Work in a terminal

This page covers terminal windows and tabs, the Mac window's sidebar, moving tabs between windows, what comes back after a relaunch, Show All Windows, the session's tools menu, text size, scaling the text with the window, search, pasting, links and paths, previewing a file over the terminal, selecting on Vision Pro, dropping files, snippets, recording, and the Mac's local shell.

Windows and tabs#

On Vision Pro: each connection opens a terminal window. To add a terminal to the same window, press ⌘T or choose New Terminal Tab (the plus button), then pick a saved host. Pinch and hold the plus button instead for a menu of your saved servers: each has New Terminal, then, under Running, the terminals running there in tmux that aren't open here, with where each one is. The one you choose opens as a tab of this window.

With two or more terminals, a tab bar appears, and the Terminal View button in the window's bar shows which layout the window is in: Tabs, Grid or Carousel. Pinch it to go on to the next, round again after Carousel. Pinch and hold it to choose one, or Orb to shrink the window into an orb (see Shrink a session window to an orb on Vision Pro). In Grid or Carousel, use Previous and Next, then Open Terminal to return to that terminal's tab. With Auto-focus on activity on for the window, Grid and Carousel bring forward the terminal that is printing (see Give a terminal window its own settings).

To move a terminal to another window, touch and hold its tab, or its card in Grid or Carousel, and choose Move Tab to New Window (when the window has other tabs), or Move Tab To and then the window. Move Tab To lists the terminal windows that are open, named as Active names them. The terminal's tools menu (the gear button in its bottom bar) has Move Tab To too, with New Window at the top of its list when the window has other tabs. You can also drag the terminal's name, at the top of its window, onto another terminal window: it goes after that window's last tab. Both work with only one terminal in the window, so to put two windows together, drag one window's name onto the other, or choose Move Tab To in its tools menu. Letting go over its own window leaves it where it was. In Grid you can also drag a card onto another terminal window: dropped on a card in that window's grid, it takes that card's place; dropped anywhere else on the window, it goes after the last tab. Dragging a card onto another card in the same grid moves it there. A moved terminal keeps running, with its connection, its tmux session and its name, and a window whose last tab leaves closes.

On Mac: terminals open in a terminal window with tabs. Each tab can be split into panes.

The plus button opens a new tab as ⌘T does. Its menu has New Terminal; New Basic Terminal, a shell on this Mac outside tmux (see Open a terminal without tmux); and New Terminal on, which lists every saved host with a Terminal service by its machine's name and opens a tab there, in tmux when that host keeps its terminals in tmux. A host with terminals running there in tmux is a submenu instead: New Terminal, then, under Running, each of its running terminals that no tab shows, with where it is and when it was last used. Running on This Mac lists this Mac's own tmux sessions that no tab shows. The running terminal you choose opens as a tab of this window, attached to its session. A Terminal service you gave a name of its own shows it after the machine's, for example alpha — Admin shell, and two that would still read the same show their user names, for example alpha (root) and alpha (ann). Connect Saved Host… and the command palette name them the same way.

The window's sidebar lists its tabs. Opening it, with the sidebar button at the top left of the window, makes the window wider by the sidebar's width, toward the left, and closing it makes the window narrower again. The terminal keeps its size, so its rows and columns don't change, and it stays where it is unless the window is at the edge of the screen. In full screen, or when the screen has no room for the wider window, the sidebar takes its room from the terminal instead. Terminal Overview hides the sidebar without changing the window's size.

A new local tab, window or split opened while a local terminal is in front starts in the folder that terminal is in, as Terminal.app's Same Working Directory does; opened from anywhere else, or when that folder no longer exists, it starts in your home folder, or in the working directory set in Settings.

A tab is named after what is running in it: the title a program set (Claude Code's task, the file open in vim), else the Git repository it is in, else the folder it is in. In your home folder it takes its Workgroup's name, or, in tmux, its session's name as Active shows it (Terminal 1), or else the shell's. Below the name: where it is, and in tmux when it is kept in tmux. In a Git repository, where it is reads as the repository and branch, then the folder inside the repository, for example app · main · Sources. A long branch name is shortened in the middle. After you switch branches in it, the tab shows the new branch within a few seconds, or within about 15 seconds over SSH. On a machine you reach over SSH, that machine's git is asked; without git there, the tab shows the folder as before. Over SSH the repository and branch come before the machine's address. In tmux, over SSH too, the title, folder and name come from the tmux session, so the tab, Active and your other devices call the terminal the same; a name given on another device shows in the tab while it is open (see Keep terminals running with tmux).

