termie

A fast, lightweight GPU terminal multiplexer for Windows and Linux — tabs, split panes, and many shells across many repos in one window.

• downloads: GitHub Releases (Windows x64 installer; Linux x86-64 archive)
• plugins: registry at zeo/termie-plugins
• license: MIT OR Apache-2.0

Early but daily-usable. Windows and Linux (X11 and Wayland) run the same rendering, emulation, and plugin core. The global Quake hotkey is Windows-only.

features

GPU-rendered (wgpu glyph-atlas), a ~8.8 MB binary, and a lean dependency tree. A pre-warmed shell pool keeps the default shell ready, so new tabs and splits feel instant and the window appears before any shell finishes spawning.

Tabs and recursive split panes: split vertically or horizontally, drag tabs to reorder them, dock live panes on any side of another pane, move panes between Termie windows, tear tabs or panes into their own window, and broadcast input to every pane in a tab. Splits and "new tab here" open in the focused pane's directory; pick a per-tab shell from the command palette: pwsh / cmd / wsl on Windows, bash / zsh / fish on Linux, plus any custom profile. When a background tab's command finishes, its tab rail draws in green or red and settles into a dot; a bell in a background tab dots that tab, and a bell while the window is unfocused asks for attention (a taskbar flash on Windows, the window-manager's urgency hint on Linux), so a finished agent or build finds you first. The status bar follows the focused pane: its directory, a live timer while a command runs, then the exit status and how long it took. Right-click the pinned launcher for a new window, a built-in shell, or any custom profile on either OS (termie --shell bash from a script does the same everywhere).

Drag a tab out to make a window, or drop it into any other ordinary Termie window to combine them again. Starting Termie from a shortcut, shell, launcher, or Ctrl+Shift+N opens that window inside the running app, so live tabs and panes can move between them. Each move keeps the pane tree, shell processes, title, color, and status. Docking the final tab or pane closes the emptied source window.

To combine a complete window at once, drag the square Termie app badge at the far left of its title bar into another Termie tab strip. Every tab moves in order and the emptied window closes. Dragging the neighboring termie wordmark still moves the OS window.

Real terminal emulation: a vte-based parser, alt screen, scroll regions, mouse reporting, bracketed paste, OSC 7 cwd (tab labels + window title), reflow on resize, the kitty keyboard protocol (so Shift+Enter inserts a newline in TUIs), OSC 8 hyperlinks, optional OSC 52 clipboard writes, OSC 4/10/11/12 color queries, OSC 9;4 taskbar progress, underline styles, strikethrough, blink, and DEC 2026 synchronized output for tear-free frames.

Inline images via the kitty graphics protocol (raw RGB / RGBA / PNG, cursor flow like kitty's, z-index stacking, scoped deletes, unicode placeholders so images survive tmux and scrollback) and sixel — img2sixel, chafa, lsix, and anything else that probes DA1 finds both — plus full-color emoji, all packed into a dedicated RGBA atlas beside the glyph cache. On Windows, installs ship a current ConPTY host (conpty.dll + OpenConsole.exe, MIT, from microsoft/terminal) beside the exe, because the ConPTY built into Windows strips sixel before a terminal ever sees it; on Linux the kernel pty passes every byte through untouched, so nothing extra is needed. IME composition, a screen-reader path via AccessKit, and session restore (tab + split layout) with crash recovery.

Termie can be the default terminal: run "default terminal" from the palette once. On Windows 11, console apps launched from the run box, the start menu, or a double-clicked script open in a Termie window instead of the legacy console host. On KDE Plasma and Linux desktops that use xdg-terminal-exec, terminal launchers and Terminal=true desktop apps open in Termie. The same palette action turns it back off, restores the previous choice, and uninstalling removes Termie's selection.

"New admin window" opens the focused directory with an elevated shell. Windows uses its UAC relaunch; Linux keeps the graphical process in the desktop session and elevates only the new PTY through Polkit, with sudo as the fallback.

