Hold down COMMAND and hit the spacebar. In the top right the blue "search bar" will pop up. Type: terminal Click on the Terminal application that looks kind of like a black box. This will open Terminal.
Full Answer
You usually give instructions to your computer through clicking around in applications or typing keys to make things happen. Terminal lets you do many of the same things; it’s just more direct. You can give clear, structured orders to your computer using the terminal. You just have to be patient and willing to try them!
Technically, a terminal is software that starts and connects to a shell. A shell is your session and session environment (where things like the prompt and shortcuts might be customised). The command line is the literal line where you enter commands and the cursor blinks. Do you have to use the terminal?
How you open Terminal depends on your operating system. If you're on a Mac, open your Applications folder and find the Utilities folder inside. You can open Terminal from here. Note: consider right-clicking terminal in your dock and selecting “Keep in dock” for easier access! If you're on Windows, you'll need to install Cygwin.
The terminal is the actual interface to the console that you can type and execute text based commands. To launch the terminal on a mac: Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal. A Terminal displays a command prompt ending with “$” sign, in the form of: “ComputerName:CurrentDirectory Username$”. You can enter commands after the command ...
The terminal is a text interface for executing text-based programs. If you're running any tooling for web development there's a near-guaranteed chance that you'll have to pop open the command line and run some commands to use your chosen tools (you'll often see such tools referred to as CLI tools — command line interface tools).
Generally you'll find these two terms used interchangeably. Technically, a terminal is software that starts and connects to a shell. A shell is your session and session environment (where things like the prompt and shortcuts might be customised). The command line is the literal line where you enter commands and the cursor blinks.
A general philosophy of (unix) command line tools is that they print text to the terminal (also referred to "printing to standard output" or STDOUT ). A good deal of commands can also read content from streamed input (known as "standard input" or STDIN ).
Most terminal commands have options — these are modifiers that you add onto the end of a command, which make it behave in a slightly different way. These usually consist of a space after the command name, followed by a dash, followed by one or more letters.
As with some other programming tools, using the terminal (or command line) on Windows has traditionally not been as simple or easy as on other operating systems. But things are getting better.
We’ve alluded to this before, but to be clear — you need to be careful with the terminal. Simple commands do not carry too much danger, but as you start putting together more complex commands, you need to think carefully about what the command will do, and try testing them out first before you finally run them in the intended directory.
Aside from its development-related purposes, the command line is an excellent tool for automating actions, scripting, and a host of other things that are typically faster than doing them in Finder. All commands have three parts: the utility, the flags, and the arguments.
A Terminal displays a command prompt ending with “$” sign, in the form of: You can enter commands after the command prompt. Keep in mind that you cannot access source code through a terminal. The terminal is used to execute commands that allow you to do a certain task.
Utilities are also sometimes known as commands all on their own, because they indicate the general idea of what you want. Most of the time, you can simply run a utility all by itself, without any flags or arguments. Most commands only have one utility. The flag that alters how the utility operates.
The command-line is used to enter commands to the operating system, instead of graphical user interface (GUI). This is because command-line is much more flexible than graphical interface, which is what makes it so handy to developers.
Arguments are used when the utility needs to know exactly what you want for a certain action, and there is no clear default setting. To submit a command to the computer simply press enter. Learning commands can seem overwhelming, but the more you practice the better you will become.
Most commands only have one utility. The flag that alters how the utility operates. Flags are like options or preferences: the utility will usually work perfectly well with the defaults, but sometimes, you want to modify how it works slightly.
The Terminal will generally launch with your home directory selected. To navigate down a folder, enter “cd foldername”. To navigate up to the containing folder, enter “cd ..”.
Very often one comes across this command ‘sudo’, which is generally appended at the start of a string. ‘sudo’ stands for ‘super user do’. The sudo command provides logging for individual commands run and some cases it has completely supplanted the root logon for administrative tasks.
Every software release from Apple brings out some new terminal commands. I don’t know how they find these commands, but they always make their way into the Apple community. They’re usually just boolean commands, meaning you have a string of text with a YES or NO at the end. Either way enables or disables the feature.
You can open Terminal from here. Note: consider right-clicking terminal in your dock and selecting “Keep in dock” for easier access!
It may have a hacker reputation, but that’s only because fictional characters in CIA movies use it to do wild and fake stuff. Yes, you can use Terminal and the command line for powerful operations, but you can also use it for simple tasks like listing the contents of a folder. 😅.