diff --git a/src/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/electron-browser/terminalInstanceService.ts b/src/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/electron-browser/terminalInstanceService.ts
index 45a5971aad9f2..e22c8b92540ab 100644
--- a/src/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/electron-browser/terminalInstanceService.ts
+++ b/src/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/electron-browser/terminalInstanceService.ts
@@ -98,10 +98,29 @@ export class TerminalInstanceService implements ITerminalInstanceService {
 			this._mainProcessParentEnv = env;
 		}
 
-		// For macOS just return the root environment which seems to always be {}, this is the
-		// parent of the main process when code is launched from the dock.
+		// For macOS it doesn't appear to be possible to get the "root" environment as
+		// `ps eww -o command` for PID 1 (the parent of the main process when launched from the
+		// dock/finder) returns no environment, because of this we will fill in the root environment
+		// using a whitelist of environment variables that we have.
 		if (isMacintosh) {
 			this._mainProcessParentEnv = {};
+			// This list was generated by diffing launching a terminal with {} and the system
+			// terminal launched from finder.
+			const rootEnvVars = [
+				'SHELL',
+				'SSH_AUTH_SOCK',
+				'Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render',
+				'XPC_FLAGS',
+				'XPC_SERVICE_NAME',
+				'HOME',
+				'LOGNAME',
+				'TMPDIR'
+			];
+			rootEnvVars.forEach(k => {
+				if (process.env[k]) {
+					this._mainProcessParentEnv![k] = process.env[k]!;
+				}
+			});
 		}
 
 		// TODO: Windows should return a fresh environment block, might need native code?