Termina v0.13.0

FAQ

Is Termina free and open source?

Yes. It is free and released under the MIT License. The source is on GitHub. The bundled fonts and the shell marks in the profile menu carry their own licenses, listed in the repository’s NOTICE file; Symbols Nerd Font Mono’s license is beside the font file.

Does it collect data or phone home?

No account, no telemetry, no analytics. The one request Termina makes on its own is the update check: at startup, at most once a day, it asks the GitHub releases API for the newest version, and sends nothing about you or the machine beyond the request itself. Turn it off under Settings → Advanced → Updates → Check for updates at startup, or set updates.check=false in the settings file.

Everything else that reaches the network is something you started: the programs you run, the links you click, and settings sync once you connect it, which pushes and pulls your key bindings to the Git repository you named and nowhere else. The debug log stays in the settings folder, and a program’s desktop notification goes to your own desktop.

Which platforms does it run on?

macOS on Apple Silicon and Intel, Windows on x64, and Linux on x64 and arm64. The installers bundle their own Java runtime, so you do not need Java installed. They are on the releases page: a .dmg for each Mac, an .msi for Windows, and a .deb and an .rpm for each Linux architecture. Homebrew and winget packages are planned but not published yet.

The app is unsigned. How do I open it?

Nothing is signed yet. The macOS app is not signed with an Apple Developer ID and is not notarized, so the first launch is refused: allow it once under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, SmartScreen may warn on the first run: More info, then Run anyway. Each release lists its files’ SHA-256 checksums in checksums_sha256.txt. See Troubleshooting.

Why JavaFX?

Termina shares its toolkit with Editora, the same author’s editor, which is what lets the themes, the command palette, the fonts and the Settings window carry over between the two. It also gives one codebase for macOS, Windows and Linux, and the emulator and PTY libraries Termina builds on are JVM libraries. On Linux under Wayland, JavaFX runs through XWayland, since it has no Wayland backend.

Why not write the emulator?

Because the hard part of a terminal is being xterm: cursor modes, character sets, scroll regions, four mouse reporting formats and about a hundred control sequences, where a mistake shows up as a program quietly misbehaving rather than as a bug anyone can see. JetBrains’ JediTerm, the emulator inside their IDEs, has been through that, and its core knows nothing about drawing. Termina does the drawing, the input and everything around it. See Introduction.

Does it work with tmux, vim and ssh?

Yes. Programs see TERM=xterm-256color and COLORTERM=truecolor. Full-screen programs get the alternate screen and mouse reporting, so vim places its cursor where you click, htop responds to clicks, and less and man scroll with the wheel. tmux runs like any other program, with no special integration, and vim and tmux can copy to your clipboard over ssh (OSC 52). Over ssh, the tab is named ssh while it runs, closing it asks first, and on a slow connection what you type appears at once, dimmed until the far end echoes it. See What programs can ask for.

Does it support the kitty keyboard protocol, notifications, ligatures or images?

The kitty keyboard protocol, yes: a program that asks for it, as Neovim, Vim, Helix, fish and nushell do, gets Escape on its own, Ctrl+I apart from Tab and Shift+Enter as a key of its own, and all of the protocol’s further flags. Desktop notifications from programs (OSC 9 and 777) and links they declare (OSC 8), yes. See What programs can ask for.

Ligatures and images, no: ligatures are not drawn (Fira Code is bundled, without them), and there is no image protocol (sixel or kitty graphics). An image a program sends with the kitty graphics protocol is discarded, as xterm does, rather than printed as a line of text.

Does it use the CPU when nothing is happening?

Very little. A tab repaints only while there is something to draw, so with one tab sitting at a prompt Termina measured 0.8% of a core, down from 2–3% before 0.11.0. A tab that is not selected keeps its output and paints it when you switch to it, so a build in another tab does not compete with the one you are typing in; its activity and bell marks still update. Knowing what a tab is running costs microseconds, since Termina asks the operating system for the shell’s children rather than reading the whole process table.

Editora is a text editor by the same author, and Termina takes several things from it:

  • The Editora Dark and Light themes, “Caret & Ink”, with the terminal’s ANSI colors derived from Editora’s syntax colors.
  • The command palette: the same card, the same matcher and ranking, and the same Emacs keys, ported as they are, so the two palettes rank alike.
  • The bundled fonts: the same five monospace families and Inter.
  • The Settings window’s shape: a grouped sidebar, search, and no OK button.
  • Settings sync, ported from Editora’s: in Termina it carries the key bindings between computers, through a private Git repository you own.
  • The icon, which keeps Editora’s tile and colors with a shell prompt on it.

Settings are separate. A file path in the terminal can open in Editora with Open files with set to editora {file}:{line}; see Links.

Where are my settings?

In ~/.termina/settings.properties on every platform, unless moved with --config-dir or TERMINA_CONFIG_DIR. It is a plain properties file you can edit while Termina is closed. See Settings.

How do I report a bug or ask for a feature?

Open an issue at github.com/adriandeleon/Termina/issues. For a bug, include the output of termina --version, your platform and shell, what you did and what happened, and the debug log (Settings → Advanced → Diagnostics → Show Debug Log…, then Copy). Troubleshooting says how to run --version from a packaged app.