programmatically clear iterm2 buffer

Question

When I search with iterm2, using ctrl+f, it will search through older stuff in the buffer, older than the current process I am running in the terminal. In this case I don't care about the older stuff in the buffer, I want to delete it.

My question is - is there a way to programmatically clear the buffer, using a bash script/command? I could call this shell command from my process when it starts up.

SushiHangover SushiHangover · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-18T20:43:01

You can use AppleScript to clear the scroll back buffer and then do a terminal clear, drop the following into a bash script (or compile just the AppleScript part and run it via osascript)

Note: Trying to do just a "Clear Buffer" will not work as the cmd is actually still running and iTerm accept the CMD-K, but it does not clear the screen... bug? execution timing? ....

#!/bin/bash
read -r -d '' script <<'EOF'
on run argv
   tell application "iTerm"
     tell application "System Events" to keystroke "K" using {shift down, command down}
     tell current window
        tell current session
           write text "clear"
        end tell
     end tell
   end tell
end run
EOF
echo "$script" | osascript ``-'' $@

programmatically clear iterm2 buffer

1 Answers