| Terminal | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Terminal 2.14 running thetop program under macOS Sonoma | |
| Developer | Apple Inc. |
| Initial release | March 27, 2001; 24 years ago (2001-03-27) |
| Stable release | 2.15 (464) / September 15, 2025; 5 months ago (2025-09-15) |
| Written in | Objective-C |
| Operating system | macOS |
| Platform | |
| Type | Terminal emulator |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | support |
Terminal is theterminal emulator included in themacOSoperating system byApple.[1] Terminal originated inNeXTSTEP andOPENSTEP, the predecessor operating systems of macOS.[2]
As a terminal emulator, the application provides text-based access to the operating system, in contrast to the mostly graphical nature of the user experience of macOS, by providing acommand-line interface to the operating system when used in conjunction with aUnix shell, such aszsh (the default interactive shell sincemacOS Catalina[3]).[4] The user can choose other shells available with macOS, such as theKornShell,tcsh, andbash.[4][5]
The preferences dialog for Terminal.app in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later offers choices for values of the TERMenvironment variable. Available options areansi,dtterm,nsterm,rxvt,vt52,vt100,vt102,xterm,xterm-16color andxterm-256color, which differ from the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) choices by dropping thexterm-color and addingxterm-16color andxterm-256color. These settings do not alter the operation of Terminal, and the xterm settings do not match the behavior ofxterm.[6]
Terminal includes several features that specifically access macOS APIs and features, such as the commandmdfind which is the terminal interface ofSpotlight.[7][failed verification][8][failed verification] Terminal offers a range of profiles that include customfont and coloring options, and custom profiles can be created as well.[9]
 | ThisClassic Mac OS and/ormacOSsoftware–related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |
