Setting the Terminal Window Transparency

· by · TMO Quick Tip

The Terminal app allows UNIX experts to access a UNIX shell and enter commands directly. For those who use this facility frequently, it's not exactly clear how to set the transparency of the Terminal's window. Here's how.

After you launch the Terminal app, found in /Applications/Utilities, go to Preferences under the Terminal's main menu. Then select the Settings tab in the toolbar at the top and also select the Window tab.

 

Terminal prefs

Terminal Preferences

Try as you might, you won't find a setting for transparency anywhere until you come here and click on the Background control. That brings up not only a way to set the background color but also set the transparency at the bottom.

Terminal background color

 

Terminal background color has opacity control

That's all there is to it, but in this case, finding is a bit harder than doing.

John Martellaro

John Martellaro

John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer and has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include skiing, chess, science fiction and astronomy. You can follow John on Twitter at twitter.com/jmartellaro.

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