Terminal is a tool that we use almost every day as Linux Users. copying files, editing texts, running a service, and many things can be done through the terminal.
Therefore, making the terminal comfortable can make your work more enjoyable when using the terminal. Additionally, a nice-looking terminal will add up to the overall look of your desktop environment, Making your Linux desktop look more beautiful.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to customize Gnome Terminal, you will learn how to customize the font, color scheme, keyboard shortcuts, and everything else to make your terminal experience become more enjoyable.
What is Gnome Terminal
Gnome terminal is a default terminal that comes preinstalled with the Gnome Desktop Manager. It allows users to run commands, navigate through directories, edit files, and various other Command Line Interface(CLI) tasks.
Gnome Terminal provides a user-friendly interface to work with the command line on Linux systems.
If you are using Ubuntu or Fedora, chances are your default terminal is Gnome Terminal, because Ubuntu and Fedora are using Gnome as their default Desktop manager.
Gnome Terminal Features
Being part of Gnome Desktop Manger, Gnome terminal offers many good features we can use to make our work on the terminal environment much easier. Some of those features are:
- Multiple Profiles. You can work with multiple profiles in Gnome Terminal. This feature is very useful, especially when you are working on multiple projects with different needs for terminal configurations.
- Tabbed Window. Working with multiple terminals is now easier than ever. You no longer need to open multiple terminal windows, which can clutter your desktop. Instead, take advantage of the built-in tabbed window feature in Gnome Terminal. This allows you to work within a tabbed window system, where you can easily manage multiple terminal tabs using just one terminal window.
- Keyboard Shortcuts. With the help of keyboard shortcuts, you can significantly enhance your productivity and efficiency by eliminating the need for mouse navigation within the terminal. These shortcuts allow you to perform various actions quickly, such as navigating between tabs, copying and pasting, searching, and much more.
- Customizable. Gnome Terminal offers a lot of customization options, allowing you to personalize everything from fonts and colors to backgrounds and transparency levels. With these extensive customization features, you have the freedom to create a terminal environment that suits your unique style and preferences.
- Search Ability. Searching for previously executed commands is made easier with the search feature provided by Gnome Terminal. This handy function allows you to quickly locate specific commands within your command history, saving you valuable time and effort. With the ability to search through your executed commands, Gnome Terminal further enhances your command-line experience.
Installing Gnome Terminal
Before customizing Gnome Terminal, you need to ensure that it is already installed on your system. If you are using Ubuntu or Fedora, it is likely that Gnome Terminal is already installed. However, if for some reason Gnome Terminal is not yet installed, you can easily install it by running the command below:
For Ubuntu or Debian, run this command:
sudo apt install gnome-terminal
And for Manjaro or Arch Linux, you can use the command below:
sudo pacman -S gnome-terminal
After running the above command, the Gnome Terminal should be installed on your Linux machine.
Customize Gnome Terminal
Now comes the fun part which is customizing Gnome Terminal to enhance its appearance and elevate your overall terminal experience. Get ready to discover how to change fonts, color schemes, create transparent backgrounds, and much more.
Change Font in Gnome Terminal
Font plays an important role to make the terminal look better. With proper fonts, you can have a beautiful terminal display.
Fortunately, Gnome Terminal does support custom font so you can change the display font with any font you like. But of course, you need the proper font, for terminal display, you will need a monospace font so that the characters won’t collapse to each other.
To change the font in the Gnome terminal is easy:
- Open the Gnome terminal if you haven’t yet.
- Right-click and click preferences, this will open up the preferences window.
- In the profiles section, choose your currently active profile, in this case, it’s called
Unnamed
. - Under the
Text
tab, check theCustom font
box, and choose your preferred monospace font. - once you choose the font you like to use, click the
select
button. - Now you can close the preferences window and go back to the terminal, and the font should be already changed.
Change Font Size in Gnome Terminal
There are two ways of changing the font size in Gnome Terminal. a temporary method and a permanent method. With the temporary method, the font size will be back to the default size when you close the terminal window. While the permanent method will keep the font size even if you close the terminal window. You will learn both methods, so you can use any method you like.
To change the font size temporarily, you can simply use the keyboard shortcut.
use CTRL +
to increase the font size
use CTRL -
to decrease the font size
To change the font size permanently, you can do that by following the instruction below.
Similar to changing the font, changing the font size can be done from the preferences menu.
- Right-click on your Gnome terminal window and select
Preferences
. - In the profiles section, choose the
Unnamed
profile. - Make sure to check the
Custom font
box. - Then click the font name, there you can change the font size by using the slider or clicking on the
-
and+
buttons. - When you are done changing the font size, click the
Select
button and close the preferences window. - Now when you back to your Gnome terminal, the font size should be already changed.
Change Color Schemes in Gnome Terminal
Color schemes are also important for the appearance of the terminal. if the color scheme is dull, the terminal will look boring and not interesting to work with.
