Open Terminal Here is an AppleScript by Marc Liyanage which allows to open a new Terminal window and `cd` to the current Finder location by a mere click. This is delightful for heavy Terminal users.
Now that Leopard’s Terminal finally has tabs there has been a modification of the original script to take advantage of those when your front-most shell is busy (running top or vi for example). Better integration with the Finder also showed through better icons.
However I still did not find the ease I had with OnMyCommand and iTerm scripts: with a right click I could open a new window or a new tab, in the current or in the parent Finder’s directory. Using those scripts in Leopard was less than ideal since the menu of OnMyCommand is buried under the “More” item in the Finder’s contextual menu and the scripts had to be rewritten for Apple’s Terminal which is more robust than iTerm. So I decided to improve on all the work other already did and modify Open Terminal Here. Using a method wonderfully described by jobu at MacScripter I was able to detect key-down events at the start of the application and used them to modify the behavior of the script. Now:
- Clicking the application icon creates a new Terminal at the Finder’s location (i.e. the old behavior)
- ⌘ + Clicking opens a new tab in the frontmost Terminal instead of opening a new window
- ⌥ + Clicking runs the
cdcommand in the frontmost Terminal window if it is not busy. Otherwise it opens a new window/tab (depending on the state of ⌘)
OpenTerminalHere
Of course there is still plenty of room for improvement. The source is freely available for download in the form of an XCode project. Please modify, tweak, improve, and make it better than I ever could.
One last tip, which you probably already know if you read the post through here but there’s no harm in repeating. To do the reverse operation (i.e. open a Finder window in the current Terminal directory) just issue the command
open .
Sweet ;) This replaces the page titled From Finder to Terminal, and back again from my old site, which had less information anyway (in addition to being a lame reference to a nonetheless great book).
Thank you! Very, very useful!
Hey, great script!
I have a question: How can I make the default behaviour be to open in a new tab??
And how can I assign a shortcut to it? Applescript? :)
Thanks for this! ;)
Whoaa!! Thanks for the detailed instructions! After opening the source file it was kind of obvious but thanks for giving detailed instruction! ;)
As to the keyboard shortcut, I’m using OSX internal keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard/Mouse preference panel, and using Shift+Cmd+O :) Works great!
Thanks for this! I’ll probably blog about it as I find it very useful for developers like myself than need to jump from the finder to the terminal all the time to do some more advanced stuff (i.e. file permission, zip/tar, etc…) :)
Again, thanks for the quick reply!
Cheers
PS: After having made a comment, your blog “remembers” me, but hides the math spam protection! I had to click “Change” and, although everything is filled and I just had to had the question, it’d be good if the math was out of the hide! ;)
: Thanks, glad you like it. To invert the behavior regarding tabs, open the source in XCode and modify Application.applescript. Set
property useTabsto 0 on line 20, and set it to 1 on line 32, when Command is held down. Then compile the project and you’re done.NB: this supposes that you have Apple Developer tools installed of course.
To assign a shortcut to the application, you can probably write a small AppleScript (
tell foo to activate end tell) and run it through FastScripts Lite.Thanks for a very nice mod. My finder is now a much nicer place. I downloaded the source because I wanted to modify it to use a specific theme whenever I open a tab by clicking the toolbar button, and noticed your comment that there has to be a better way to make tabs. Here’s what I added to allow me to make tabs with a non-default theme.
My source is here. My changes were to add the 3 functions I referenced in my blog post, add a new property for the tab style, and change the bit that sent command-t to call “my make_tab(tabStyle)”. Though I made no attempt to measure speed, I didn’t notice any difference at all.
As for the keyboard shortcuts, Butler does the job nicely, and is donationware so you can set your own price. Just drag OpenTerminalHere.app to the “Hidden” section of Butler’s configuration, and add a hot key in the Triggers tab for OpernTerminalHere.
: sorry, seems my comment feed is broken. I did not see your comment. I’ll try to look into the math question thing.
Also, could you elaborate on how you use the keyboard shortcut. I know how to use those to set custom shortcuts for menu items but not to start an app (or maybe you put the app in the Finder’s script folder). Anyhow, having instructions written here would be helpful for others too.
: Thanks for the pointer to these helper functions for UI scripting. It’s really a shame that Apple did not include a proper way to make tabs in Terminal’s AppleScript dictionary though… If you have modified the source in a way that makes it more flexible yet not slower, I’ll be happy to replace current version with yours (and give you credit of course ;) ).
: the math question thing is fixed.
Also, for all those, like you, who do a lot of quick command line stuff –such as plenty of chmod, zip, tar, one liners– you may be interested in DTerm. It allows you to invoque a floating, HUD style command line window at your current location, with just a keyboard shortcut. That’s $20 (TWENTY BUCKS!!) the keyboard shortcut but there’s nothing faster or better crafted at this time.
I just tried it and did not buy it. I would have bought it for a third or half of the price. However you may need this more than I do… or be wealthier than me.
Very very nice. Thank you! btw, your implementation as a finder toolbar button is awesome as well!
This is very handy, and replaces functionality I enjoyed in Windows (if the words “enjoy” and “windows” can even be in the same sentence).
I went to modify the code of the script to make opening a new tab the default behavior, and I got tangled up in the order of the logic. I therefore did some editing on the script and changed it a bit to make it clearer and change the logic to what I hope results in fewer steps during execution. I am happy to send you the source of the changed script, but I don’t have a web page I can post it to.
Thanks for putting the package together.
Hi Tobias, thanks for your interest and work. Paste the source on Pastie and post the link here.
Nice script. Had to replace the icon mind as I’m using the smaller size and it shrinks unlike other built-in Finder toolbar buttons.
Nice work!
Fantastic! I’ve been wanting something like this for a long time since switching from windows. I used to use the “command prompt here” power tool in windows all the time.
Mighty fine indeed. Thanks.
When I run this from the Finder’s bar, it opens two Terminal windows…one in the root, and the other in the current Finder folder. Any ideas?
: It does wat you describe for me only when Terminal is not yet running. This is Terminal.app normal behaviour: when it starts it creates a blank window and then the script tells it to open a new one and
cdwherever you need. To avoid that you can:Altpressed down. This willcdin the window that Terminal opens rather than opening a new oneI hope that kind of solves your issue.
: Would you mind sharing the smaller icon size? The best would of course be to combine those two in an .icns file. I’ll what I can do if I have the two sizes.
Nice work! Thank you!
Is it possible to have this script open a different terminal app like iTerm? I would modify it myself, I just don’t know how.
Nice work, i have searched for a windows equivalent of “PowerToy – Open Command Window Here”. Thank you very much.
This saved the day… been working with dev folders stored on a time capsule and got tired of typing long urls. Thanks folks!
Great!!! What else can I say…
JiHO
OpenTerminalHere is just what I was looking for,
many thanks from a newcomer to Mac
Rudif
Hmmmm – on launch I get:
“Can’t make of application “Finder” into the expected type. (-1700)”
I’m using standard Leopard 10.5.6
Any ideas please?
: This is probably because the front most Finder window does not point to a “real” folder. It does not work with smart folders for example: those are just a collection of search results and have no physical existence, so the `cd` shell command cannot navigate to them.