Here's How to Open a Terminal App in Your Current Emacs Working Directory

So you want to open a terminal from Emacs.

While Emacs comes with various modes such as shell, ansi-term, and eshell, sometimes you just want to open a directory in your trusty terminal application of choice.

The Basics: Opening a Terminal in The Current Working Directory

The below code will open a terminal in your working directory, either using the key combination C-c t or by using M-x open-terminal-in-workdir.

You are going to have to change the “konsole –workdir “ part depending on what terminal application you are using. I am using Konsole.

(defun open-terminal-in-workdir ()
  (interactive)
  (call-process-shell-command
   (concat "konsole --workdir " default-directory) nil 0))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c t") 'open-terminal-in-workdir)

Here are some replacements of “konsole –workdir “ for various terminal emulators:

Taking It a Bit Further: Opening a Terminal in the Project’s Root

This is great so far, howevever I might be nested deep within a project and would like to open a terminal at the root of the project.

I got around this by creating a little if-else statement. Note: You need Projectile for this to work.

If you are inside a project, the terminal will open in its root. If you are editing some random files that are not part of “a project”, this function will fall back on Emacs’ default-directory variable, which is your current working directory.

(defun open-terminal-in-workdir ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((workdir (if (projectile-project-root)
                     (projectile-project-root)
                   default-directory)))
    (call-process-shell-command
     (concat "konsole --workdir " workdir) nil 0)))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c t") 'open-terminal-in-workdir)

Hope this helps!