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I am using the terminal on Mac OS, but all the terminal's windows are borderless, making them difficult to distinguish when they are one over the top of the other. I can't find the way to add a 1px border around the window (my terminal's windows are all black backgrounded).

How can I add a colorful (or white) border to a terminal window?

Eric Leschinski
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Romain Jouin
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5 Answers5

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I had the same annoyance, and the Tab Bar, whilst handy, is not a substitute for multiple open terminals. The easiest solution I found was to use iTerm2 (free download) instead of Terminal. It has a preference option for switching on a 1px border (not enabled by default):

iTerm:: Preferences -> Appearance -> [Window] Show border around window

sim303
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Whoop! Whoop! Work-around alert...

You can alleviate the issue somewhat by setting the scrollbar to always show, rather than only when scrolling, so at least one side of the Terminal is always demarcated properly...

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowScrollBars -string "Always"

enter image description here

Note 1. You must quit and restart Terminal for this to take effect.

Note 2. This will also affect Safari, and other apps, which you may or may not mind.

Mark Setchell
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    the idea to hide damn scrollbars makes me want to quit using computers. – MK. Jan 26 '17 at 19:24
  • @MK. the default terminal on ubuntu is much nicer and by default solves OP's issue and many others – Scott Stensland Feb 17 '20 at 10:55
  • I had to write CSS stylesheets to make ubuntu terminal color its tabs in a way where I'd be able to tell which one is active. So... no. It was 4 years ago so m.b. they fixed it since, _but I remember_. – MK. Feb 18 '20 at 15:25
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I guess you have opted for a solution already, but I just thought of this fix: What it actually looks like I simply made a black background with a white border and went in "Preferences (cmd + ,) > Profiles > Text" and used the "Background > Image" option and uploaded the .png

Just made it, so I don't know if it will bring me troubles, but it sure looks good!

I am using the "Pro" test display, so the fonts work well on a black background. the border doesn't show much, but it is there

I can adjust the colors to your liking and send it back to you.

Cheers, -Jérémie

J. Auger
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I had the same problem, and while there is no way to actually add borders to the terminal, I found a happy alternative in using tmux - the terminal multiplexer.

Tmux allows to split the terminal/session into as many sub-windows as you'd like, each of these are separated by a dashed line. It is installed using homebrew: brew install tmux, it might be just what you need.

ahron
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In Yosemite (and maybe in other OSs before) there is the Tab Bar in terminal.

Its a modern way to deal with windows.

To activate Tab Bar:

In Terminal: View->Show Tab Bar

OR

Hit: ⇧+⌘+T

JohnnyJS
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  • can we split the screen with different terminals? I need to read simultaneously information from different servers – Romain Jouin Dec 01 '14 at 10:32
  • Not that I know of. You can use split pane, but thats intended just for you can SEE the previous commands you typed. so if you connecting to server on ssh in one window, and simultaneously want to work on local machine, thats cant be done with split pane. it must be another tab. – JohnnyJS Dec 01 '14 at 10:40
  • so I still prefer my several terms :-& – Romain Jouin Dec 01 '14 at 10:41
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    I found an idea : on the terminal preferences -> colors it is possible to set a different blurr and transparency for the non-active window. I set the non actives at 90% of transprency, and 100% blurr, which gives me a slight change between the activate and the non-activate terminals. – Romain Jouin Dec 01 '14 at 10:43