To work with several tabs at once, ⌘-click them in the sidebar, or ⇧-click to select a range; the window shows the tab you clicked last. Right-click the selection for Move 3 Tabs to New Window (with however many you chose), which opens one window holding them in their order, still running, or Close 3 Tabs, which asks first under the same rules as closing one. Move Tab to New Window, in the Terminal menu and under Tab Actions in the toolbar, moves the selected tabs too; when they are every tab in the window, that window closes. To bring windows together, drag a tab from the sidebar onto another terminal window, anywhere on it, sidebar open or not: it moves there with its terminals still running, and a window whose last tab leaves closes. Dropped on the other window's sidebar, it lands where you drop it; dragging a tab within the sidebar reorders it. Double-click a tab, or right-click it, to rename it. Closing a tab that has an SSH session, a recording, a connection in progress or running commands asks first. A terminal kept in tmux doesn't count: closing it leaves it running, and Active lists it (see Keep terminals running with tmux). A Mac's local terminals kept in tmux work the same way, listed under This Mac. Closing a tab never changes a saved Workgroup.

On iPad and iPhone: the plus button (New Terminal Tab) adds a terminal to the current set. Touch and hold it for the menu of saved servers and their running terminals described for Vision Pro above; the one you choose joins this set. iPad shows the terminals as tabs; iPhone lists them in a menu at the top. To move a terminal into another open set, open the tools menu (Tools ▸ Session) or touch and hold its tab in the sidebar on iPad, or open the menu at the top on iPhone, and choose Move Tab To, then the set. On iPad, Move Tab to New Window (in the tools menu, Move Tab To ▸ New Window) opens it in a window of its own (when the set has other terminals). The terminal keeps running; a set whose last terminal leaves closes, and the screen shows the set it went to.

After a relaunch on Vision Pro, iPad and iPhone (the app quit, crashed or was updated), the terminal windows and sets you had open come back once the library has loaded: their terminals in the same order, the same one selected, with their names and the window's own settings. Each terminal kept in tmux goes back into its own session, with everything still running there (see Keep terminals running with tmux). Any other terminal in it comes back as a new terminal on the same machine; what was running in it is gone. A window or set comes back only when a terminal in it is kept in tmux.

• On Vision Pro each comes back as its own window, and every terminal in it connects. A window you closed doesn't come back; its terminals keep running, and Active lists them.
• On iPad and iPhone the set that was on screen is shown again, and only its terminal on screen connects; the others connect when you switch to them, and the other sets are in Active.
• A set whose last terminal ended, or that you closed in Active, doesn't come back. A terminal on a machine you removed, or one that allows legacy algorithms (which asks each time), is left out, and a message says so.
• Your saved Workgroups are never changed by this.

On Vision Pro, iPad and iPhone, a terminal is named the way the Mac names its tabs: the name you gave it, else the title its program set, else its Git repository, else its folder, else its server. For a terminal kept in tmux, these come from its tmux session, so a name you give a tab on your Mac shows on your other devices too, without reconnecting. In a repository, the repository and branch come before the machine's address. To rename a terminal, touch and hold its tab (on Vision Pro, its tab or its card in Grid and Carousel), or open the menu at the top on iPhone, and choose Rename Tab…. Leave the name blank, or choose Use Automatic Name, to go back to the automatic name. A terminal kept in tmux keeps the name on its session, so every device shows it.

Show All Windows#

See every terminal window and its tabs, with every other window you have open, at once, as live pictures, and go straight to one. On Mac press ⇧⌘, or pinch in on a terminal or remote desktop window; on iPad and iPhone pull down from the bar at the top of the screen, or touch and hold ⚡; on Vision Pro pinch and hold ⚡. On the Mac you can also drag a terminal's picture onto another window's group to move that tab there. See See everything open with Show All Windows.

