Go2ShellNext

Open your terminal from the macOS Finder toolbar — at the folder you're looking at.

Go2ShellNext is a native Swift rewrite of the classic Go2Shell utility, modernized for Apple Silicon and recent macOS. The whole app weighs in at ~700 KB with no bundled runtime — it uses the system frameworks only.

Features

• Toolbar button — hold ⌘ and drag Go2ShellNext.app onto the Finder toolbar; click it to open a terminal at the front Finder window's folder
• Right-click menu — right-click any folder in Finder and choose Open Shell Here to open it directly
• Multiple terminals — Terminal.app, iTerm2, Warp, Ghostty, WezTerm, Kitty, Alacritty
• Custom command — optionally run a command (e.g. vim .) after cd
• Open in new tab — reuse the front terminal window via a new tab when supported
• Tiny & native — pure Swift + AppKit/SwiftUI, no Electron, no WebView runtime, ~700 KB

Usage

Action	Result
Click the toolbar button / double-click the app	Terminal opens at the front Finder window's folder
Hold ⌥ while launching the app	Opens the settings window
Right-click in Finder → Open Shell Here	Terminal opens at that folder
Right-click in Finder → Settings…	Opens the settings window
Right-click in Finder → Quit Go2ShellNext	Quits the background app

Open in new tab (setting): works natively with iTerm2. For Terminal.app the tab is created via a simulated ⌘T, which needs Accessibility permission for Go2ShellNext (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). Without it — or if the keystroke misses — the app automatically falls back to opening a new window, so you always get a terminal.

Install

1. Download Go2ShellNext.app.zip from the latest release, unzip and move the app to /Applications.

2. The app is ad-hoc signed, so on first launch macOS may say "Go2ShellNext is damaged and can't be opened". Right-click → Open does not bypass this; clear the quarantine flag once instead:

   xattr -cr /Applications/Go2ShellNext.app

3. Launch it once, then enable the Finder extension: System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Extensions → File Providers → Go2ShellNext

4. Hold ⌘ and drag Go2ShellNext.app from /Applications onto the Finder toolbar.

Build from source

./build.sh          # compiles the FinderSync extension + app, assembles and signs Go2ShellNext.app

Requires macOS 12+ on Apple Silicon and Xcode command line tools (swiftc). No Node/Rust toolchains needed.

Project layout

swift/App/        Main application (AppKit + SwiftUI)
extensions/       FinderSync extension (appex)
assets/           Icon sources
legacy/           Archived Tauri prototype (no longer built)
build.sh          One-shot build script

Communication design (for the curious)

The sandboxed FinderSync extension and the main app talk via a small JSON request file (app-group container, with the extension's own container as fallback) plus a Darwin notification when the app is already running — or launch arguments (--open-dir=…, --settings) when it isn't. A fresh-request TTL prevents stale requests from hijacking a normal launch. See swift/App/FinderBridge.swift.