Many people use Terminal on their Mac to carry out the commands they want to use to make changes on their system, and by default, it’s a plain white interface with black text. Because this is simply boring, we’re going to show you in this tutorial how you can colorize the Terminal window to look exactly how you want it to.
Why customize Terminal
If you enjoy the strikingly bland black text and white background for your Terminal interface, then, by all means, leave it alone.
On the other hand, I find it can be hard on the eyes. I’d rather look at something a little more pleasant, such as green text on a black background; not to mention, it reminds me of The Matrix.
In fact, what you see in my example above is that the background isn’t just blackened, but it’s also transparent, allowing you to see behind the window to my wallpaper. I think that’s pretty cool in itself!
As you’ll soon find out, there are many choices for making your Terminal window look the way you want it, and you’re not going to be limited to green and black for your color choices.
Change the color of your macOS Terminal window
1) Launch the Terminal app on your Mac.
2) From the top menu bar, click Terminal > Settings or Preferences.
3) Ensure you’re on the “General” tab when the preferences pane opens up, and with the “New window with profile” option selected, click on the drop-down menu and pick an interface color profile option. We’ve chosen Homebrew for our example.
4) Quit the Terminal app.
5) Now, relaunch the app to see the new changes take effect.
That’s all there is to it! You’ve just changed the look of your Terminal window from black text on a white background to green text on a black background, as you saw earlier, but there are many other options to pick from as well, and you’re free to experiment with them on your own.
Modify Terminal’s interface even further
If the stock presets aren’t good enough for you, then you can visit the Profiles tab at the top of the Terminal preferences pane window to view and tinker with additional appearance options.
From here, you can add or remove Terminal profiles. A profile is a saved state of colors and effects that make Terminal look and feel the way you want it to. You can switch between profiles at any time to alter the look of the Terminal.
Among some of the many things you can alter here are:
- Choosing the background for the Terminal window (can be a color or an image)
- Choosing the font styles
- Configuring the text effects and indicator icons
- Configuring the ANSI colors
- Configuring the type of cursor you want to use and whether or not it will blink
- Configuring a default Terminal app window size
- Configuring how far back into your commands you can scroll back to
Although not for the faint of heart, there are a lot of options to peruse through here, and if you’re interested in giving your Terminal app a makeover, rest assured, you’ve come to the right place in your Mac’s settings.
Edit background color
After opening Terminal, you can also click Shell > Edit Background Color to adjust the background.
Changes not reflecting?
Do the following after you customize the Terminal background and text color, but it doesn’t show the changes:
- Quit the Terminal app and reopen it.
- If that doesn’t help, restart your Mac.
- In case the problem continues, it could be because of macOS bugs. Head over to System Settings > General > Software Update and install the latest version of macOS.
- Open Terminal and go to Shell > Edit Background Color. Now, choose the Profile tab in the small window that opens and select the options there, and the Terminal look should change in real-time.
Do more with Terminal: