Terminal.app ⌘N suddenly opens new tab by default. Don't want that

⌘N (Command-N) opens new tab instead new window. Only option-⌘N creates a new window.

I want to get back to the traditional behavior. Most apps use ⌘N to create a new window, so I keep forgetting to add the option key just for the Terminal app.

What's the easiest way to make ⌘N open up a new Window by default in Big Sur 11.6? Note: Terminal.app already has ⌘T to open a new tab so having two shortcuts to do that makes no sense.

Solution 1:

I expect your problem might be resolved if you go to System Preferences -> General and change the “Prefer Tabs” menu option to “in full screen” or “never”, whichever you might prefer, from “always”.

Update

For those interested, this setting was under System Preferences -> Dock for Catalina (10.15), Mojave (10.14), High Sierra (10.13), and Sierra (10.12).

Solution 2:

The answer I accepted by @Alper,is the best workaround so far. I call it a workaround, because there is buggy behavior bug as of Big Sur 11.6. By changing prefer tabs to never, it breaks the configuration I liked for Safari where I do prefer new tabs.

These are the problem areas:

• General System Preferences → Prefer Tabs, "always"
• Keyboard System Preferences → Shortcuts
• Terminal.app menus

"Prefer Tabs always" has the following associated misbehaviors, and I've filed feedback with Apple about it:

1. Terminal.app : Shell → New Window → New Window with Profile no longer works. It opens a new tab instead of window, even if that menu item is explicitly selected with mouse or trackpad. Assigning a shortcut to it doesn't fix that (i.e. Keyboard System Preferences → Shortcuts). That's a bug.

2. By accident I discovered Option-⌘N in Terminal.app does open a new window. However, defying precedent, there is no corresponding menu item with Option-⌘N assigned to it, whereas hotkeys generally correspond to menu items. The only menu option that says it can create a new window (per issue 1 above), does the wrong thing, and isn't even associated with Option-⌘N, which creates a new window.

3. When ⌘N creates new tabs (in aforementioned scenario), the new tab created shrinks all the existing tabbed panes down to the default size of the new window! That really disrupts the workflow, since I don't want to resize the other tab, which may have corresponded to big windows. That weird tab-resizing behavior doesn't seem to occur with ⌘T which is the standard menu item to create a new tab.