How do I open a new Terminal window in the same directory as the current window

Question

When I have a Terminal window open, ⌘N opens a new one.

Is there any way to get the current directory in the new window to automatically be the same as it was on the window where I pressed ⌘N?

score 29 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

29

To accomplish this within a new window, go to Preferences within Terminal.app.

Within the General tab, you can adjust the behavior (you likely want to select Same Working Directory) for both new windows and new tabs.

Preferences

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Mar 24 '15 at 03:35

Scot

8,045

Oh, looks like I already had it enabled but must have messed it up somehow in my .bashrc. Thanks! – Bemmu Mar 24 '15 at 04:06
3

Three years later I found I just had some cd command at the end of said .bashrc, after removing that this started to work. – Bemmu Mar 09 '18 at 04:38
1

@Bemmu Ha. Glad you figured it out - been waiting... ;) – Scot Mar 09 '18 at 20:03

score 14 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 26 '22 at 14:56

14

If you hit ⌘T in the Terminal, it will open another tab, which will be in the same directory as before :-).

You can easily switch between the tabs using keyboard shortcuts too like

- ⌘-Shift-[ and ⌘-Shift-]

Enjoy!

edited Sep 26 '22 at 14:56

Yves Boutellier

125

answered Mar 24 '15 at 02:25

Ambidextrous

424

1

This should be the answer. – CJWEB Nov 15 '18 at 23:56
2

You can also then drag the tab out to a separate window if you didn't want it tabbed – andynormancx Dec 13 '18 at 09:20
This is the correct answer. – MoMo Nov 12 '19 at 15:23
This doesn't work for me. If I change directory in terminal and open a new tab the new tab is not in that directory. – smohadjer Aug 04 '20 at 08:05
@smohadjer look at your settings - there should be separate settings for 'New windows open with' and 'New tabs open with' - you can adjust those so that the behavior is more to your liking – Ambidextrous Oct 03 '22 at 02:31

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 13 '18 at 11:11

7

The problem is that Terminal doesn't know anything about what directory you're in.

But the shell does! So you can type:

open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app .

and it will open a new window on your current directory.

If you want to do this a lot, put the following in ~/.bashrc:

alias openhere='open -a /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app .'

Then, all you will have to type is openhere to do the same thing.

edited Dec 13 '18 at 11:11

nohillside

100,768

answered Mar 24 '15 at 00:25

Jan Steinman

631

1

Terminal does know your directory. The shell reports to Apple Terminal whenever directory changes; the code that enables this is in /etc/bashrc. – hamstergene Mar 24 '15 at 10:30
1

That would be alias openhere='open -a /Systems/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app .' for Big Sur OS :) – iulial Mar 02 '22 at 09:19
2

just open -a Terminal . seems to do the trick – Seth Tisue Jun 30 '22 at 03:00
@hamstergene, I don't see anything in my /etc/bashrc that "reports to Apple Terminal" about directory changes. Mine sets a prompt that bash itself updates, and tells bash to change its idea about Terminal directions upon process completion. Or am I missing something? – Jan Steinman Jun 30 '22 at 06:24
iTerm open -a iTerm . – Andy Nov 02 '23 at 08:45

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 26 '18 at 21:37

In Zshell, I need to do both this setting

and I need this in my .zshrc

# http://superuser.com/a/315029/4952
# Set Apple Terminal.app to resume directory... still necessary 2018-10-26
if [[ $TERM_PROGRAM == "Apple_Terminal" ]] && [[ -z "$INSIDE_EMACS" ]] {
  function chpwd {
    local SEARCH=' '
    local REPLACE='%20'
    local PWD_URL="file://$HOSTNAME${PWD//$SEARCH/$REPLACE}"
    printf '\e]7;%s\a' "$PWD_URL"
  }
  chpwd
}

I've tried without one or the other to no avail.

How do I open a new Terminal window in the same directory as the current window

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