The session's tools menu#

Each SSH terminal has a tools menu: the gear button in its toolbar on Mac, or in its bottom bar on Vision Pro. It holds Search, Clear, Open Folder in Editor (once the shell's folder is known; it opens that folder as a project in the Editor), Snippets, Start Recording…, Recordings, Duplicate Session, on Vision Pro and iPad Move Tab To when there is somewhere to move it (see Windows and tabs), Reconnect, Disconnect (Detach for a terminal kept in tmux), and Settings: This Window for the window's own settings, All Terminals for the settings every terminal shares (see Give a terminal window its own settings), and the session's port forwards.

On iPhone and iPad: the tools menu and the buttons below are in Tools, at the bottom of the terminal and on the bar above the on-screen keyboard. On iPhone held sideways, Tools is in the top bar beside + and ⚡, so the terminal gets the whole height.

Beside the tools menu:

• Open Folder Here, once the remote shell reports its current directory. It opens that folder in the file browser. On Vision Pro and Mac, pinch and hold it (right-click it on Mac) for Open in Files and Open in Editor, which opens the folder as a project in the Editor.
• Scale Text, on Vision Pro, Mac and iPad: see Scale the text with the window.
• Focus Mode. On Vision Pro it surrounds you with a dimmed environment. On Mac it makes the window full screen.
• AI Assistant, when Apple Intelligence is available. It suggests a command from a description; Review & Run shows the exact command and asks before sending it. When a command fails, it can explain the error and suggest a fix; a fix that is advice rather than a command is shown to read, with nothing to run. If the suggestions keep coming, for example while a test run prints "failed" on purpose, open the menu beside the suggestion's close button: Pause in This Terminal stops them in this terminal until it closes, and Turn Off Error Suggestions stops them everywhere, until you turn Suggest fixes for errors back on in Settings ▸ Connections.

Text size#

Make the text larger or smaller, or reset it, from the menus below; on Mac and Vision Pro with a keyboard, press ⌘+, ⌘- or ⌘0. This changes the current terminal only.

• On Mac: Terminal ▸ Increase Font Size, Decrease Font Size and Reset Font Size.
• On Vision Pro: Terminal Font Size (the text size button) in the window's bar.
• On iPad and iPhone: Tools ▸ Font Size ▸ Increase, Decrease and Reset.

In a window that scales its text, these size the window instead; see below.

Scale the text with the window#

Making a terminal window smaller normally gives the terminal fewer rows and columns, and the program in it redraws to fit. With Scale Text, the terminal keeps its rows and columns, and its text grows and shrinks with the window instead: a terminal of 120 columns and 40 rows stays 120 × 40 in a small window.

On Vision Pro, Mac and iPad, choose Scale Text in the terminal window's bar: on Vision Pro in the bar below the window, on Mac in the toolbar, and on iPad in Tools. Choose it again to turn it off. It changes this window only. To have every window scale, set When a window is resized to Scale the Text in Settings ▸ Terminal; see Terminal settings. iPhone has no Scale Text: its terminal fills the screen.

While a window scales:

• The terminal keeps the rows and columns it had when you turned Scale on. A window that opens scaling keeps the ones it opens with; on Mac, that is the size a new terminal opens at: Initial Terminal Size in Settings, or the Terminal service's own Columns and Rows.
• The program in the terminal isn't told the window changed size, so it doesn't redraw.
• On Vision Pro and Mac, the window keeps the terminal's shape as you resize it. On Mac, a window split into panes doesn't: each pane scales into its own part. On iPad, a window can be any shape, and the text is centred in it.
• The text size commands size the window instead. On Vision Pro and Mac, ⌘+ and ⌘- make the window a tenth larger or smaller, and ⌘0 sizes it so the text is at its font's own size; on Mac they do nothing in full screen. On iPad, Increase makes the window larger, and Reset does when the text is smaller than its font's own size; Decrease does nothing, because iPadOS doesn't let an app make a window smaller.
• Changing the font size in Settings shows no change: the window sets the text's size.

Turning Scale off gives the terminal the rows and columns that fit the window, and the program redraws.

