"Everything should be obvious and easy to use."
- some lazy developer (me)
Skyterm is basic terminal emulator inspired by great terminal emulators like Terminator and Tilix
I built it because I wanted a simple terminal emulator with all my requirements included:
-
Baked in themes - I dont want to download themes from different places and spend time configuring them. I want a terminal to have 10-20 solid light and dark themes that I can start using off the bat.
-
Obvious menu and shortcuts - one annoying feature of many new GPU terminals is lack of right click menu. I dont want to read the docs and remember various keyboard shortcuts. The menu should be simple, obvious and easy to use - and also provide keyboard shortcuts for same actions
-
Lean and mean - the terminal should be as minimal on resource usage as possible, and still have extremely fast performance and rendering using GPU rendering if available
-
The focus of the terminal should be out of box, batteries included functionality for 99% of required terminal workload, ie, ssh, panes, tabs, splitting, fonts, themes, for anything more advanced, there will be an option to customize. But once you install Skyterm - it should come with usable sane defaults and options for vast majority of users
Skyterm's aim is to be light weight, low-resource and fast.
It uses GPU rendering with OpenGL for fast performance.
Skyterm is written with Claude code and all code is human reviewed and tested.
Skyterm is written in Rust for performance, memory safety and availability of large number of terminal application libs.
Skyterm has the following features:
- Tabs
- Panes (ability to split a tab into multiple panes)
- Infinite scrollback
- built in Themes (future release will add Terminator-compatible theme files)
- shortcut key bindings
Skyterm aims to be basic, fast and no-nonsense terminal emulator tailored for system administrators, developers and anyone who wants a responsive and lightweight terminal that doesnt get in your way.
all Skyterm actions are available through a menu (right click to open menu) or through a keyboard shortcut.
to zoom in on pane content
Linux
Ctrl + "+" (zoom in)
Ctrl + "-" (zoom out)
MacOS
Command + "+" (zoom in)
Command + "-" (zoom out)
or with mouse
Linux
Ctrl + mouse scroll up (zoom in)
Ctrl + mouse scroll down (zoom out)
MacOS
Command + mouse scroll up (zoom out)
Command + mouse scroll down (zoom in)
open new Tab
Linux
Ctrl+A → T
MacOS
Command + A → T
rename a Tab
by default, each tab will be named Tab + incremented number, to change the name of each tab, double click on Tab header and type in a new name, hit Enter
Panes are virtual sub-terminals inside the parent terminal window
Split panes
Linux
Ctrl+A → Right key (split pane right)
Ctrl+A → Left key (split pane left)
Ctrl+A → Up key (split pane right)
Ctrl+A → Down key (split pane down)
or Terminator-style shortcuts
Shift + Ctrl + O (split horizontally)
Shift + Ctrl + E (split vertically)
MacOS
Command+A → Right key (split pane right)
Command+A → Left key (split pane left)
Command+A → Up key (split pane right)
Command+A → Down key (split pane down)
Pane cycling
Linux
Ctrl+A → o Cycle to the next pane in the tab
Ctrl+A → h Focus pane to the left
Ctrl+A → j Focus pane below
Ctrl+A → k Focus pane above
Ctrl+A → l Focus pane to the right
MacOS
Command+A → o Cycle to the next pane in the tab
Command+A → h Focus pane to the left
Command+A → j Focus pane below
Command+A → k Focus pane above
Command+A → l Focus pane to the right
Panes can be dragged into new positions or moved to another tab via the Pane toolbar visible on top right corner of each pane.
To move a pane to another tab, drag the pane via Toolbar drag icon and hover over the tab you want to place it, then drop it into a position inside this tab.