Therefore, the Gnome terminal gives you the option to customize the color schemes, so your terminal can have a better color scheme.
There are two parts that you can customize the color schemes. Text and Background Color
and Pallete
. Text and Background Color
is basically defining how the text and background color should appear. While Pallete
is defining the 16 colors of the text in the terminal.
Customize Text and Background Color.
To change the color schemes for Text and Background Color, you can follow the simple instructions below
- From your Gnome terminal window, press right-click and click on
Preferences
. it will prompt the preferences menu. - In the profiles section, choose
Unnamed
profile. - at the top of the window, click on the
Colors
section. - Then, under the
Text and Background Color
, make sure to uncheck theUse colors from system theme
box. - Below that, you can change the color scheme for text and background using the built-in schemes. Choose the color scheme that you like, for example, you can use the
Solarized dark
.
If you want a custom color scheme, in the drop-down choose the Custom
option instead, and set the colors from the Default color
boxes.
Customize Pallete color scheme.
The Palette color scheme has 16 colors that can be customized. Although you can easily just use built-in color schemes which already have great combinations.
- Right-click on Gnome terminal window, and click on
Preferences
, it will bring you to the Preferences menu. - In the profiles section, choose
Unnamed
profile. - Click on the
Colors
section, there you will see the Pallete section listed at the bottom section. - There you can choose built-in schemes such as polarized, gnome, Rxvt, and more. Or you can also choose Custom to set your own color scheme.
- Once you have done selecting the color scheme for Palette, you can close the Preferences menu and go back to the Gnome terminal, and see the result.
Change shell in Gnome Terminal
The default shell is mostly Bash. Bash is actually a solid and good shell for the Linux system. But the appearance is quite basic. Therefore, we need a better shell to make the appearance looks better.
One of the available options is Zsh. Zsh offers flexibility for customization and is able to extend the functionality with plugins.
You need to install Zsh on your Linux system first.
For Ubuntu or Debian based, you can install Zsh by using the command below:
sudo apt install zsh
For Manjaro or Arch Linux use the following command:
sudo pacman -S zsh
And for Fedora, you can use the command below:
sudo dnf install zsh
Once you have successfully installed Zsh into your Linux system. you can set Zsh as a default shell by using the command below:
chsh -s $(which zsh)
Now you have successfully changed the shell on Gnome Terminal.
Set Keyboard Shortcut in Gnome Terminal
With keyboard shortcuts, you can have a faster and more efficient workflow without the need to use a mouse.
By default, Gnome Terminal is already providing keyboard shortcuts that you can use. For example, you can open a new terminal window by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + N
, or you can open a new tab by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + T
.
If you feel you don’t like the default keyboard shortcuts, you can easily change them.
- Right-click on the Gnome terminal window, then click preferences.
- on the left side, find a menu called
Shortcuts
and click it, and you should see lists of keyboard shortcuts for the Gnome terminal. - Double-click on any command that you want to change the shortcut keys and it says “New accelerator” which is mean it waiting for your new shortcut keys. Press the key combination you want to set and it will automatically save the shortcut.
Repeat the process with other commands you want to change the keyboard shortcuts.
Disable the Scrollbar in Gnome Terminal
Scrollbar is quite useful to navigate and scroll through the terminal interface. And by default, the scrollbar is enabled in the Gnome Terminal.
But sometimes, you just want to have a more clear view of your terminal. having a scrollbar may reduce the aesthetic of your terminal. Therefore you may want to remove the scrollbar.
That’s okay, you can easily disable the scrollbar in Gnome Terminal by going to the preferences menu.
- Right-click on Gnome terminal window, and choose
Preferences
. - Under the profiles section, choose the
Unnamed
profile. - In the preferences menu, click the
Scrolling
section, in there you will see the optionShow scrollbar
. - Uncheck the
Show scrollbar
option to disable the scrollbar. - Once you are done, close the Preferences menu and go back to the terminal and you will see that the scrollbar Is already gone.
If you want to reenable the scrollbar, simply follow the same steps and check the Show scrollbar
option.
Change the Default Window Size in Gnome Terminal
Depending on your screen resolution, Gnome terminal window may appear either too small or to larger, therefore, Gnome terminal provides the ability to change the default window size.
To change the default window size in the Gnome terminal is simple:
- Right-click on the Gnome terminal window, and click
Preferences
. - On the left side, click on
Unnamed
profile. - Click on the
Text
section, there are listed some options with text-related settings. - Look for
Initial terminal size
option, there are two fields available there,columns
androws
. Columns represent width, while rows represent height.
You can set the size of the Gnome terminal window by editing the value of columns and rows. For example, you can set the columns to 90 and the rows to 30.
If you want to reset the window size, you can follow the same step as above, and then click the reset button on the right side.
Conclusion
In summary, there are a lot of options to customize Gnome Terminal. You have learned how to change the font, color scheme, shell, and more. You should now be able to customize them up to your creativity and imagination.