You can start by pressing “ command button + space,” which will open up the ‘Spotlight’ search bar, and then type in ‘Terminal’ to launch it. There are two proven ways to open a terminal on Mac. Put using a terminal is straightforward: you type a command on the command line and press Return to execute it.īut first things first, how to launch the Mac terminal? How to Open a Terminal on Mac? That means you interact with the system by typing in commands (keywords or phrases) that tell the terminal what to do.Īpart from doing things that a GUI does, you will run into thousands of features that aren’t possible without a terminal. Unlike a traditional GUI app, where you navigate by clicking buttons with the mouse, the terminal works on a simple command line interface. The terminal is typically designed for network administrators and tech-savvy users who want to perform an action not supported by the operating system’s graphical user interface (GUI). Using a terminal is like speaking another language once you’re familiar, you will find it pretty helpful. Pivoting back to the Mac terminal, we would say. Commands in Unix are shell-specific, so it’s essential to use the right combination of shell and commands for desirable results. Note: You can run other shells with the terminal, but you’ll have to install those yourself.

You launch it like any other app, and when you do, you’ll walk through a Unix command-line environment, popularly known as a shell (Apple uses one called Bash). The application can be found in your Mac’s ‘Utilities folder, or you can search for it in the finder. In simpler terms, the Mac terminal is an application that gives you access to a deeper level of engineering on your OS.

Mac terminal is the built-in shell environment on Mac Operating System that allows you to issue text-based UNIX commands directly. In this article, you will discover the Mac terminal commands and get a terminal command cheat sheet, in the end, so you never have to search the web again.īut first, let’s get to know the basics! What is a Mac Terminal?

Thus navigating through the terminal is more complicated than hovering the mouse on the trackpad. What we see in front of us, the MacOS, is a Graphical User Interface, beautified and polished for the consumers. Most baseline or general purpose Mac users aren’t familiar with the legendary Mac terminal – a more raw form of computer navigation or talking to the computer in its mother tongue.Īnd Apple doesn’t expect the business users to understand the terminal’s power like it doesn’t expect coders to utilize Pivot Tables.

Mac terminal commands go back directory