How to have different colors in each Terminal window

colorsettingsterminal

Can I do this?

OMG, I looked for hours, and every article I find tells me how to colorize the output of ls. Or colorize my prompt. I really really really don't want that.

I want to colorize the text. The default text in the terminal window.

I know I can do this from Terminal Preferences. But that applies to EVERY terminal window that's open, which I don't want.

As the subject says, I'd like to have three different terminal windows with three different default colors for text in them. How can I do that?

In Windows cmd.exe, I could run a command from the prompt: color 0xA 0xG (something like that) and it would re-colorize the basic text and background. rather that pointy-clicky inspector themes menus and all that… can I do something like this from the MacOS Terminal prompt?

Best Answer

I may not be understanding the question fully, since you change the color settings per-tab/window contrary to your question, but here is how to do what I think you want.

  1. Go to Terminal menu > Preferences.
  2. Click on the Settings tab.
  3. Click on the gear icon at the bottom left and choose Duplicate Settings.

  4. Enter a name for your settings.

    Preferences window, Settings tab

  5. Make any changes you want to font colors.

  6. Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you have as many sets of colors as you want.
  7. Close the Preferences window.
  8. Open as many tabs as you want (3, it sounds like).

  9. Right-click on the first and choose Inspect Tab.

    Terminal window with tab Inspector open

  10. Select your desired Settings pre-set from the list. (The ones you created will be down towards the bottom.)

  11. Close the Inspector window.
  12. Repeat steps 9 through 11 until you have customized each tab.

That should be it. If you want Terminal to always open like this, with these three tabs and their associated color settings:

  1. Go to Window menu > Save Windows as Group.
  2. Enter a name.
  3. Click Save.
  4. Go to Terminal menu > Preferences.
  5. Click on the Startup tab.

  6. Next to "On startup, open:" choose the radio button for "Window group:" and select the name of the group you created in step 2.

    Preferences window, Startup tab

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