You are required to first enable an option in your Preferences panel, and then you will have the option to launch an instance of Terminal in any folder of your choice – this was as true five years ago as it is on Big Sur today. Here’s how you can launch Terminal in the current folder location on your Mac.
Launch Terminal Window in the Current Folder on Mac
You do not need a third-party app to get the job done. All you need to do is visit the Preferences panel, tweak a few settings here and there, and you will be all set. Click on “none” next to “New Terminal at Folder,” and press a key combination on your keyboard to assign a new shortcut key to the feature. That way you will be able to launch a Terminal window using a shortcut key instead of pulling up the menu and selecting the option to launch one. Launching a local instance of Terminal should now be easy for you. Should you ever wish to disable the feature, you can do so from the Preferences panel by just unchecking the boxes that you selected in the above steps.
1. Can I drag-and-drop folders into the Terminal?
Yes, if you keep the Terminal shortcut in your Dock, then you can open a specific folder in the Terminal by drag-and-dropping that folder from the Finder window onto the Terminal icon. Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop the folder from Finder into an open Terminal window.
2. How do I navigate to a folder within the Terminal?
If you want to use the Terminal to navigate to folders, simply type cd followed by the directory you want to navigate to. For example cd Desktop or cd Desktop/Downloads To see the current directory you’re in in the Terminal, type pwd, which stands for “print working directory”. If your work revolves around working with local files using Terminal, and you do not want to go through the hassle of providing full paths to the files, you can simply use the above workaround to have Terminal launched keeping your current folder as its current working directory. If you want to do the opposite, then see our guide on opening any folder from the Mac Terminal. We can also show you how to repair your macOS hard drive using fsck.
