open new tab in iTerm and execute command there

Question

I have found way to open new tab in iTerm:

newtabi()
{
    osascript -e 'tell application "iTerm" to activate' -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTerm" to keystroke "t" using command down'
}

And I want to execute some commands in new tab. Let it be simple command pwd. How to do it?

If I run ...

newtabi && pwd

The new tab is opened as expected, but pwd command is executed not in new tab but in old one, where I typed newtabi && pwd

I use zsh. My os is OS X 10.8.5

Answer 1

Use tell session -1 of current terminal to write text "pwd":

activate application "iTerm"
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "t" using command down
tell application "iTerm" to tell session -1 of current terminal to write text "pwd"

Answer 2

As of at least macos Mojave, iTerm 3.2.8, if you run:

$ open -a iTerm .

It will add it as a tab to the current window.

Answer 3

osascript \
-e 'tell application "iTerm" to activate' \
-e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTerm" to keystroke "t" using command down' \
-e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTerm" to keystroke "ls"' \
-e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTerm" to key code 52'

Answer 4

I couldn't get the accepted answer to work. I also wanted to pass multiple commands. This is what I came up with.

newtabi(){  
  osascript \
    -e 'tell application "iTerm2" to tell current window to set newWindow to (create tab with default profile)'\
    -e "tell application \"iTerm2\" to tell current session of newWindow to write text \"${@}\""
}

Example usage

newtabi pwd
newtabi 'cd ~/ && pwd'
newtabi 'echo \"Hello New Tab\"'

For more complex actions, I would recommend breaking up the commands.

code_folder="/path/to/code"

alias project="cd ${code_folder}/my-project/foo && yarn run start"

Then, newtabi project

Answer 5

ttab is a macOS and Linux CLI for opening a new terminal tab/window, optionally with a command to execute and/or display settings

From its samples:

# Open a new tab, execute a command, wait for a keypress, and exit.
ttab 'ls "$HOME/Library/Application Support"; echo Press a key to exit.; read -rsn 1; exit'

Answer 6

In case you are searching for JXA version:

Reusable class

class iTerm {
  constructor() {
    this.app = Application("iTerm");
    this.window = this.app.currentWindow();
  }
  findOrCreateTab(tabName, command) {
    this.app.activate();
    let existingTab = this.findTab(tabName);
    if (existingTab == undefined) {
      existingTab = this.createTab(tabName);
      console.log(`Created new tab: ${tabName}`);
      existingTab.currentSession().write({ text: command });
    } else {
      existingTab.select();
      console.log(`Found existing tab: ${tabName}`);
    }
    return existingTab;
  }
  createTab(name) {
    const newTab = this.window.createTabWithDefaultProfile();
    const session = newTab.currentSession();
    session.name = name;
    // console.log(newTab.index());
    // console.log(newSession.name());
    // console.log(newSession.profileName());
    return newTab;
  }
  findTab(name) {
    const tabs = this.window.tabs();
    for (const tab of tabs) {
      let session = tab.currentSession();
      // Strange, but iTerm uses `profileName` instead of `name` for keeping manually assigned session name.
      const tabName = session.profileName();
      if (tabName === name) {
        return tab;
      }
    }
    return undefined;
  }
}

In case you are also interesting how to use ESM modules in JXA (via browserify), then here is a good example: https://github.com/johnelm/node-jxa. Plus https://www.npmjs.com/package/esmify.

After setting up you can import reusable class as show below:

import iTerm from "../lib/iTerm";

const app = new iTerm();
app.findOrCreateTab("MyTab", `cd "$HOME"`);