MacOS – How to Add a Terminal-Here Button to Finder Toolbar

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I've seen Automator and AppleScripts that open a terminal to the path of the file currently selected in a Finder window. I think it would be more useful to me to simply have a button on the Finder toolbar that opens a terminal window to the current directory listed in the Finder.

How can I get a Terminal-here button added to the Finder toolbar?

Best Answer

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal includes exactly this functionality as a Service. As with most Services, these are disabled by default, so you'll need to enable this to make it appear in the Services menu.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services

Enable New Terminal at Folder. There's also New Terminal Tab at Folder, which will create a tab in the frontmost Terminal window (if any, else it will create a new window). These Services work in all applications, not just Finder, and they operate on folders as well as absolute pathnames selected in text.

You can even assign command keys to them.

Services appear in the Services submenu of each application menu, and within the contextual menu (Control-Click or Right-Click on a folder or pathname).

In addition, Lion Terminal will open a new terminal window if you drag a folder (or pathname) onto the Terminal application icon, and you can also drag to the tab bar of an existing window to create a new tab.

Finally, if you drag a folder or pathname onto a tab (in the tab bar) and the foreground process is the shell, it will automatically execute a "cd" command. (Dragging into the terminal view within the tab merely inserts the pathname on its own, as in older versions of Terminal.)

On a related note, Lion Terminal also has new Services for looking up man pages: Open man page in Terminal displays the selected man page topic in a new terminal window, and Search man Pages in Terminal performs "apropos" on the selected text. The former also understands man page references ("open(2)"), man page command line arguments ("2 open") and man page URLs ("x-man-page://2/open").

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Macos – How to create a new folder within a nested folder hierarchy using Finder

One (very unrecommended) option would be to assign a shortcut to an AppleScript like this. There's an open bug in 10.7 that makes the script more or less unusable.

tell application "Finder"
    if insertion location as alias is desktop as alias or current view of Finder window 1 is in {icon view, column view} or selection is {} then
        tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder"
            click menu item "New Folder" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
        end tell
        return
    end if
    tell application "System Events" to key code 124 -- right arrow
    set p to item 1 of (get selection)
    try
        set f to make new folder at p
    on error
        set f to make new folder at container of p
    end try
    set selection to f
end tell
tell application "System Events" to keystroke return

MacOS – How to Duplicate Current Open Finder View in New Tab (Mavericks)

You can do it by pressing:

cmd+ctrl+O

on any folder and it'll show up in a new tab.

Best Answer

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Macos – How to create a new folder within a nested folder hierarchy using Finder

MacOS – How to Duplicate Current Open Finder View in New Tab (Mavericks)

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