Terminal

The Terminal is the main entry point into Linux on ChromeOS and the main way for you to interact with the development environment by running command line tools. We understand that the Terminal is a crucial tool for developers and are committed to improving developer experiences on ChromeOS. For this reason, as part of the M84 release, a newly redesigned Terminal launched with a brand new look as well as additional customizable themes and features. These new features make it more accessible and comfortable, and let you personalize the Terminal to feel uniquely your own.

Install and settings

Go to the ChromeOS settings and in the “Linux” section, “Turn on” Linux. This will bring up a window with a series of prompts. Choose your preferred username and disk size and click “Install”. When the installation is complete, a Terminal window will open.

When you first start up the Terminal, you’ll notice that the window now opens immediately and displays the progress of starting up the Linux container.

You can make the Terminal your own by changing the settings. Right-click the Terminal icon and select “Settings” from the menu.

Appearance and themes

You can customize the way the Terminal looks to fit your needs and preferences. Upon opening the Terminal settings, you’ll see customizations for “Appearance”. Here you can choose from preset themes or edit them by changing the following:

• background color
• text font, size, and color
• cursor shape, color, blinking

Any changes you make to each theme will be saved and remembered. If you want to reset a theme, click on it and you should see “Reset” appear. Click on it again and confirm that you would like to reset the theme to its original settings.

Keyboard, mouse, and additional behaviors

In the Terminal Settings, go to “Keyboard & mouse” to enable various keyboard and mouse shortcuts you are familiar with. Some shortcuts you may want to enable:

• ctrl + t new tab behavior
• ctrl + w close tab behavior
• ctrl + c copy behavior
• ctrl + v paste behavior
• Scroll to bottom after keystroke

You can also enable or disable copy and paste functionalities such as “Automatically copy selected content” and “Mouse right clicks paste content”.

The “Behavior” section of the settings has a couple more functionalities you can toggle. If you are unsure what a toggling a setting will do, you can always hover your cursor over it for additional details. This also works on all other Terminal settings options.

Multi-tabs and multi-window

The Terminal now has tab and multi-window support so you can multitask on different projects. Quickly create new tabs and windows via mouse or keyboard shortcuts. Organize your work across multiple windows by seamlessly dragging tabs between windows.