Mac what is terminal

Confirm your email so we can send you our best stories and more guides like this one. Terminal Alternatives on Setapp. Download Free. How To. Hit Return or Enter to search. How to use the Terminal command line in macOS. Igor Degtiarenko. Writer and blogger at MacPaw, curious just about everything. Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe Now. March 21, Updated: September 13, CleanMyMac X. Free Download. These might also interest you:. December 11, Subscribe to know first Our delivery owl will bring you our best deals and news about MacPaw apps.

Thanks for signing up! Now, please check your email. Terminal is an app on your Mac that allows you to gain root-level access to your system. All that power should come with a heavy warning, though. Terminal is fussy, and very literal. Changes you make are not easily reversed, either. One fell keystroke can lead to disaster. There are plenty of ways to open Terminal Mac keeps locked away.

Here are all the ways to access command line Mac services by opening Terminal:. This is often to gain remote access to another computer, typically to gain access to Terminal on another computer.

Core Shell allows you to operate several SSH environments at one time, all of which can be uniquely color coded to for ease of use. Core Shell also supports drag and drop of files or folders for syncing to other Macs, and has a really handy download and upload monitor in the app so you can always monitor the progress of your file transfers.

As you familiarize yourself with Core Shell and begin using it for all your SSH needs, it learns your connections and offers a one-click way to log into a device remotely from within the app, and has automatic reconnection for lost connections.

Perhaps best of all, each connection can be customized to your liking with advanced options and settings. Of course, your first step will be to open Terminal. Double-click to open it. When the Terminal window opens, you can resize it by dragging one of the corners to expand. In the Profiles dialog box that appears, you can change the appearance of the command windows to match your style or needs.

Once your Terminal window has the appearance you prefer, then you can start using it to execute commands on the computer. You can do a lot of cool and useful things with the terminal. For example, if you really want to, you can use a Terminal command to make your Mac speak to you. But before you start, it's helpful to know how Terminal commands are written. Each Terminal command has three parts.

For example, if you want to move a file, you would use the command mv. The argument for that command would be the location of the file you want to move. And the output would be the location you want the file moved to.

So to move a file from your desktop to your Documents file might look like this:. That command says, "Move the command the file TerminalTestFile. Both the desktop and the Documents folder exist in the Home folder. Now that you understand the basics of how to write and use Terminal commands, there are a few rules that you need to understand. An alternative way to change directories that's especially useful if you don't know the exact directory path, is to use the GUI to navigate to location you want to include and then drag and drop the directory into the Terminal window.

It will not move the directory, instead, it will copy the path to the directory into the command you are writing. One more note before moving on. If you've never used terminal before you may be confused when you execute a command and nothing happens in the Terminal window.

Even though the latter appears to only copy the actual file name, it actually captures the full pathway. In either case, hit the spacebar following the app name and then the command would take hold. If you need to get to your Terminal's settings, hold down the command key while tapping the comma button.

And, in case you want to stop a command you've input, you can do that by tapping the window if it isn't already selected and holding down the "control" key and hitting "c. Don't worry if you make a mistake in your command pathways: You'll just get a message back saying something along the lines of, "No such file or directory exists.

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