config file. Terminator manages its configuration file via the ConfigObj library to combine flexibility with clear, human editable files. As of version 0.90, Terminator offers a full GUI preferences editor which automatically saves its config file so you don't need to write a config file by hand.
Normally the config file will be ~/.config/terminator/config, but it may be overridden with $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (in which case it will be $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminator/config)
Control whether or not Terminator will load its DBus server. When this server is loaded, running Terminator multiple times will cause the first Terminator process to open additional windows. If this configuration item is set to False, or the python dbus module is unavailable, running Terminator multiple times will run a separate Terminator process for each invocation.
Control how focus is given to terminals. 'click' means the focus only moves to a terminal after you click in it. 'sloppy' means the focus will follow the mouse pointer. 'system' means the focus will match that used by a GNOME window manager.
When set to 'normal' the Terminator window opens normally. 'maximise' opens the window in a maximised state, 'fullscreen' in a fullscreen state and 'hidden' will make it not shown by default.
If set to True, the tab bar will be hidden. This means there will be no visual indication of either how many tabs there are, or which one you are on. Be warned that this can be very confusing and hard to use.
If set to True, the tab bar will not fill the width of the window. The titlebars of the tabs will only take as much space as is necessary for the text they contain. Except, that is, if the tabs no longer fit the width of the window - in that case scroll buttons will appear to move through the tabs.
If set to True, URL matching regexps will try to use POSIX style first, and fall back on GNU style on failure. If you are on Linux but URL matches don't work, try setting this to True. If you are not on Linux, but you get VTE warnings on startup saying "Error compiling regular expression", set this to False to silence them (they are otherwise harmless).
Default value: \fBFalse\fR on Linux, \fBTrue\fR otherwise.
If set to True, URL handling will be given over entirely to the program specified by 'custom_url_handler'.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Bcustom_url_handler\fR(string)
Path to a program which accepts a URI as an argument and does something relevant with it. This option is ignored unless 'use_custom_url_handler' is set to True.
If this is set to True, Terminator will never try to use 'real' transparency if your windowing environment supports it. Instead it will use 'fake' transparency where a background image is shown, but other windows are not.
These are the options Terminator currently supports in the profiles section.
Each profile should be its own subsection with a header in the format \fB[[name]]\fR
.Ballow_bold\fR(boolean)
If true, allow applications in the terminal to make text boldface.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Baudible_bell\fR(boolean)
If true, make a noise when applications send the escape sequence for the terminal bell.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Burgent_bell\fR(boolean)
If true, set the window manager "urgent" hint when applications send the escale sequence for the terminal bell. Any keypress will cancel the urgent status.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Bicon_bell\fR(boolean)
If true, briefly show a small icon on the terminal title bar for the terminal bell.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Bforce_no_bell\fR(boolean)
If true, don't make a noise or flash. All terminal bells will be ignored.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Buse_theme_colors
If true, ignore the configured colours and use values from the theme instead.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Bbackground_color
Default colour of terminal background, as a colour specification (can be HTML-style hex digits, or a colour name such as "red"). \fBNote:\fR You may need to set \fBuse_theme_colors=False\fR to force this setting to take effect.
A value between 0.0 and 1.0 indicating how much to darken the background image. 0.0 means no darkness, 1.0 means fully dark. If the terminal is set to transparent, this setting controls how transparent it is. 0.0 means fully transparent, 1.0 means fully opaque.
Sets what code the backspace key generates. Possible values are "ascii-del" for the ASCII DEL character, "control-h" for Control-H (AKA the ASCII BS character), "escape-sequence" for the escape sequence typically bound to backspace or delete. "ascii-del" is normally considered the correct setting for the Backspace key.
Default value: \fBascii\-del\fR
.TP
.Bdelete_binding
Sets what code the delete key generates. Possible values are "ascii-del" for the ASCII DEL character, "control-h" for Control-H (AKA the ASCII BS character), "escape-sequence" for the escape sequence typically bound to backspace or delete. "escape-sequence" is normally considered the correct setting for the Delete key.
If specified this sets foreground_color and background_color to pre-set values. Possible options are 'grey_on_black', 'black_on_yellow', 'black_on_white', 'white_on_black', 'green_on_black', 'orange_on_black', 'ambience', 'solarized_dark', 'solarized_light'.
An Pango font name. Examples are "Sans 12" or "Monospace Bold 14".
Default value: \fBMono 8\fR
.TP
.Bforeground_color
Default colour of text in the terminal, as a colour specification (can be HTML-style hex digits, or a colour name such as "red"). \fBNote:\fR You may need to set \fBuse_theme_colors=False\fR to force this setting to take effect.
Where to put the terminal scrollbar. Possibilities are "left", "right", and "disabled".
Default value: \fBright\fR
.TP
.Bshow_titlebar
If true, a titlebar will be drawn for each terminal which shows the current title of that terminal.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Bscroll_background\fR(boolean)
If true, scroll the background image with the foreground text; if false, keep the image in a fixed position and scroll the text above it.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Bscroll_on_keystroke\fR(boolean)
If true, pressing a key jumps the scrollbar to the bottom.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Bscroll_on_output\fR(boolean)
If true, whenever there's new output the terminal will scroll to the bottom.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Bscrollback_lines
Number of scrollback lines to keep around. You can scroll back in the terminal by this number of lines; lines that don't fit in the scrollback are discarded. Be careful with this setting; it's the primary factor in determining how much memory the terminal will use.
Default value: \fB500\fR
.TP
.Bscrollback_infinite
If this is set to True, scrollback_lines will be ignored and VTE will continue to allocate RAM for scrollback history.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Bfocus_on_close
Sets which terminal should get the focus when another terminal is closed. Values can be "prev", "next" or "auto".
Possible values are "close" to close the terminal, and "restart" to restart the command.
Default value: \fBclose\fR
.TP
.Bpalette
Terminals have a 16-colour palette that applications inside the terminal can use. This is that palette, in the form of a colon-separated list of colour names. Colour names should be in hex format e.g. "#FF00FF".
.TP
.Bmouse_autohide\fR(boolean)
Controls whether the mouse cursor should be hidden while typing.
Default value: \fBTrue\fR
.TP
.Buse_custom_command\fR(boolean)
If True, the value of \fBcustom_command\fR will be used instead of the default shell.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.TP
.Bcustom_command
Command to execute instead of the default shell, if \fBuse_custom_command\fR is set to True.
Default value: Nothing
.TP
.Bhttp_proxy
URL of an HTTP proxy to use, e.g. http://proxy.lan:3128/
Default value: Nothing
.TP
.Bencoding
Character set to use for the terminal.
Default value: \fBUTF-8\fR
.TP
.Bcopy_on_selection\fR(boolean)
If set to True, text selections will be automatically copied to the clipboard, in addition to being made the Primary selection.
Default value: \fBFalse\fR
.SHlayouts
This describes the layouts section of the config file. Like with the profiles, each layout should be defined as a sub-section with a name formatted like: \fB[[name]]\fR.
Each object in a layout is a named sub-sub-section with various properties:
[layouts]
[[default]]
[[window0]]
type = Window
[[child1]]
type = Terminal
parent = window0
Window objects may not have a parent attribute. \fBEvery\fR other object must specify a parent. This is how the structure of the window is determined.
.SHplugins
Terminator plugins can add their own configuration to the config file, and will appear as a sub-section. Please refer to the documentation of individual plugins for more information.
