Open or quit Terminal on Mac
Terminal provides a command-line interface to macOS. Each window in Terminal represents an instance of a shell process. The window contains a prompt that indicates you can enter a command. The prompt you see depends on your Terminal and shell settings, but it often includes the name of the host you’re logged in to, your current working folder, your username and a prompt symbol. For example, if a user named michael is using the default zsh shell, the prompt appears as:
michael@MacBook-Pro ~ %This indicates that the user named michael is logged in to a computer named MacBook-Pro, and the current folder is his home folder, indicated by the tilde (~).
Open Terminal
On your Mac, do one of the following:
Click the Launchpad icon
in the Dock, type Terminal in the search field, then click Terminal.In the Finder
, open the /Applications/Utilities folder, then double-click Terminal.
Once you open a Terminal window, you can execute commands and run tools.
Quit Terminal
Go to the Terminal app
on your Mac.Choose Terminal > Quit Terminal.
Quit a shell session
Go to the Terminal app
on your Mac.In the window running the shell process you want to quit, type
exit, then press Return.
This ensures that commands actively running in the shell are closed. If anything’s still in progress, a dialogue appears.
If you want to change the shell exit behaviour, see Change Profiles Shell settings.