Close Terminal window from within shell script (Unix)?

Asked 10/1, 2012 at 4:40 Answered 1/5, 2022 at 17:24

Is there a way to close a Terminal window from within a shell script? I have a .command file that should just get out of the way once it's done.

Lockout answered 10/1, 2012 at 4:40 Comment(3)

Then why open one in the first place? – Dogmatize 10/1, 2012 at 4:41

Doesn't exit -f work for you? You might want to use nohup if you don't want your commands that are running to quit abruptly. – Salian 10/1, 2012 at 4:43

@IgnacioVazquez-Abrams I run a script by double-clicking a .command file, the functionality is complete, end of operation. i don't need the Terminal window hanging around. What's confusing about this? – Lockout 11/1, 2012 at 6:14

Using exit 0 will cleanly terminate the script.

Whether Terminal window stays open is user-configurable. The default is to always stay open. To change this:

Terminal.app > Preferences > Profiles > Shell
    - "When the shell exists:"
        > Close if the shell exited cleanly
    - "Ask before closing:"
        (•) Never
        -- OR --
        (•) Only if there are....

When "Close if shell exited cleanly" is used, the script will close the window if the exit result is 0, which is the default if nothing went wrong.

Triatomic answered 11/1, 2012 at 16:15 Comment(4)

I do have "lose if shell exited cleanly" set, however in a certain script I want the terminal to stay open until user closes it... anyway around that? – Nutritive 14/5, 2013 at 2:37

Not directly (because .command adds ;exit to the shell), but you call an AppleScript that doesn't close, e.g.: osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal"' -e activate -e 'do script "run.my.jobs"' -e 'end tell' -- that window will always stay open – Triatomic 24/5, 2013 at 14:29

Very cool. Thanks @SimonUrbanek. Getting my feet wet in the Appleverse and this tip is helping me automate some chores. – Hubris 14/10, 2013 at 18:48

Works, but note that in Yosemite this preference is under Terminal -> Preferences -> Profiles, then click on Shell tab. – Brilliance 21/6, 2015 at 19:45

Since you don't want to delete all Terminal windows, first change the name of your window from "Terminal" to something else:

echo -n -e "\033]0;My Window Name\007"

Then at the end of the script, use:

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to close (every window whose name contains "My Window Name")' &

Lugworm answered 15/1, 2015 at 18:32 Comment(3)

Still asks for confirmation to close it unless you change Terminal pref. – Prothalamium 30/11, 2016 at 18:18

@damasio If you change the end from & to & exit at the end there will be no confirmation dialog – Endothelium 4/1, 2017 at 18:53

@Lugworm is it possible to close a specific tab rather than a whole window? – Kristenkristi 30/5, 2019 at 21:29

You can use apple script to quit the terminal app. Add the following to your script -

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to quit'

This will give you a popup confirming to close the app. You can disable this in Terminal preferences.

Alternatively, you can also use killall command to quit the app. The following would work just as well.

killall Terminal

Note:

Just as a side note, you can freely add the above commands to your script and it would work as you want. However, there are few caveats. First being you will limit the ability of your script to work on different boxes. Secondly, it would be safer to use nohup so that any commands that are currently running won't quit due to quitting of the Terminal app.

Salian answered 10/1, 2012 at 4:53 Comment(5)

+1 I don't have a Mac so I'm going to assume this is the correct answer. – Achaea 10/1, 2012 at 5:2

@Achaea LOL .. I knew we could run apple scripts from terminal. Didn't really knew it was the osascript command. However, there is another cool command called killall which kinda does the same. Thank you for your trust and upvote. Appreciate it. :-) – Salian 10/1, 2012 at 5:6

... wow - this is really radical - killing all open scripts is certainly not what I'd recommend. Note that the behavior is user-configurable so if you change your setting in Settings -> Shell -> When the shell exists to a more sane "Close if shell existed cleanly" then you simply need exit 0 (or nothing) really. – Triatomic 10/1, 2012 at 18:13

@SimonUrbanek didn't realize Terminal had that config option. That works perfectly. Your comment is really a separate answer on its own -- I went ahead and wrote it up as an answer below. Feel free to copy and paste it under your name if you want. Thanks! – Lockout 11/1, 2012 at 6:27

killall Terminal will kill all the terminal windows. Not at all user friendly option. – Leitman 24/9, 2018 at 6:13

This works for me:

#!/bin/sh

{your script here}

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to close (every window whose name contains ".command")' &
exit

This will work for closing just your windows opened with a .command file but leave things already running in other terminal windows. I know that I almost always have either sass or grunt watch something so I don't want to quit terminal totally.

Rois answered 25/9, 2014 at 17:21 Comment(1)

Variation for when you'd also like Terminal to quit, but only if there's no more open windows.

osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal"' -e 'close (every window whose name contains ".command")' -e 'if number of windows = 0 then quit' -e 'end tell' & exit;

. Multiple -es add line breaks in the script; "\n" has issues for me. – Abhorrent 22/11, 2017 at 11:26

closeWindow() {
    /usr/bin/osascript << _OSACLOSE_
    tell application "Terminal"
        close (every window whose name contains "YourScriptName")
    end tell
    delay 0.3
    tell application "System Events" to click UI element "Close" of sheet 1 of window 1 of application process "Terminal"
_OSACLOSE_
}

This will close the Terminal window for your script and keep any other Terminal windows open as long as their window titles don't match. For it to work Terminal will have to be added to the list of applications permitted to use the Accessibility framework. You can also cycle through Terminal windows with a repeat command and close every window x that contains a UI element "Close" on sheet 1.

Rigorous answered 14/1, 2014 at 16:21 Comment(3)

Where do I put this script? – Thyestes 1/2, 2014 at 20:55

Paste it inside your Bash script and call the closeWindow function when your script is completed. The function must be pasted into the script before it is called. – Rigorous 2/2, 2014 at 23:56

Had to activate Terminal as Accessibility for this. Feels a little like a security vulnerability... But works fine now thanks! – Marilla 26/8, 2016 at 20:18

I find the best solution for this is to use Automator to create a true OSX application which will work the same way regardless of how your system is configured. You can have the Automator run your shell script, or you can embed the shell script itself in Automator.

Here is how you do it:

Run Automator (in Applications).
Choose "New Document" and when it asks "Choose a type for your document" choose "Application"
In the left panel, select "Utilities" then "Run Shell Script".
Type in your script commands in the workflow item in the right panel. You can either call another shell script, or just put your commands in their directly.
Save the Application, which will be a full-fledged Mac App. You can even cut-and-paste icons from other apps to give your script some personality.

Luciana answered 12/8, 2015 at 1:5 Comment(1)

Upvoted. Very useful and swift solution in my case (mac user). – Jory 6/10, 2019 at 9:48

#!/bin/bash -x

{your script here}

. exit 0
kill -9 $PPID

you can also create a shortcut for your script:

cp yourscript.sh ~/bin/yourshortcutnamewhateveryouwant

then type

yourshortcutnamewhateveryouwant

will run whatever is writen into script at any directory.

Forgery answered 1/5, 2022 at 17:24 Comment(0)

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