How to switch terminal settings using a keyboard shortcut

keyboardsettingsterminal

Usually I need different settings in my terminal depending on what I'm working on. For example, change the opacity to see some info on the back.

I think an option is to set different setting schemas, and then switch between them with a keyboard shortcut. Any ideas on how to achieve this?

Best Answer

You can do this via Terminal's AppleScript interface, for example to set the background colour of the first tab in the first window to green:

tell application "Terminal"
    set tabsettings to current settings of tab 0 of window 0
    set background color of tabsettings to {0, 32768, 0} -- colours are 16-bit
end tell

That's the good news. The bad news is that the background opacity is not exposed to AppleScript in Lion (this seems like an oversight by Apple). You can change pretty much everything else like this though (see the Library in the AppleScript Editor for the full list). There are a few crazy AppleScripts out there that adjust the background opacity by emulating keypresses to Terminal, but that approach is too horrible to even link to.

Once you have the AppleScript code to change the settings to your liking there are many ways of binding your script to a key.

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How does one change Terminal.app profile for all open tabs using a keyboard shortcut

Create an AppleScript like this one, and call it something like TerminalNightMode:

tell application "Terminal"
    set current settings of tabs of windows to settings set "Pro"
end tell

You can replace the "Pro" setting with the setting name of your choice. When you run this AppleScript, it will change the settings for all the tabs in all windows. I recommend putting this script on the dock for easy access. Likewise, you can make another script for day mode.

MacOS – Keyboard shortcut for jumping directly to a specific input method

One option would be to download changeInput and assign shortcuts to shell commands like changeInput U.S..

You could also use KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_HIRAGANA</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.inputmethod.Kotoeri.Japanese</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_KATAKANA</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.inputmethod.Kotoeri.Japanese.Katakana</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <item>
    <name>change_inputsources</name>
    <identifier>change_inputsources</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::E, VK_CONTROL | VK_OPTION | VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_ENGLISH</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::H, VK_CONTROL | VK_OPTION | VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_HIRAGANA</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::K, VK_CONTROL | VK_OPTION | VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_KATAKANA</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

See the private.xml documentation.

VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_ENGLISH is defined in vkchangeinputsourcedef.xml. You can see the IDs of input sources from EventViewer.app. Without | ModifierFlag::NONE for example the first setting would also apply to control-option-shift-command-E. See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.

Best Answer

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How does one change Terminal.app profile for all open tabs using a keyboard shortcut

MacOS – Keyboard shortcut for jumping directly to a specific input method

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