A command palette (Ctrl+P) for fuzzy access to every action, each listed with its shortcut, plus a searchable numbered tab switcher (tab search in the palette) for crowded windows. Save the focused directory with bookmark current location, or use the same action in a tab's context menu. Saved locations become searchable open bookmark actions. Seven built-in themes, three house schemes plus Catppuccin Mocha, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, and Nord, a bundled Maple Mono Nerd Font, adjustable font size / padding / cursor / opacity, and per-user colors.conf and keybindings.conf. The live font picker checks each installed face for real fixed-width ASCII and shows a specimen before it can be selected. Windows, Linux X11, and KDE Plasma Wayland have an optional Quake-style drop-down (quake_key).

A plugin system: plugins run as separate processes over a small JSON protocol, render widgets in a side dock (text or drawn graphics), talk over an in-process bus, and run inside an OS sandbox by default: a Windows AppContainer or a Linux bubblewrap jail. An in-app marketplace browses and installs them.

install

Windows. Download termie-<version>-setup.exe from the latest release and run it — a small native installer in termie's own style, not a wizard. It installs per-user (no admin prompt), and the options are right on its one page: PATH, Start-menu and desktop shortcuts, and the "Open in termie" right-click entry. It shows up in Add/Remove Programs, replaces any older install (including the previous MSI, after asking), and uninstalls cleanly. The build is unsigned, so SmartScreen may warn first: More info → Run anyway.

termie checks for a newer release once a day and shows a small UPDATE chip on the status bar when one exists. Clicking it (or running "update termie" from the palette) verifies the release asset, installs the new version, and relaunches with your session restored; nothing downloads without that confirmation. Linux archive installs update in place. Package-manager and source builds keep their owner and open the release page. Turn the check off entirely with update_check=false in config. An MSI is still attached to each release for anyone scripting Windows installs.

Linux. Download termie-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz, extract it, and run ./install.sh. The default prefix is ~/.local; pass an absolute prefix such as /usr/local to install elsewhere. ./uninstall.sh uses the same prefix. The archive includes the desktop entry, icon, licenses, and bundled assets. Termie runs on X11 and Wayland; a working Vulkan or GL driver is all the GPU side needs.

keybindings

key	action
Ctrl+T / Ctrl+W	new / close tab
Ctrl+Shift+D	duplicate tab (same shell and directory)
Ctrl+Shift+N	new window (same shell and directory)
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+1..9	next / nth tab
Ctrl+Shift+PgUp / Ctrl+Shift+PgDn	move tab left / right (tabs also drag to reorder)
Ctrl+Shift+E / Ctrl+Shift+O	split vertical / horizontal
Ctrl+P	command palette
Ctrl+Shift+P	pane mode (move / resize / zoom / close)
Ctrl+Shift+M	mark mode (arrows move, Ctrl+arrows jump words, Shift extends, Enter copies)
Ctrl+Shift+A	select all text in the focused pane
Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V	copy / paste (also Ctrl+Insert / Shift+Insert)
Ctrl+Shift+F	find in scrollback
Ctrl+Shift+B	broadcast input to every pane
Ctrl+Alt+A	jump to the next pane that failed, rang, or finished
Ctrl+Shift+W	close pane
Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down	jump to previous / next prompt (marked on the scrollbar)
Shift+PgUp / Shift+PgDn	scroll a page of history
Ctrl+Shift+Home / Ctrl+Shift+End	scroll to the top / bottom
F11	fullscreen
Ctrl+wheel	font zoom

Every binding is rebindable (or unbindable) in keybindings.conf; the full list is in the command palette.

shells

Windows auto-detects pwsh → powershell → cmd, with WSL selectable. Linux auto-detects bash → zsh → fish → pwsh. PowerShell launches -NoLogo -NoProfile unless profile loading is enabled. Bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell, and CMD emit prompt, command-start, command-finished, exit-status, and current-directory marks where the shell exposes them. These marks drive prompt navigation, status badges, scrollbar marks, tab labels, and "new tab here".

Any other shell works as a custom profile — add profile.<name>=<command line> to config (quote paths with spaces):

profile.git-bash="C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe" -i -l
profile.nu=nu.exe

Each profile shows up on the palette as new tab: <name>, can be bound in keybindings.conf by that same label, restores with the session, and duplicates like the built-in shells. A profile name also works as the shell default.

