Terminal settings, themes and snippets

The terminal adds three pages to Settings: Connections, Terminal and Snippets. This page covers what each controls, editing themes, giving a terminal window its own settings, importing an SSH config file, and Tailscale.

Connections#

• Auto-reconnect on disconnect: try again after a dropped connection. On by default.
• Confirm before closing active sessions: ask before disconnecting a connected session. On by default.
• Keep scrollback during session and Max scrollback lines (1,000 to 100,000; default 10,000). Scrollback stays in memory and is cleared when the session ends.
• Suggest fixes for errors: when a terminal's output shows an error, Apple Intelligence on this device explains it and offers a fix to review. On by default, and kept on this device. To stop it in one terminal only, use the menu on the suggestion itself; see The session's tools menu.
• On Mac, Local Terminal: the Shell and Working directory for new local terminals. Leave them empty for your login shell and home folder. A Workgroup's tab can override them. Whether they run in tmux is on the Terminal page, under tmux.
• Session Recording: how many recordings you have and the space they use.
• Bell enabled plays a sound when a program rings the bell. It is off by default. Visual bell also flashes the terminal, and works only while Bell enabled is on.
• Host key verification: Ask or Strict. See Sign in with keys and trust host keys.

Terminal#

• Theme: the current theme and its font. Edit Theme opens the theme editor.
• Canvas: a tint for the terminal background. Opacity, Glass and Material are shared with every window and set in Settings under Appearance. A window can keep its own of these and more; see Give a terminal window its own settings.
• Font Family (SF Mono, Monaco, Menlo or Courier New) and Font Size (10 to 24 points).
• Initial Terminal Size: Columns and Rows for a new terminal before its window is measured.
• On Vision Pro, Mac and iPad, Resizing: When a window is resized, choose Change Rows and Columns (the starting setting), where a smaller window holds fewer and the program redraws to fit, or Scale the Text, where the terminal keeps its rows and columns and its text grows and shrinks with the window. Scale Text in a window's bar switches that window alone. See Scale the text with the window.
• Cursor Style (Block, Underline or Bar) and Blinking cursor.
• On Mac, Previews: Show previews, Never, Mouseover (the starting setting) or Mouseover + Space, for the file a path in a terminal names. See Preview a file over the terminal.
• On Mac, tmux: Keep local terminals running with tmux keeps local terminals running when you quit, update or force quit the app. Running in the background shows whether they are running and how many there are, and End All Local Terminals… ends them all. See Local terminals on a Mac. Each saved host has its own tmux setting, in its Terminal service; see Turn it on.

Edit a theme#

1. Choose Edit Theme.
2. Select a theme in Themes. New and Duplicate make an editable copy; Delete removes a custom theme; Reset restores a built-in one.
3. Change its Name, Canvas Material (Automatic, Light or Dark), Background, Foreground, Cursor, Selection, font, and each normal and bright color under ANSI Colors. Use Apple Clear Dark Colors takes the text, cursor, selection and ANSI colors of Terminal's Clear Dark profile and sets Canvas Material to Dark; the background, name and font stay as they are. Preview shows the result.
4. Choose Save. The selected theme becomes the terminal's theme.

On Mac: Import reads a Terminal profile From .terminal File…, or from Apple Built-in Profiles.

Sync terminal settings, under iCloud Sync in the theme editor's list of themes, keeps your themes the same on every device. It also syncs your Workgroups and your reconnect, closing, scrollback, bell, cursor, initial size, resizing, previews and tint preferences. It never syncs passwords, keys, saved connections, host keys or snippets.

Give a terminal window its own settings#

Anything about how a terminal window looks and behaves can be set for that window alone, so you can tell your windows apart at a glance, or keep a larger font in one. In any tab of the window, open the tools menu and choose Settings: it opens on This Window. All Terminals, beside it, changes every terminal window. iPhone has no This Window: its terminals all use All Terminals. On Mac, a local terminal's tools menu opens the same Settings; the app's own Settings are in the app menu, or press ⌘,.

This Window has:

• Appearance: Opacity, Glass and a Glass Tint. On iPad, also Material.
• Theme: any theme from your theme library, its Font Family and its Font Size.
• Cursor: Cursor Style and Blinking cursor.
• When resized (on Vision Pro, Mac and iPad): Change Rows and Columns or Scale the Text. Scale Text in the window's bar changes this setting.
• Show previews (on Mac): Never, Mouseover or Mouseover + Space.
• Bell and Scrollback: Bell enabled, Visual bell, Keep scrollback during session and Max scrollback lines.
• Activity (on Vision Pro): Auto-focus on activity. While a terminal in this window prints, Grid and Carousel bring it forward, and the window's orb pulses (see Shrink a session window to an orb on Vision Pro). Until you change it here, it follows the saved Workgroup the window was opened from, and is otherwise off.

Each setting follows All Terminals (or Appearance, or Settings) until you change it here. Once you do, a small ↺ appears beside its name; choose it to follow again. Its tooltip says what it returns to: hold the pointer over it, or on Vision Pro look at it. Reset This Window, at the end, returns every one. Every tab in the window changes at once.

Opacity, Glass and Material are the window's own Appearance: change them here and only this window changes; change them in Settings under Appearance and every window that hasn't set its own changes. A tint colours the terminal whatever its opacity; for a completely clear terminal, set Opacity and Glass to 0% and choose no tint. On Vision Pro, Glass is the window's glass: at 100% it's the system's glass, and at 0% there is none, so only the text floats in the room. Opacity paints the area behind the text.

A theme comes from your theme library, which syncs with Sync terminal settings. If a window's theme isn't on this device yet, the window uses the theme from All Terminals until it arrives.

Some settings are only ever for every window: Initial Terminal Size (a window that is already open has its own size), and the settings for connections, host keys, Tailscale, SSH keys, local shells, recordings, snippets and sync.

• A tab you move into another window takes that window's settings. Move Tab to New Window gives the new window the settings of the one the tab left.
• The settings stay with the window: they come back when the app relaunches.
• On Mac, the tab icons in the window's sidebar take its tint.
• On Mac, Save Workspace as Workgroup… saves the window's settings with the Workgroup, and the Workgroup opens with them, on every device where Sync terminal settings is on. Changing a window's settings doesn't change a saved Workgroup; to update one, save the window again under its name and choose Replace. A device not yet updated still opens it with the window's glass and tint.

Snippets#

A snippet is a saved command you run from a terminal's tools menu.

1. Open the Snippets page and choose Add Snippet.
2. Enter a Name and the Command. Description (optional) and tags are optional.
3. Choose Add.

Each snippet shows how often and how recently you used it. Its edit button changes it; swipe it away, or use Delete, to remove it.

Import an SSH config file#

1. On the Connections page, under Import SSH Config, paste the contents of an OpenSSH config file.
2. Choose Import into Server Configs.

Each explicit Host entry becomes a saved connection, using HostName, User, Port and IdentityFile. The result lists how many were imported, updated and skipped, and why. Match, Include, wildcard entries and other options are skipped and reported.

Tailscale#

1. On the Connections page, under Tailscale, enter your Tailnet name.
2. Choose an Auth method, API Key or OAuth Client, and enter the credentials.
3. Choose Save & Test. Connected to Tailscale. confirms it works.

The library toolbar then has Tailscale, which lists your tailnet's devices. Select a device and choose Import to save it as a connection, finishing the form that opens, or Connect to enter a username, password and port and sign in once without saving.