Pane toolbars can be disabled in Settings > Behavior or via config file variable 'show_pane_toolbar'
To open a new terminal window, right click Menu > New Window or via shortcut
Shift + Ctrl + N
Copy
Shift + Ctrl + C
Paste
Shift + Ctrl + V
Select All
Shift + Ctrl + A
Themes can be applied globally to all tabs and panes by going to Menu > Settings > Theme and choosing a color theme
To apply to specific pane, right click on the pane, Menu > Themes > choose a theme - this will be applied locally to the pane
You can also scroll through available themes and see how they look on the pane:
Linux
hold down Ctrl + A and hit ' or / to cycle up or down a theme
MacOS
hold down Command + A and hit ' or / to cycle up or down a theme
Custom Themes
to add your own custom theme, place a theme-name.toml file into
~/.config/skyterm/themes
directory
custom themes are declared in a TOML format
[themes]
[themes.MyTheme1]
palette = "#353535:#d25252:#a5c261:#ffc66d:#6c99bb:#d197d9:#bed6ff:#eeeeec:#535353:#f00c0c:#c2e075:#e1e48b:#8ab7d9:#efb5f7:#dcf4ff:#ffffff"
background_color = "#323232"
cursor_color = "#d6d6d6"
foreground_color = "#ffffff"
font_size = 12
font_path = "/usr/share/fonts/myfont/myfont.ttf"
[themes.SomeOtherTheme]
cursor_color = "#BAFFAA"
foreground_color = "#FFFFFF"
palette = "#444444:#FF0054:#B1D630:#9D895E:#67BEE3:#B576BC:#569A9F:#EDEDED:#777777:#D65E75:#BAFFAA:#ECE1C8:#9FD3E5:#DEB3DF:#B6E0E5:#FFFFFF"
Custom themes will show up in Menu > Themes > Custom
additional configration can be applied to your skyterm config file
located in ~/.config/skyterm/config.toml
font_path = ":embedded:JetBrainsMono-Regular:"
font_size = 16
theme_name = "Skyterm Blue"
scrollback_lines = 10000
cursor_blink = true
click_word_select = true
copy_on_select = false
a custom font path can be added to font_path variable
theme_name is the default theme applied to all panes and tabs
click_word_select toggles double-click-to-select-word and triple-click-to-select-line (set to false to disable). Also available under Settings > Behavior.
copy_on_select automatically copies any selection (word, line, or drag) to the clipboard as soon as you make it (set to true to enable). Also available under Settings > Behavior.
for specific theme on a specific pane, right click > Menu > Themes and choose a theme to apply to this specific pane
Skyterm supports preconfigured pane layouts
Available layouts
single
+----------------+
| |
| |
| |
| |
+----------------+
2 panes vertical
+------+ +------+
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
+------+ +------+
2 panes horizontal
+----------------+
| |
| |
+----------------+
+----------------+
| |
| |
+----------------+
3 panes
+---------+ +---------+
| | | |
| | | |
+---------+ +---------+
+---------------------+
| |
| |
+---------------------+
4 panes
+---------+ +---------+
| | | |
| | | |
+---------+ +---------+
+---------+ +---------+
| | | |
| | | |
+---------+ +---------+
Pane layout can also be configured in skyterm config TOML (default is single pane)
default_layout = single / 2v / 2h / 3 / 4
or from the Menu > Settings > Behavior > Default layout
cargo build --release
binary is located in target/release/skyterm
for RPM builds
cargo install cargo-generate-rpm
cargo build --release -p skyterm-gui
cargo generate-rpm -p skyterm-gui
or run ./package-rpm.sh
Install: sudo rpm -ivh target/generate-rpm/skyterm-0.1.1-1.x86_64.rpm
Upgrade: sudo rpm -Uvh target/generate-rpm/skyterm-0.1.1-1.x86_64.rpm
Verify: rpm -qip target/generate-rpm/skyterm-0.1.1-1.x86_64.rpm
for DEB builds
./package-deb.sh
for MacOS builds
./package-macos.sh
- cycle tabs using Control + Tab (done)
- fix Macos small pane size jitter bug
- linux - ncdu not working, not scrolling up or down (done)
-
tabs are wider in size and can be dragged left or right
-
maximum number of tabs by default is set to 20 for performance reasons. To change this number, update tab_max_number variable in config.toml
-
when trying to create new tab after max # of tab limit reached, a warning banner appears and explains why new tab isnt being opened
-
closing pane, tab or window now throws a confirmation prompt, can be disabled via confirm_ variables in config file
confirm_tab_close = true confirm_pane_close = true confirm_window_close = true
-
panes are now draggable, each pane has a small tooltip on top right, with Drag and Close buttons. Panes can be dragged into new horizontal or vertical position, when you hover over a new position, the position is highlighted with green color
-
added "new window" command to spawn off a new terminal window
-
can drag a pane into a different tab
-
custom themes can now be added via toml theme files
add documentation on themes, add ability to integrate custom themes via terminator-style config filesadd New Window commandchange split menu option to single row with 4 sub buttons Up, Down, Left, Right- add keyboard shortcut helpers to all menu commands (gray shortcut helper text)- add button few pixels to right of rightmost tab "new tab", should be able to create new tab via button (along w menu and KB shortcut)
add ability to drag and drop panes in different locations, ie terminator behavior, move panes left, right etcadd ability to drag a pane into a different tab, highlight the drop placement area on the new tab
git tag -d v0.1.7
git tag v0.1.7
git push --force origin v0.1.7