ttab — open a new Terminal.app / iTerm2.app tab or window

A macOS (OS X) CLI for programmatically opening a new terminal tab/window in the standard terminal application, Terminal, or in popular alternative iTerm2, optionally with a command to execute and/or a specific title and specific display settings.

Note: iTerm2 support is experimental in that it is currently not covered by the automated tests run before every release.

Installation

Important: Irrespective of installation method, Terminal / iTerm2 (iTerm.app) needs to be granted access for assistive devices in order for ttab to function properly, which is a one-time operation that requires administrative privileges.
If you're not prompted on first run and get an error message instead, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy, tab Privacy, select Accessibility, unlock, and make sure Terminal.app / iTerm.app is in the list on the right and has a checkmark.
For more information, see Apple's support article on the subject

Installation from the npm registry

With Node.js or io.js installed, install from the npm registry:

[sudo] npm install ttab -g

Note:

Whether you need sudo depends on how you installed Node.js / io.js and whether you've changed permissions later; if you get an EACCES error, try again with sudo.
The -g ensures global installation and is needed to put ttab in your system's $PATH.

Manual installation

Download this bash script as ttab.
Make it executable with chmod +x ttab.
Move it to a folder in your $PATH, such as /usr/local/bin.

Examples

# Open a new tab in the current terminal window.
ttab

# Open a new tab in a new terminal window.
ttab -w 

# Open a new tab and execute the specified command before showing the prompt.
ttab ls -l "$HOME/Library/Application Support"

# Open a new tab and execute *multiple* commands in it - note how the entire
# command line is specified as *single, quoted string*.
ttab 'git branch; git status'

# Open a new tab, switch to the specified dir., then execute the specified 
# command before showing the prompt.
ttab -d ~/Library/Application\ Support ls -1 

# Open a new tab with title 'How Green Was My Valley' and settings 'Grass'.
ttab -t 'How Green Was My Valley' -s Grass

# Open a new tab and execute the specified script before showing the prompt.
ttab /path/to/someScript 

# Open a new tab, execute the specified script, and exit.
ttab exec /path/to/someScript

# Open a new tab, execute a command, wait for a keypress, and exit.
ttab 'ls "$HOME/Library/Application Support"; echo Press a key to exit.; read -rsn 1; exit'

# Open a new tab in iTerm2 (if installed).
ttab -a iTerm2 echo 'Hi from iTerm2.'

Usage

Find concise usage information below; for complete documentation, read the manual online, or, once installed, run man ttab (ttab --man if installed manually).

$ ttab --help


Opens a new terminal tab or window in OS X's Terminal application or iTerm2.

    ttab [-w] [-s <settings>] [-t <title>] [-q] [-g|-G] [-d <dir>] [<cmd> ...]

    -w                  open new tab in new terminal window
    -s <settings>       assign a settings set (profile)
    -t <title>          specify title for new tab
    -q                  clear the new tab's screen
    -g                  create tab in background (don't activate Terminal/iTerm)
    -G                  create tab in background and don't activate new tab
    -d <dir>            specify working directory; -d '' disables inheriting
                        the current dir.
    -a Terminal|iTerm2  open tab or window in Terminal.app / iTerm2  
    <cmd> ...           command to execute in the new tab
    "<cmd> ...; ..."    multi-command command line (passed as single operand)

Standard options: --help, --man, --version, --home

License

Acknowledgements

This project gratefully depends on the following open-source components, according to the terms of their respective licenses.

npm dependencies below have optional suffixes denoting the type of dependency; the absence of a suffix denotes a required run-time dependency: (D) denotes a development-time-only dependency, (O) an optional dependency, and (P) a peer dependency.

npm dependencies

Changelog

Versioning complies with semantic versioning (semver).

v0.6.1 (2017-11-08):
- [fix] macOS 10.13 (High Sierra compatibility), which makes -G work again.
v0.6.0 (2017-06-21):
- [enhancement] -d '' now prevents ttab from implicitly changing to what it thinks the working directory should be; useful for creating tabs/windows that set their own working directory.
v0.5.1 (2017-03-23):
- [doc] Sample command fixed.
- [dev] Reliability of tests improved.
v0.5.0 (2016-10-01):
- [new feature] -q now allows clearing the "screen" of the new tab after opening using clear, assuming any command (list) passed succeeded.
- [enhancement] A quoted multi-command shell command string can now be specified as a single - and only - operand, without having to precede with an explicit eval command.
- [behavior change] If no custom title is specified with -t <title>, no attempt is made anymore to auto-derive a meaningful tab title from the shell command specified, as there is no heuristic that works well in all cases.
- [fix] Issue #7: iTerm2 now also preserves the current working dir. when opening a new tab in the current window.
v0.4.0 (2016-09-13):
- [enhancement] -a Terminal|iTerm2 now allows specifying the target Terminal application, which is useful for launching ttab from non-terminal applications such as Alfred.
- [fix] Specifying a syntactically invalid shell command to execute in the new tab now causes ttab to report a nonzero exit code.
v0.3.1 (2016-06-03):
- [enhancement] Support for iTerm2 v3 added (whose AppleScript syntax changed fundamentally)
- [enhancement] Setting a tab title is now also supported in iTerm2 v2.
v0.3.0 (2016-05-04):
- [enhancement] Experimental support for iTerm2 (iTerm.app) added.
v0.2.1 (2015-09-15):
- [dev] Makefile improvements; various other behind-the-scenes tweaks.
v0.2.0 (2015-09-14):
- [enhancement] You can now use embedded (escaped, if necessary) double-quotes inside a multi-command string passed via eval.
- [doc] If installed via the npm registry, a man page is now installed (view with man ttab); if installed manually, ttab --man shows a plain-text version. ttab -h now only prints concise, single-page usage information.
v0.1.8 (2015-09-11):
- [doc] Incorrect new-window option corrected in examples.
- [doc, dev] Read-me improved together with the Makefile to turn off syntax highlighting for the CLI help chapter.
v0.1.7 (2015-06-26):
- [doc] Read-me: npm badge changed to shields.io; license badge added.
- [dev] Makefile updated.
v0.1.6 (2015-06-01):
- [doc] Read-me improvements; typo in CLI usage help fixed.
v0.1.5 (2015-06-01):
- [doc] Improved CLI usage help.
v0.1.4 (2015-06-01):
- [doc] Improved CLI usage help; keywords added to package.json.
- [dev] make browse now opens the GitHub repo in the default browser.
v0.1.3 (2015-06-01):
- [fix] The -g and -G options again correctly do not activate Terminal.app when creating the desired tab.
- [enhancement] Option parsing now accepts option-arguments directly attached to the option.
- [dev] Tests added.
v0.1.2 (2015-06-01):
- [doc] Manual-installation link and instructions fixed; examples fixed.
v0.1.1 (2015-06-01):
- [doc] README.md improved with respect to manual installation instructions.
v0.1.0 (2015-06-01):
- Initial release.

iha2/ttab