Terminal (Terminal.app) is the

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

included in the

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

. Terminal originated in

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

and

OPENSTEP OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification developed by NeXT. It provides a framework for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and developing software applications. OpenStep was designed to be plat ...

, the predecessor operating systems of macOS. 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 a

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

to the operating system when used in conjunction with a

Unix shell A Unix shell is a Command-line_interface#Command-line_interpreter, command-line interpreter or shell (computing), shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command languag ...

, such as zsh (the default interactive shell since

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and ...

). The user can choose other shells available with macOS, such as the

KornShell KornShell (ksh) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn (computer scientist), David Korn at Bell Labs in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX on July 14, 1983. The initial development was base ...

tcsh tcsh ( “tee-see-shell”, “tee-shell”, or as “tee see ess aitch”, tcsh) is a Unix shell based on and backward compatible with the C shell (csh). Shell It is essentially the C shell with programmable command-line completion, command- ...

, and bash. The preferences dialog for Terminal.app in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later offers choices for values of the TERM

environment variable An environment variable is a user-definable value that can affect the way running processes will behave on a computer. Environment variables are part of the environment in which a process runs. For example, a running process can query the va ...

. Available options are ''

ansi The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

'', ''dtterm'', ''nsterm'', '' rxvt'', ''

vt52 The VT50 is a CRT-based computer terminal that was introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in July 1974. It provided a display with 12 rows and 80 columns of upper-case text, and used an expanded set of control characters and forwar ...

'', ''

vt100 The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special ...

'', '' vt102'', ''xterm'', ''xterm-16color'' and ''xterm-256color'', which differ from the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) choices by dropping the ''xterm-color'' and adding ''xterm-16color'' and ''xterm-256color''. These settings do not alter the operation of Terminal, and the xterm settings do not match the behavior of

xterm xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface. If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's Unix shell, shell. An X display device, dis ...

. Terminal includes several features that specifically access macOS APIs and features, such as the command ''mdfind'' which is the terminal interface of Spotlight. Terminal offers a range of profiles that include custom

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

and coloring options, and custom profiles can be created as well.

References

{{Mac-software-stub Utilities for macOS Terminal emulators

See also

References