On Mac, Scale applies to terminals on other machines, over SSH. A terminal on this Mac always changes its rows and columns with its window.

Search#

Choose Search from the tools menu, or press ⌘F (on Mac, Edit ▸ Find ▸ Find…; on iPad and Vision Pro, with a hardware keyboard). Type, then press Return: the first match is the newest, and each Return goes on to an older one. The arrows step to older and newer matches, the bar shows how many there are, and Escape closes it. On Mac, ⌘G (Find Next) and ⇧⌘G (Find Previous) step older and newer too, and with the bar closed they open it with the last word searched for.

In a terminal kept in tmux, tmux searches its own history, so text that has scrolled away is found; closing the bar returns to the live prompt. In a program that fills the screen, such as less or vim, only what's on screen can be searched: use the program's own search.

Paste#

Pasting a single short line sends it straight away. Text with more than one line, or longer than 4,096 bytes, opens Review Terminal Paste first. Edit it if needed, then choose Paste, or press ⌘↩︎ with a keyboard (Return adds a new line to the text). Clipboards larger than 262,144 bytes are refused. If a review is still waiting when you paste or drop something else, the newer text takes its place.

Right-click in a terminal (Mac)#

Right-click, or Control-click, in a terminal for Look Up, Copy, Paste and Select All. The selected text also works with Services. Right-clicking a word outside the selection selects that word first; right-clicking inside the selection keeps it. Paste goes through the same review as ⌘V.

Links and paths#

On Mac, right-click a web address or a path the terminal shows, and the menu starts with what can be done with it. On Vision Pro, pinch and hold on it and let go without moving for the same actions.

• On a web address: Open Link, which asks before opening it in your browser, and Copy Link. Open Link is offered only for an http or https address with no user name or password in it.
• On a web address of a 3D model, one ending in .usdz, .usd, .usda, .usdc or .reality, the question's button is Open in 3D. The model is downloaded, up to 512 MB, and shown here in 3D: on Mac in the Editor, on iPhone and iPad in AR Quick Look, and on Vision Pro in Quick Look, where you can walk around it. (Quick Look opens USDZ and Reality files; any other USD file is shown in the Editor instead.) Downloading 3D model… shows while it comes. A file that turns out not to be a model is not kept, and Couldn't Open the Model says why.
• On a path: Quick Look on Mac (see Preview a file over the terminal); Open in Editor, which opens a file as a tab or a folder as a project, on the machine the path is on; Show in Finder for a path on this Mac, or Show in Files for a path on a server, which opens the file browser at its folder; Watch Log File; and Copy Path.

A path is read on the machine that printed it: from the shell's current folder when it is relative, and ~ as that machine's home folder. A :line:column after it is left off. A path that isn't there beeps.

Watch Log File opens a new tab in the same window, on the same machine, that follows the file with tail -F: new lines appear as they are written, and it keeps following when the log is rotated, or waits for a file that isn't there yet. The tab is named after the file. It runs outside tmux, so closing the tab ends it.

Preview a file over the terminal#

On Mac, the file a path names can show in a popover over the terminal. What it is comes from its contents, not its name, so a log saved as .output shows as text:

• Code and other text: in the editor's own view, highlighted as the editor highlights its language, with line numbers, and read-only.
• Markdown (with its diagrams), HTML, SVG and CSV: as the editor previews them.
• Pictures, PDFs, video, audio and documents: as Quick Look shows them.
• 3D models (USDZ, USD and Reality files): in 3D, turned with the pointer.

A bar across the top names the file and has Open in Editor, to change it, and Show in Finder, or Show in Files for a file on a server. A file on a server is copied to this Mac for the preview, up to 32 MB, and the copy is removed when the preview closes. A folder has no preview.

• Choose Quick Look from a path's right-click menu.
• Or set Show previews in Settings ▸ Terminal:
  • Mouseover, the starting setting: rest the pointer on a path, and the preview opens after a moment. Move into it to scroll or click; it closes once the pointer has left both the path and the preview.
  • Mouseover + Space: put the pointer on a path and press Space; Space again or Escape closes it. On a web address, Space asks whether to open it, as a ⌘-click does. Anywhere else, Space types a space.
  • Never: only Quick Look shows a preview.

