Does recent macos have TTYs enabled? If not, is it possible to enable?

On most Linux distributions, you have the ability to press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to open TTY1.

Does macOS have this ability? Is there a way to enable it?

If macOS freezes, it could be quite handy to be able to switch over to a TTY to enable one to execute a command or two to fix things.

If it matters, I am using a MacBook Air M1.

There is an answer on stackoverflow suggesting that you can use Fn+Ctrl+Alt+F1, but that doesn't seem to work for me. It is also from 2009, so it could very well be out-of-date information.

Only one TTY (TTY1) is available in OSX. To enable tty use fn+ctrl+alt+F1.


macOS boots into the graphical environment directly, there is no underlaying TTY from which the GUI is started (unlike Linux which boots into text mode from where you start X11 or whatever graphical environment you use).

You can enable ssh logins and then try to log in via ssh if the GUI freezes. This obviously requires access to a second device though.


nohillside is correct that no equivalent to "Ctrl+Alt+Fn" exists on the Mac. The GUI implementation is not the same, although MacOS does have the ability to run XWindows/XOrg based applications through the use of an appropriate built-in tool.