Backgrounds and glowing text

A terminal window can have a look of its own: a picture or a moving background behind its text, the text in one phosphor's colours, and a glow around it. This page covers choosing a look, each background, the text's palette and glow, and keeping the text readable.

A look belongs to one window and is one of its own settings, so it is set in This Window: in any tab of the window, open the tools menu and choose Settings. On Mac, iPad and Vision Pro only; iPhone has no This Window. See Give a terminal window its own settings.

Start from a look#

Under Look, choose Start From ▸ Choose a Look, then one of:

• Digital Rain: falling columns of green glyphs, with the text in Digital Green and a glow.
• Synthwave: a sunset over a grid that rolls toward you, with the text in Vaporwave and a pink glow.
• Amber Phosphor and Green Phosphor: a phosphor screen, with the text in that phosphor's colour and a glow.
• None: takes the look away.

Each sets the whole look at once, in place of the window's own, and you can change any part of it afterwards. A picture you chose for the window stays chosen, so going back to Picture finds it.

The background#

Background chooses what is drawn behind the text of every tab in the window:

• None, the starting setting: the window's canvas and glass, as always.
• Picture: a picture of your own (below).
• Digital Rain: falling columns of glyphs. With Quicken with Output on (the starting setting), they fall faster while a terminal in the window prints.
• Synthwave: a sunset over a rolling grid.
• Phosphor Screen: a glow in the text's colour, darker at the edges, with scanlines.

Intensity, from Faint to Strong, sets how strongly it shows. The window's own Opacity and Glass still show through around it.

Moving backgrounds stay still with Reduce Motion or Low Power Mode on, and while the app is in the background. In a window that isn't in front they move more slowly.

A picture#

1. Choose Picture as the Background.
2. Drop a picture on the well under it, or choose Choose… and pick one.

Then:

• Blur, from Sharp to Soft.
• Pixelate, from Smooth to Blocky.
• Tone to Theme, from the picture's own colours to the theme's.

Remove takes the picture away. The picture is kept on this device, at a size suited to a screen; a picture of 80 MB or more, or a file that isn't a picture, is refused, and the well says why.

Keep the text readable#

Readability, from Less scrim to More scrim, darkens the background under the text. Wherever the background is bright enough to make the text hard to read, such as a sun in a picture, it is darkened further, there alone, so ordinary text and dimmed text both stay readable while the rest of the background keeps its brightness.

What you can select, copy and search, and what VoiceOver reads, is the same text whatever the look.

The text#

Under Text:

• Text Palette: Theme's Own (the starting setting), Green Phosphor, Amber Phosphor, Digital Green or Vaporwave. The three phosphors turn every colour a program draws into a shade of one colour, by its brightness, keeping a little of its own hue so red and blue still differ, and that includes programs such as btop that draw with millions of colours. Vaporwave replaces the theme's sixteen colours with neon ones; colours a program chooses beyond those sixteen keep their own.
• Text Glow, from No glow to Strong glow: a soft glow around the text.
• Glow Color, once there is a glow: Text Color (the starting setting), Green, Amber, Pink, Cyan or Purple.

Where a look applies#

• Every tab in the window, local terminals on a Mac included, and a tab moved into the window takes its look.
• A look is saved with the window's other settings: it comes back after a relaunch, and On Mac, Save Workspace as Workgroup… keeps it with the Workgroup. The picture itself stays on the device where you chose it.
• Each part has a ↺ beside its name once set; choose it to go back to none. Reset This Window removes the whole look with the window's other settings.
• On Mac, Show All Windows and Terminal Overview show each window's look, standing still, around the pictures of its terminals.