Case insensitive command-line completion for Terminal

Written on September 06, 2014

You might call me stubborn - coming from a strong Windows background - but I find it annoying that OS X’s Terminal is case sensitive if it comes to command-line completion.

You can change its behavior to case insensitive by putting the following line into a file .inputrc in your home directory ~/:

set completion-ignore-case On

Or you could just open a Terminal window (Command + Space and type Terminal) and execute the following command (which does exactly the same):

echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc

Now your Terminal’s command-line completion is set to be case insensitive.

Note that you’ll need to open a new Terminal window for the changes to be effective.

Martin Buberl

Purveyor of Internet duct tape.
If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to shout @martinbuberl.