Customize your Mac terminal using figlet

There are many ways you can customize your Mac OS X terminal. One way I customize my terminal was by using figlet, a computer program that generates text banners, in a variety of typefaces, composed of letters made up of conglomerations of smaller ASCII characters.

The best way I know how to install figlet in the terminal is by using homebrew. You can install homebrew with ruby by typing in the following command.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”

Then you can install figlet in the terminal with the following command.

brew install figlet

Once you have installed figlet you can start using it in your Mac OS X terminal. You can see all the fonts in the terminal by typing:

showfigfonts 

Once you have figured out the one you like type the command showfigfonts and the message as a string. For example I typed:

showfigfonts “Spyboy”

Then decide copy the figlet design you want. Before you past it type:

sudo pico /etc/motd 

Your password is required and it will open up a text editor. Paste your figlet design in code editor and save it by pressing control X. After that when you open up a new terminal window and your custom header will be on top!