The refreshed Terminal utility in Mac OS X Leopard doesn’t have an obvious way to revert settings changes you make in the Preferences window. Or, at least, it doesn’t have an obvious way if you’re used to seeing a “Revert to Defaults” button or somesuch.
At first, while I was trying out some new font/color combinations — something I hadn’t touched since Jaguar — I was put off by the lack of a “Revert” or “Cancel” button.
Then, being a long-time Mac user, I realized that I should try thinking the Mac way. Instead pressing a button to get rid of the changes, what would a Mac application do? Undo!
I found that if you make preferences selections that modify your terminals’ appearance or behavior — which are “live” and affect your frontmost Terminal window immediately, so you can preview them — you can simply use Edit > Undo to revert whatever changes you’ve made. Just do it while the Preferences window is still open.
I’ll grant that Undo is not the most obvious option for this action in some sense. It’s not right in your face, staring at you from the Preferences window. Thinking about myself looking for a button to undo these changes reminded me of watching the convoluted steps I sometimes see people take for actions when they’re new to the Mac. Have we all just trained ourselves to expect complexity?