output. So, for example, to move a file from one folder to another on your Mac, you’d use the «move» command mv and then type the location of the file you want to move, including the file name and the location where you want to move it to.

/Documents then and press Return to navigate to your Home folder.

Type ls then Return (you type Return after every command).

You should now see a list of all the files in your Documents folder — ls is the command for listing files.

To see a list of all the commands available in Terminal, hold down the Escape key and then press y when you see a question asking if you want to see all the possibilities. To see more commands, press Return.

Unix has its own built-in manual. So, to learn more about a command type man [name of command] , where «command» is the name of the command you want to find out more about.

Terminal rules

There are a few things you need to bear in mind when you’re typing commands in Terminal or any other command-line tool. Firstly, every character matters, including spaces. So when you’re copying a command you see here, make sure you include the spaces and that characters are in the correct case.

You can’t use a mouse or trackpad in Terminal, but you can navigate using the arrow keys. If you want to re-run a command, tap the up arrow key until you reach it, then press Return. To interrupt a command that’s already running, type Control-C.

Commands are always executed in the current location. So, if you don’t specify a location in the command, it will run wherever you last moved to or where the last command was run. Use the cd command, followed by a directory path, like in Step 1 above, to specify the folder where you want a command to run.

There is another way to specify a location: go to the Finder, navigate to the file or folder you want and drag it onto the Terminal window, with the cursor at the point where you typed the path.

Here’s another example. This time, we’ll create a new folder inside your Documents directory and call it «TerminalTest.»

Open a Finder window and navigate to your Documents folder.

Type cd and drag the Documents folder onto the Terminal window.

Now, type mkdir «TerminalTest»

Go back to the Finder, open Text Edit and create a new file called «TerminalTestFile.rtf.» Now save it to the TerminalTest folder in your Documents folder.

In the Terminal window, type cd

/Documents/TerminalTest then Return. Now type ls and you should see «TerminalTestFile» listed.

To change the name of the file, type this, pressing Return after every step:

mv TerminalTestFile TerminalTestFile2.rtf

That will change the name of the file to «TerminalTestFile2». You can, of course, use any name you like. The mv command means «move,» and you can also use it to move files from one directory to another. In that case, you’d keep the file names the same, but specify another directory before typing the second instance of the name, like this:

More advanced Terminal commands

Terminal can be used for all sorts of different tasks. Some of them can be performed in the Finder but are quicker in Terminal. Others access deep-rooted parts of macOS that aren’t accessible from the Finder without specialist applications. Here are a few examples.

Copy files from one folder to another

In a Terminal window, type ditto [folder 1] [folder 2] where «folder 1» is the folder that hosts the files and «folder 2» is the folder you want to move them to.

To see the files being copied in the Terminal window, type -v after the command.

Download files from the internet

You’ll need the URL of the file you want to download to use Terminal for this.

curl [URL of the file you want to download]

If you want to download the file to a directory other than your Downloads folder, replace

/Downloads/ with the path to that folder, or drag it onto the Terminal window after typing the cd command.

Change the default location for screenshots

If you don’t want macOS to save screenshots to your Desktop when you press Command-Shift-3, you can change the default location in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location

[path to the folder where you want screenshots to be saved]

Change the default file type for screenshots

By default, macOS saves screenshots as .png files. To change that to .jpg, do this:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG

Delete all files in a folder

The command used to delete or remove files in Terminal is rm . So, for example, if you wanted to remove a file in your Documents folder named «oldfile.rtf,» you’d use cd

/Documents it to go to your Documents folder then delete the file. As it stands, that will delete the file without further intervention from you.

If you want to confirm the file to be deleted, use -i as in
rm -i oldfile.rtf

To delete all the files and sub-folders in a directory named «oldfolder,» the command is rm -R oldfolder and to confirm each file should be deleted, rm -iR oldfolder

Just because you can use Terminal to delete files on your Mac doesn’t mean you should. It’s a relatively blunt instrument, deleting only those files and folders you specify.

Another way to free up space

If your goal in removing files or folders is to free up space on your Mac or to remove junk files that are causing your Mac to run slowly, it’s far better to use an app designed for the purpose. CleanMyMac X is one such app.

It will scan your Mac for files and recommend which ones you can delete safely, as well as telling you how much space you’ll save. And once you’ve decided which files to delete, you can get rid of them with a click. You can download CleanMyMac X here.

As you can see, while Terminal may look scary and seem like it’s difficult to use, it really isn’t. The key is learning a few commands, such as those we’ve outlined above, and getting to know the syntax for those commands.

However, you should be careful when using Terminal; it’s a powerful tool that has deep access to your Mac’s system files. Check commands by googling them if you’re not sure what they do. And if you need to delete files to save space, use an app like CleanMyMac X to do it. It’s much safer!

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