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Mac OS X / Open terminal with specified windows

Asked 2009-07-19T17:28:08.060
25

Is it possible to open a terminal window with 3 tabs. Each tab should have different path.

Example:

Tab1: /etc
Tab2: /bin
Tab3: /www/ tail -f file.txt
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1 Answer

15

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal makes this much easier to do, without creating new profiles for each command.

  1. By default, Terminal will remember and restore the current working directory for each terminal in a Window Group. (If the working directory has been communicated to Terminal using an escape sequence. The default shell, bash, will do this at every command prompt. For other shells, you'll need to adapt the code in /etc/bashrc.)

  2. If you create a terminal with Shell > New Command, Terminal will automatically run that command when a Window Group is opened. Terminal will automatically run a limited set of "safe" commands†, and when saving a Window Group there's an option to run all commands in the group.

Terminal also automatically does these for all windows when restarting Terminal with Resume enabled. So, you may not even have to create a Window Group, depending on your circumstances.

For your example case:

  1. Use Shell > New Command to run "tail -f /www/file.txt".
  2. Create a new tab and "cd /etc".
  3. Create a new tab and "cd /bin".
  4. Save them with Window > Save Windows as Group. Be sure to check the "Restore all commands" checkbox.

Each time you open that Window Group, it will recreate those windows and run the commands. If you need to run a command and specify the starting directory, in the New Command dialog check the "Run command inside a shell" checkbox and make the command "cd ; ".

Also note that you can tell Terminal to open your Window Group at startup with Terminal > Preferences > Startup > On startup, open > Window group. There's even a checkbox to set this when saving a new Window Group.

† The "safe" commands include anything listed in /etc/shells, plus: screen, tmux, emacs, vi/vim, nano, pico, and top. You can customize the list with "defaults write

answered 2011-08-13T23:11:10.147

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