Restart terminal without closing on MacOS

bash macos terminal iterm
blagus picture blagus · Jul 30, 2019 · Viewed 18.6k times · Source

How to restart my current MacOS terminal session without closing the window?

In Linux I use exec bash but it does not work in this environment. I made a few changes to the .bash_profile (prompt, alias etc) I would like to see without closing it and opening again.

thanks in advance

Answer

Mihir Luthra picture Mihir Luthra · Jul 30, 2019

Just type in the command:

exec bash -l

I guess that should do it.

For zsh,

exec zsh -l

This is needed because every shell on macOS by default is a login shell.

Justing writing exec bash would replace the current shell with a non-login shell which is not the same effect as closing and re-opening the terminal.

exec would make new bash -l process replace the current shell. If exec is not used, bash -l would spawn a new shell over the current shell incrementing the $SHLVL.

Related questions

How do I edit $PATH (.bash_profile) on OSX?

I am trying to edit an entry to PATH, as I did something wrong. I am using Mac OS X 10.10.3 I have tried: > touch ~/.bash_profile; open ~/.bash_profile But the file editor opens with nothing inside. My problem: …

Read More
How do I make this file.sh executable via double click?

First off I'm using Mac. Next, I need to execute this "file.sh" we will call it. Everytime I need to execute it I have to open Terminal and type: cd /Users/Jacob/Documents/folderWithFileInIt bash file.sh This is …

Read More
Running a command in a new Mac OS X Terminal window

I've been trying to figure out how to run a bash command in a new Max OS X Terminal.app window. As, an example, here's how I would run my command in a new bash process: bash -c "my command …

Read More