Tip: Shell Integration
Extraterm's shell integration unlocks many powerful features such as frames around command output, reusing command
output and in-place editing of text. bash, zsh and fish shells are supported. To enable it in your shell session see
this guide.
Tip: Command Palette
Extraterm has a pop up Command Palette
where all relevant commands can be seen, searched and executed.
Tip: Tabs
Use tabs to run multiple terminal sessions at the same time. Create a new tab by clicking on the plus button in the top
right or by using on the keyboard.
Move between tabs using next and
previous keys.
Tip: Frames
Once the shell
integration has been set up, Extraterm will place 'frames' around the output of commands. Frames also display
the command which was executed and warn when a command has indicated failure status. Frames can also be deleted
from the scrollback if desired (
) or moved
into their own tab for safe keeping (
), plus many
other things.
Tip: Cursor Mode
Extraterm has two modes: normal mode which acts as a traditional terminal emulator, and
cursor mode which allows you to navigate the screen and the contents of the scrollback using a cursor
like in a text editor.
Enter cursor mode using .
Once in cursor mode you have a blinking vertical bar cursor and keypresses are no longer sent to your shell. The
cursor keys works like a text editor and text can be selected using shift and copied to the clipboard
. Text
inside frames can also be edited in-place. Useful when you want to use previous command output to prepare your next
command line.
Exit cursor mode using .
More detailed
information can be found here.
Tip: Multiple cursor editing in cursor mode
Extraterm has some text editor features, and like many modern text editors it too support mutliple cursor editing.
When in cursor mode press
or the Command Palette
("Selection to Multiple Cursors") to create a column of cursors. Press Escape to return to one cursor.
To create fewer cursors, first select the rows where you want the cursors to appear before executing the multiple
cursor command.
Tip: Use cursor mode and frames to prepare complex
commands
Use cursor mode and
frames to edit
text already on the screen to prepare a complex command.
Once your command is complete the next question is how to get the shell to execute it. One way is to select it and
copy it to the clipboard , exit cursor mode and then paste it into the shell.
Another, faster way is to select the text and one of these commands:
- "type selection" command which types the selected text into the shell.
- "type selection and hit enter" command does the same thing as above but also executes the command.
Click here to see a
demo.
Tip: Use text from a frame in a command pipe-line
Once shell
integration is set up, Extraterm will place frames around the output of commands. Each frame has a little tag
with a number which indentifies the frame. Extraterm's from
command lets you
grab the contents of a frame and use it as part of a shell command.
For example, if we have run the ls
command and it has tag 5 then we can
use from
and the normal grep
command to filter the output.
from 5 | grep .txt
This will find any lines with the text ".txt" in it. This works across tabs and terminal sessions.
Click here to see a demo.
Tip: Use the "Go to Previous/Next Frame" commands to quickly move
through the scrollback
Use the "Go to Previous Frame" and "Go to Next Frame" commands to quickly navigate between frames in
the scrollback. This is useful when you are at the bottom of a tower of output and you want to get to the top.
Tip: Splitting the window
The "Horizontal Split"
and "Vertical Split"
commands let you split the window in half with side-by-side groups of tabs. These too can be split again if
desired.
These commands are all available in the Command Palette .
Tip: Drag and Drop tabs and command frames
Tabs can dragged around and repositioned using the mouse. Command frames can also be dragged out of the terminal and up to the tab bar. Command frames which hold text can also be dragged outside of Extraterm and dropped into any application which accepts text via drag and drop.