Detect Terminal Color "Theme" from Command Line

When one uses the terminal inspector, one can change many properties of the terminal, such as background color, text color, and selection color.

How can I detect what these properties have been set to from the command line?

Is there some cache or file within "/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources" that holds this information?

Thank you.

Solution 1:

Terminal Preferences are stored in the com.apple.Terminal.plist file (/Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist) and while it can be read using the defaults command, nonetheless much of it may not be discernible.

Copy and paste the following command into a Terminal and then press Enter:

defaults read com.apple.Terminal 

Solution 2:

We can use an AppleScript to both retrieve and set the profile of the foremost Terminal window:

echo 'tell application "Terminal" to return name of current settings of first window' | osascript

We can similarly set the profile:

echo 'tell application "Terminal" to set current settings of first window to settings set "Basic"' | osascript

Replace "Basic" with the name of the profile you wish to adopt.

These commands will apply to the current/foremost tab or window of Terminal.app

I've also written a script that will get/set the profile depending on whether a profile name is provided: https://github.com/starbase527/dotfiles/blob/master/local/bin/term-profile . Example usage:

# Gets profile name
> term-profile
Basic
# Sets profile to Basic
> term-profile Basic
>