Using screen with multiple tabs in Apple’s Terminal.app

I’ve explored this topic in the past, and even tried my hand at writing some AppleScript when we moved to OS X Leopard. I found a solution way-back-then, and with all the new servers in place I wanted to replicate my setup for these new machines.

My current configuration is like this: I have a dock stack which opens a list of pre-configured Terminal settings. Clicking on a Transformer icon opens a Terminal with four tabs. Inside each tab I SSH to the appropriate machine and reconnect to a named screen session.

Sounds complicated, right? It’s not, really.

I thought I’d be able to edit an existing .terminal file and change the necessary settings for a new machine, but that didn’t work. What I need to do is create four seperate Window configurations and wrap them in a single Window Group. Here’s how you do that.

Firstly, open Terminal. Get to the Window menu through Terminal > Preferences... > Settings. Make a new setting and configure all the details as you like. You can also copy an existing setting to use as the base (which is what I did). I called my Window setting “Jazz 1″. Choose the Shell tab and click the “Run command” checkbox. Enter ssh -t jazz 'screen -d -R tfg_1' as the command, and check “Run inside shell.” This means when you open this Window you’ll ssh to jazz (change your server details here) and execute screen.

Now I copy this to Jazz 2, Jazz 3, and Jazz 4. For each Window you’ll need to change the name of the screen session to tfg_2, tfg_3 or tfg_4. You might name your screen sessions differently.

Open a new Terminal and open the Jazz 1 Window by choosing Shell > New Window > Jazz 1. Repeat the same process for Jazz 2, 3 and 4 but choose Shell > New Tab instead. Now you’ll have your four-tabbed Terminal with each tab logged into the remote server. We save this configuration by choosing Window > Save Window as Group... from the menu. Open your Window Group and drag the newly created configuration onto your desktop. You’ll now have a .terminal file on your filesystem which you can use to open this exact configuration in the future.

Change the icon and drag it into the dock and you’re all done!