Terminal

Athas includes a built-in terminal so you can run commands without leaving the editor.

Features

• Multiple Terminals: Create as many terminal tabs as you need and pin the important ones
• Split Panes: Split any terminal right or down, nest splits, and drag the dividers
• Shell Selection: Choose bash, zsh, fish, nushell, PowerShell, or a custom profile
• Shell Integration: Prompt marks, exit codes, and working-directory tracking for zsh, bash, fish, PowerShell, and Git Bash
• Clickable Links: URLs, file paths with line numbers, and OSC 8 hyperlinks open with Cmd/Ctrl+Click
• Command Notifications: Get told when a long command finishes in a terminal you are not looking at
• Terminal Persistence: Terminals and their split layouts restore across app restarts
• Search: Use Cmd/Ctrl+F to search terminal output

On Windows, WSL distributions appear as terminal shells. Terminals created from WSL workspaces start in the matching Linux distribution and working directory. See WSL.

Shell Integration

When shell integration is enabled (the default), Athas injects a small script into supported shells at launch. Nothing is written to your dotfiles.

• Each prompt gets a mark in the gutter that turns green or red once the command finishes
• Cmd/Ctrl+Up and Cmd/Ctrl+Down jump between previous and next commands
• Copy Last Command Output (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+C) copies exactly what the previous command printed
• The tab title follows the shell's working directory
• Programs that report progress (for example winget or a build script using OSC 9;4) show a progress indicator in the tab

Shell integration can be turned off under Settings → Terminal → Launch.

Split Panes

• Split the focused terminal with Cmd/Ctrl+D (right) or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+D (down)
• Split any tab from its context menu, or drag a tab onto the edge of a terminal pane
• Drag the divider to resize; double-click it to make the panes equal again
• Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Left and Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Right move focus between panes
• Unsplit from the context menu or command palette moves a pane back into its own tab
• Closing a pane collapses the split and focuses its neighbour

Links

Hover a link to see where it goes, then Cmd+Click (macOS) or Ctrl+Click (Windows, Linux) to open it. Web and mail links open in your browser. File paths, including path:line:column forms printed by compilers and test runners, open in the editor at that position. Tools that emit OSC 8 hyperlinks, such as ls --hyperlink and ripgrep, work the same way.

Command Notifications

If a command runs for at least ten seconds and finishes while its terminal is hidden, not the active tab, or the window is in the background, Athas shows a toast with a Show action, adds an entry to the notification center, and sends a native notification when the app is not focused. Inactive tabs also show a green or red dot until you look at them. Turn this off under Settings → Terminal → Launch → Command Notifications.

Colors

Every builtin theme ships a full 16-color ANSI palette, so ls, git, and test runners look as their authors intended. Custom themes can define terminal-black through terminal-bright-white. The Minimum Contrast setting lifts colors that would be hard to read against the background without changing the theme itself.

Context Menu

Right-click a terminal tab for:

• Pin/Unpin Terminal
• Split Right, Split Down, and Unsplit
• Duplicate Terminal
• Clear Terminal
• Rename Terminal
• Export Output
• Close Terminal, Close Others, Close All, Close to the Right

Keyboard Shortcuts

Terminal Management

• Cmd/Ctrl+N - New terminal while the terminal is focused
• Cmd/Ctrl+W - Close current terminal or pane
• Cmd/Ctrl+D - Split right
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+D - Split down
• Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Left / Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Right - Focus previous / next pane
• Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown - Previous / next terminal
• Cmd/Ctrl+1-9 - Switch to terminal by number

Terminal Operations

• Cmd/Ctrl+F - Search in terminal
• Cmd/Ctrl+K - Clear terminal
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+A - Select all
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+C - Copy last command output
• Cmd/Ctrl+Up / Cmd/Ctrl+Down - Previous / next command
• Cmd/Ctrl++ - Increase font size
• Cmd/Ctrl+- - Decrease font size

Every shortcut can be changed under Settings → Keyboard.