A shell or profile can carry its own theme — theme.<name>=<theme> paints that shell's panes with a different palette while the window chrome keeps the global theme, so a WSL split reads apart from your PowerShell pane at a glance:

theme.wsl=gruvbox
theme.git-bash=nord

configuration

Configuration lives in %APPDATA%\termie\ on Windows. Linux follows the XDG base-directory split: configuration in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/termie (usually ~/.config/termie), plugins in $XDG_DATA_HOME/termie, session state and logs in $XDG_STATE_HOME/termie, and generated shell hooks plus the update stamp in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/termie. Existing Linux files migrate from the old config directory on first use.

• config: general settings the in-app panel also writes (shell, theme, scrollback, ...). Plugins are sandboxed by default; plugin_sandbox=off disables confinement. Other opt-ins include quake_key=ctrl+grave on Windows or Linux, osc52=true for terminal-controlled clipboard writes, latency_hud=true, acrylic=true for Windows Mica or Linux compositor blur, right_click=paste, term_program=ghostty, font_weight=semibold, min_contrast=3, background_image=<path.png> with background_image_opacity=0.3, and ligatures=false.
• colors.conf — override theme colors, one key=color per line (fg, bg, cursor, sel, ansi0..ansi255; #rrggbb, #rgb, or r,g,b).
• keybindings.conf — rebind keys, one combo=action per line, e.g. ctrl+alt+t=new tab here.

Mistyped lines are reported to termie.log in the state directory.

The command line takes Windows Terminal's layout verbs too: termie new-tab -d ~/src ; split-pane -H --shell bash opens a window with that layout (nt/sp for short; -V splits beside and is the default, -H below). Scripted windows never overwrite your saved session. For automation and demos, --drive script.txt plays timed input through the normal handlers: 500 key ctrl+shift+m, 100 type hello, 50 pointer 320 140, and 0 mouse down / 100 mouse up. Pointer coordinates are client pixels and may sit outside the window to exercise tab or pane tear-out. pointer-window 1 300 120 aims at client coordinates in another Termie window without hard-coding its desktop position. assert windows 2, assert tabs 3, and assert panes 4 check process-wide live counts. assert window-tabs 1 2 and assert window-panes 0 3 inspect one window, with the main window at index 0. A failed assertion makes the process return an error after exit. Windows creates this window without activation. Linux compositors control activation, so a drive window can receive focus there.

build from source

Requires the Rust toolchain (stable).

Windows:

git clone https://github.com/zeo/termie
cd termie
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1

This builds in release, installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\termie, bundles the fonts, adds the directory to your user PATH, and registers an "Open in termie" context-menu entry. Restart your shell, then run termie. Remove it with uninstall.ps1. To run without installing, use cargo run --release.

Linux needs the windowing and input development headers before building. On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install pkg-config libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev libx11-dev \
                 libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libxrandr-dev unzip
# Fedora: pkgconf-pkg-config wayland-devel libxkbcommon-devel libX11-devel \
#         libXcursor-devel libXi-devel libXrandr-devel
# Arch:   pkgconf wayland libxkbcommon libx11 libxcursor libxi libxrandr

git clone https://github.com/zeo/termie
cd termie
cargo build --release      # target/release/termie

At runtime the binary needs those same libraries, unzip and bubblewrap for marketplace plugins, and a Vulkan or GL driver. mesa-vulkan-drivers covers the software fallback. Optional: systemd-run isolates each pane for independent out-of-memory handling, and xdg-open opens links. theme=auto reads and monitors the desktop color scheme through xdg-desktop-portal using gdbus. Copy assets/fonts/ next to a source-built binary (or run from the repo); the release archive already carries them.

Every platform:

cargo build            # debug
cargo test             # unit tests (incl. golden snapshots)
cargo clippy --all-targets
cargo build --release  # optimized

plugins

Plugins are separate processes termie talks to over newline-delimited JSON, so a plugin can be written in any language and be as heavy as it likes while the core stays lean. They render widgets in a side dock, talk to each other over an in-process bus, and run in an OS sandbox by default. Windows uses an AppContainer. Linux uses a bubblewrap jail that shows the plugin only its own install directory and grants network only with the network permission. The in-app marketplace pins downloads to one catalog commit per Termie release. The registry, plugin source, and catalog live at zeo/termie-plugins.

license

Dual-licensed under either MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Bundled fonts and other third-party material keep their own licenses — see THIRDPARTY.md.

built with

wgpu · winit · vte · portable-pty · cosmic-text