The completion-ignore-case is fairly straightforward, when it is set to on it will ignore letting casing for autocompletions. The final portion, the settings we change. inputrc file is just a configuration file that holds some customization variables for our terminal. This will allow us to edit the final part of our command. The next portion is nano, which is just a simple command line text editor. The command is from Linux/Unix systems and more info can be found here. sudo gives us full access to a file, think of it being similar to running a program/file in windows as an administrator. The command sudo nano ~/.inputrc has 3 parts to it.

Type cd Des and hit the tab key, if everything works as intended it should autofill with cd Desktop/įor those of you who are interesting in what each command does, I will explain it in further detail below.

Press command key + x to save, then press y to confirm.

Paste the following commands one at a time

Enter the command sudo nano ~/.inputrc and enter your password when prompted.

To turn on autocomplete in Mac Terminal do the following steps: It comes immensely useful when the folder name contains space and couple of words.īoth Linux and Windows OS have this feature turned on by default, unfortunately in OS X, this feature is turned off by default.

This feature will speed up your workflow completing a lot of commands for you.

Autocomplete will fill in the rest of your command with available options when you press the tab key while typing. One of the most useful features when navigating through files and folders in the terminal is autocomplete.

Mac on linux command line