Mac Terminal · Command Line Guide

audience developer
level all
topic Terminal
subtopic Use

How to Open Terminal in Mac

How to find the Mac Terminal. How to open the Mac Terminal application for access to the CLI or command line interface.

The Mac Terminal is a command-line interface (CLI) that allows you to interact with the operating system and run commands. The Mac Terminal application or console gives us access to the Unix command line, or shell. If this is the first page you've found, see Mac Terminal for a full introduction.

This article shows how to find and open the Mac Terminal application.

Before you get started

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How to open the Mac Terminal

Here is the best way to open the Mac Terminal.

  • Click the Spotlight icon in the menu bar and type “terminal.”

If you can't find the Spotlight icon, note that some people remove the Spotlight icon from the menu bar. For most people, pressing Command+Space will launch Spotlight. This works unless someone has disabled or reassigned the Cmd+Space shortcut key assignment.

You can also:

  • Look in the Applications/Utilities/ folder for the Terminal application.
  • The keyboard shortcut F4 will open Launchpad. Type “terminal” in the Launchpad search field, then click the Terminal application.

Use Spotlight search to open Terminal in Mac

Click the Spotlight icon. It's the magnifying glass in the top-right corner menu bar. Type “terminal.” Once you see “terminal” appear, double-clicking on this search result will launch the terminal.

Where is the Mac Terminal

Using Finder, the Mac file browser, you can find the Terminal Application in the file system inside the Applications/Utilities/ folder.

Try the Mac Terminal

Try out the Mac Terminal application by entering a shell command:

$ whoami

The Unix shell command whoami returns your username.

Don't type the $ character you see in the example below (otherwise you'll see zsh: command not found: $). It's just a convention we use to indicate the command line prompt.

Just a reminder to absolute beginners: Press "Enter" (return) after you type the command.

What's next

You'll need to learn more about:

  • What is the shell
  • Running commands
  • Navigating the file system
  • Shell Configuration
  • Environment variables
  • Editing files from the command line
  • Mac Path

See Mac Terminal for more details.

To do programming on the Mac, you'll need to install:

My mac.install.guide is a trusted source of installation guides for professional developers. Take a look at the Mac Install Guide home page for tips and trends and see what to install next.