A window can have its own Show previews in its settings, under This Window. A click, scrolling or typing in the terminal closes the preview.

Select text on Vision Pro#

These work as selecting text does in Apple's own apps:

• Pinch twice quickly to select a word, or three times to select a line, with Copy offered.
• Pinch and hold on a word to select it. Keep holding and drag to select more, a word at a time. Letting go offers Copy.
• Pinch and drag either end of a selection to make it longer or shorter. A pinch-and-drag that starts anywhere else scrolls.
• With a trackpad: click and drag to select, as on a Mac; double-click a word or triple-click a line; scroll with two fingers; click with two fingers for a menu with Copy, or a link's actions.
• All of these work even when the program in the terminal takes the mouse, as tmux does with its mouse mode on (tmux 3.8 turns it on unless your configuration turns it off). A selection stays while the program redraws around it.
• A single pinch clears a selection. With nothing selected, a single pinch goes to the program.
• A pinch-and-drag up or down scrolls: in tmux, tmux's history; in a program that takes the mouse, such as vim or htop, as its scroll wheel would. It never starts tmux's own selection, the yellow one, which tmux copies to its own buffer and clears when you let go.
• Pinch and hold on a link or a path, and let go without moving, for its actions (see Links and paths).

Drop files on a terminal#

Drag files onto a terminal to type their paths at the cursor, ready for the program that reads them, such as Claude Code. The paths are escaped for the shell and separated by spaces, with a space after the last. Nothing is run: press Return yourself.

• On Mac, in a local terminal: each file types its own path. A screenshot dragged from its thumbnail, or an image dragged from a browser, is saved in the app's caches first and types that path. If the files arrive but their paths can't be typed, the Mac beeps.
• In an SSH terminal, on every platform: the shell is on the host, so the files are uploaded there first, into ~/.cache/glass-power-tools/dropped/ in a folder for the day, and their paths on the host are typed. This works with files from Files or the Finder, photos from Photos, and files from other apps. A photo in HEIC is uploaded as a JPEG, which more tools can read; other files go as they are. If a name is taken, the file gets a number, for example photo-2.jpg. Nothing is ever uploaded into the shell's current folder.

While files upload, the terminal's corner shows their progress; its × cancels, and a cancelled drop types nothing. A file that doesn't arrive types nothing either, and the corner says why and what to do. A terminal that isn't connected refuses the drop.

The day folders are cleared once they're more than a week old, the first time you drop something on each connection. Only that drop folder is touched. To keep a dropped file, move it somewhere else on the host.

Folders can't be dropped; drop the files inside them.

The on-screen keyboard bar#

On Vision Pro, iPad and iPhone, the bar above the on-screen keyboard has:

• the cursor pad: drag it to move the cursor.
• Terminal Keys: Escape, Tab, Control for Next Key, arrow keys under Navigation, and Function Keys F1–F12.
• Dismiss Keyboard.

Snippets#

Choose Snippets from the tools menu and pick one. Its command runs at once. To create snippets, see Terminal settings, themes and snippets.

Record a session#

1. Choose Start Recording….
2. Choose Record Output Only, or Record Output and Keyboard Input.

While input is recorded, the terminal shows INPUT REC. Choose Stop Recording to finish. Recordings lists saved recordings, where you can delete them.

The Mac's local shell#

On Mac: choose Local Terminal in the library toolbar, or Connect on this Mac's Local Shell service. While local terminals are kept in tmux, File ▸ New Basic Terminal Tab (⌃⌘T) opens one outside it; see Open a terminal without tmux. A local pane's tools menu adds New Local Terminal Window and, after the shell exits, Restart. Its Settings opens the same Terminal Settings as an SSH terminal's, without port forwarding. Open Folder Here opens the shell's directory in Finder. A local terminal starts with your Mac's environment, as Terminal.app's do (so ssh finds your agent), and tells programs it is Glass Power Tools through TERM_PROGRAM.

Secure Keyboard Entry, in the toolbar and the Terminal menu, stops other apps from reading what you type in the focused terminal.

iPad, iPhone and Vision Pro have no local shell.