Terminal and command-line tools

Open Terminal with Spotlight or from Applications → Utilities. Terminal is the application window; the shell is the program reading your commands inside it.

The default interactive shell on current macOS installations is Zsh. Confirm the current shell and working directory:

printf '%s\n' "$SHELL"
pwd

The prompt often shows your account, machine, and current folder. Do not paste a command merely because a website says to “open Terminal.” Read the program, arguments, paths, redirections, and use of sudo first.

Apple Command Line Tools

Git, compilers, headers, and build utilities may require Apple’s Command Line Tools. Request their installer with:

xcode-select --install

If they are already installed, macOS will tell you. Verify the selected developer directory and Git:

xcode-select -p
git --version

The complete Xcode application is much larger and is not required for every command-line workflow. Install it when your project needs the full Apple platform SDKs or IDE.

Know where a command comes from

command -v git
type git

These checks help distinguish an Apple-provided command, a Homebrew command, an alias, and a shell function.

Continue with the Shell Commands Course for navigation, files, permissions, pipes, processes, and scripting.

Try this: open a fresh Terminal window. Identify its shell, current directory, and the path of git without changing the machine.