Macos – Run a shell script on OS X without having a terminal window appear

keyboard shortcutsmacosshell-scriptterminal

I'm trying to set up a few keyboard shortcuts that open specific iTerm sessions, which I was able to do with BetterTouchTool and a bit of AppleScript magic. The problem is that OS X insists to open a Terminal window for any shell script you execute through the GUI (i.e. from Finder, or as a keyboard shortcut from BetterTouchTool). The terminal window doesn't appear if I run the script directly from another terminal.

A workaround I found was to wrap the script in an .app directory, which solves the problem of the superfluous terminal window, but has some other issues (for example OS X seems to treat each resulting iTerm window as a separate app, cluttering my dock). (EDIT: this behaviour was actually caused by a bug in my script, see below)

I also tried assigning the Terminal app to another virtual desktop in the Spaces settings in an attempt to move it out of sight, but then it will just first switch to that desktop before running the script.

Is there a way to disable this behaviour completely? I already found the setting in the Terminal preferences to close the window after the script has finished, but it's still annoying to have the Terminal window pop up for a second.

Best Answer

Open Automator, choose Application, add a Run Shell Script action and put in your Shell command between quotes (if you have a file, you can just drag and drop it).

Other than playing it, now you can save it (as an app anywhere) and even set the icon.

Related Solutions

Applescript to open a NEW terminal window in current space

tell application "Terminal"  
    do script " "  
    activate  
end tell

It seems weird but it takes advantage of an oddity in how Terminal handles incoming "do script" commands; it creates a new window for each one. You could actually replace that with something useful if you want; it'll execute whatever you want just after opening the new window.

Macos – Redirecting Terminal.app to iTerm.app

As said in the comments above, you won't be able to change that on a large scale basis. Applications calling Terminal.app will do that by calling its Bundle identifier, com.apple.terminal. You'd have to change this to "fake" the Terminal and redirect to another one. Is that's possible? I highly doubt so.

This means that every application calling Terminal will have a setting for the bundle identifier used. Some will probably have that hardcoded, others should allow changing it, either through Preferences or through a preference list setting.

How to make BBEdit use another Terminal

For BBEdit, that's relatively easy according to the release notes. This is for version 8.7 though, and I can't find it in the "Experts Preferences" of version 10 anymore. Maybe they've removed the feature.

defaults write com.barebones.bbedit Misc:TerminalBundleIDOverride "com.googlecode.iTerm2"

Just replace com.apple.Terminal with the bundle identified of the other terminal emulator, e.g. com.googlecode.iterm2 for iTerm2.

A similar entry can be found on secrets.blacktree.com, although it doesn't appear to be working (I've never seen a -bundleid datatype in defaults).

The best idea would be to bring up a support request with BBEdit's developers.

How to make Alfred use another Terminal

Alfred's shell extensions use the terminal emulator you specify, according to the help.

You can select to use the OS X Terminal.app or iTerm, as well as your prefix for Shell commands in the Alfred preferences.

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It didn't work for me at first, so I had to delete iTerm.app, delete Alfred and its preferences/caches, then reinstall iTerm2. This is explained in the Alfred support forums.

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