Open Terminal at a Folder From Finder on Mac

Typing cd followed by a long, space-escaped path is the least fun part of opening Terminal. macOS has shipped a fix for years: a right-click service that opens a Terminal window already sitting in the folder you clicked. It is just switched off on some Macs. Here is how to turn it on, plus two tricks that need no setup at all.

Enable "New Terminal at Folder"

The service lives in Keyboard settings, buried three levels deep:

1. Open System Settings → Keyboard and click Keyboard Shortcuts…
2. Select Services in the left column, then expand Files and Folders.
3. Check New Terminal at Folder. Check New Terminal Tab at Folder too if you prefer tabs in an existing window.
4. Click Done.

On macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia the path is identical. To use it, Control-click (right-click) any folder icon in Finder and look near the bottom of the menu — depending on how many services you have enabled, the command appears directly in the menu or under a Services submenu. Select New Terminal at Folder and a shell opens with its working directory already set.

One catch: the service acts on a selected folder, not the window background. If you are already inside the folder you want, click the folder name in the path bar's enclosing folder, or select the folder in the title bar's proxy icon path — or just use the drag trick below.

No setup: drag the folder onto Terminal

Two drag gestures do the same job with zero configuration:

• Drag a folder onto the Terminal icon in the Dock (or in the Applications folder). Terminal opens a new window with that folder as the working directory.
• Drag a folder into an existing Terminal window. Terminal types the folder's full path at the cursor, properly escaped. Type cd first, drop the folder, press Return.

The second trick works for files too — handy for feeding a long path to any command without typing it.

Go the other way: Finder from Terminal

The reverse direction is a single command. From any Terminal prompt:

# open the current directory in a Finder window
open .

# open any other path in Finder
open ~/Projects/website

There is no undo needed here — open . changes nothing; it just reveals the directory. Related one-liners worth knowing: open -a "TextEdit" notes.txt opens a file in a specific app, and open -R file.txt reveals the file selected in its enclosing Finder window instead of opening it.

If the service does not appear

Two common causes. First, you right-clicked the window background instead of a folder icon — the service needs a folder selected. Second, Finder occasionally caches the services menu; log out and back in, or run killall Finder in Terminal to relaunch Finder (it restarts automatically and your windows reopen). If you use a third-party terminal such as iTerm2, it ships its own equivalent service that appears in the same Services list.

Learn the commands worth running once you are there

A prompt that opens in the right folder is only useful if you know what to type next. Start with our tour of essential Terminal commands for Mac — listing, moving, and inspecting files without leaving the keyboard.