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How do I close the Terminal in OSX from the command line?

Fresh7 days ago
Mar 15, 2026162401 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

Why doesn't "exit" close a Terminal.app window on Mac OS X? Is there a way to close the window without using the mouse?

Error Output

$ exit
logout

[Process completed]

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
Unverified Fix
New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: How do I close the Terminal in OSX from the command line?

Low Risk

A window displayed by Terminal.app is just the frontend for the process you choose to run inside of it - in your case, a Unix shell. When you exit the shell, the Terminal.app does not close the window by default, so you have the possibility to inspect the output from whatever command you ran, after it finishes. You can change your preferences here Terminal Preferences -> Settings -> Shell: to either always close the window, whatever the exit status of the shell was close the window if the shell…

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