Terminal (macOS)

Current: ARM64 , x86-64
Former: IA-32 , PowerPC

Terminal
	Terminal 2.14 running the top program under macOS Sonoma
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Initial release	March 27, 2001; 24 years ago
Stable release	2.14 (454.1) / September 16, 2024; 7 months ago
Written in	Objective-C
Operating system	macOS
Platform	Current: ARM64, x86-64; Former: IA-32, PowerPC;
Type	Terminal emulator
License	Proprietary
Website	support.apple.com/guide/terminal/welcome/mac

Terminal (Terminal.app) is the terminal emulator included in the macOS operating system by Apple.^[1] Terminal originated in NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, 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 a command-line interface to the operating system when used in conjunction with a Unix shell, such as zsh (the default interactive shell since macOS Catalina^[3]).^[4] The user can choose other shells available with macOS, such as the KornShell, tcsh, and bash.^[4]^[5]

The preferences dialog for Terminal.app in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later offers choices for values of the TERM environment variable. Available options are ansi, dtterm, nsterm, rxvt, vt52, vt100, 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.^[6]

Terminal includes several features that specifically access macOS APIs and features, such as the command mdfind which is the terminal interface of Spotlight.^[7]^{[failed verification]}^[8]^{[failed verification]} Terminal offers a range of profiles that include custom font and coloring options, and custom profiles can be created as well.^[9]