A modern GTK4 terminal for developers, infrastructure, and system administration
Zashterminal combines a VTE terminal with session management, an integrated file manager, optional AI assistance, and workflow tools — built on GTK4 and libadwaita for a native Linux desktop experience.
Supported installs: Arch/Manjaro (AUR), Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, NixOS. WSL (Ubuntu) is experimental.
- Gallery
- Features
- Imports & PAM
- Requirements
- Installation
- Usage
- Configuration
- Contributing
- License & support
Screenshots live in docs/gallery/ (regenerate with PYTHONPATH=src python3 scripts/capture_gallery.py).
Main window with a live shell — sessions sidebar, tabs, and header actions for search, file manager, and AI.
Split horizontally and vertically to watch logs, metrics, and an interactive shell in one tab.
Browse local (and remote/SFTP) directories under the terminal — size, permissions, owner, recursive filter.
Find bar with Case sensitive, Regex, and All tabs — Next/Previous jumps between matching panes.
Type once and send the same command to selected tabs/panes (with optional remembered selection).
Thirty built-in schemes plus Pywal wallpaper detection — preview before you apply.
Appearance, terminal behavior, profiles/backups, and advanced VTE options in a searchable Preferences window.
Background blur is rendered live by the compositor: it follows window movement, resizing and changes behind the terminal without screenshots, hidden windows or capture permissions. Enable Background Blur and raise Terminal Transparency to see the effect. Transparency and blur strength are separate controls.
Toggling blur takes effect immediately, including while Preferences is focused and the terminal is idle; changing transparency or moving the window is not required.
On KDE Wayland, the optional Zashterminal Per-Window Blur native effect enables Blur Strength levels 1–15 in Preferences. It changes the GPU sampling kernel for the requested terminal surface only; it does not change the desktop's blur strength or blur other applications. Requests are identified by the caller's authenticated PID and native surface ID, not the window title.
Strength changes affect the window whose Preferences you opened; other open terminal windows keep their own values. The last selected strength is saved as the default for newly created windows.
The native effect currently targets Fedora 44 x86_64, KWin 6.8.2 and Qt 6.11.2. Build it with rootless Podman and network access; no compiler or development packages are installed on the host:
bash native/kwin-blur/build.sh --stage
bash native/kwin-blur/build.sh --help--stage builds into the user cache without changing the running desktop. The helper's --help shows how to expose the staged plugin to a new nested KWin through QT_PLUGIN_PATH for isolated validation. After validation, install it into the existing system plugin directory with administrator authentication:
bash native/kwin-blur/build.sh --install-systemInstallation copies only the plugin; it does not restart KWin or change its global settings. Restart the terminal application to discover and load the effect. KWin's native API is private: rebuild and revalidate the effect after KWin/Qt upgrades; the helper rejects mismatched versions.
Without the extension, standard Wayland background effects, older KDE Wayland blur, and the X11 KDE blur hint remain available when advertised by the compositor. Their strength belongs to the desktop, so the independent-strength slider is disabled with installation guidance. On unsupported compositors the blur switch is disabled too. Existing nonzero screenshot-blur amounts migrate to enabled; transparency is preserved.
Optional multi-provider AI (Groq, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama / LM Studio). Only text you explicitly send is shared.
Terminal colors, output rules, and command-specific highlighting for ops-friendly readability.
SSH/local sessions with folders, auth, post-login commands, forwards, and optional per-session highlight overrides.
Browse and customize accelerators from the shortcuts dialog.
Reusable command snippets with icons and forms — insert, run, or open as a dialog.
| Area | What you get |
|---|---|
| Sessions | Local, SSH, and SFTP sessions with folders, restore, and layouts |
| Imports | SecureCRT directory trees, PuTTY .reg/.ini, mRemoteNG confCons.xml, OpenSSH ~/.ssh/config |
| Layouts | Horizontal/vertical splits; save and restore multi-pane setups |
| File manager | Local and remote browsing, drag-and-drop transfer, remote edit + upload on save |
| Search | In-terminal find with case/regex; All tabs scope jumps across panes |
| Highlighting | Output rules for 50+ commands; optional Pygments for cat / input |
| AI (optional) | Multi-provider chat, quick prompts, click-to-run snippets — selection only |
| Broadcast | Type once; run across selected tabs/panes |
| Appearance | 30 built-in schemes (default: GitHub Dark), transparency, shortcuts |
Default: GitHub Dark. Also included: Ayu Mirage, Catppuccin (Mocha / Latte), Dracula, Everforest, Gruvbox, Horizon, Kanagawa, Material Ocean, Monokai, Moonfly, Night Owl, Nord, One Dark Pro, Oxocarbon, Palenight, Rosé Pine, Solarized, Tokyo Night, VS Code Dark+, System Default, and light variants.
Switch or customize from Preferences → Terminal colors.
Bring sessions in from the main menu:
- SecureCRT — Sessions folder trees + Password V2 (
02:<hex>) - PuTTY — exported
.regor portable.ini(SSH hosts, keys, local forwards; optional/-as-folders) - mRemoteNG —
confCons.xmlSSH nodes (legacy / AES-GCM passwords; optional master password) - OpenSSH —
~/.ssh/confighosts synced on startup
Keyboard-interactive flows used with Balabit / One Identity privileged session gateways are supported.
One Identity (formerly Balabit) PAM docs: Privileged Access Management
| Component | Notes |
|---|---|
| Python | 3.10+ |
| GTK / Adwaita | GTK4, libadwaita 1.0+ |
| VTE | VTE for GTK4 (vte4 ≥ 0.76 recommended) |
| PyGObject, pycairo | GTK bindings |
| pycryptodomex | SecureCRT-compatible crypto |
| requests | AI API calls |
| pygments | Optional syntax highlighting |
| psutil, regex | Optional |
yay -S zashterminal # or: paru -S zashterminalOr system-wide via installer:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leoberbert/zashterminal/refs/heads/main/install.sh | bashinstall.sh detects the distro, installs system packages, and places a venv under /opt/zashterminal/venv.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leoberbert/zashterminal/refs/heads/main/install.sh | bashSame installer (emerge). It writes package.use, prefers the amd64 binhost when available (GENTOO_USE_BINHOST=0 for source builds), installs gsettings-desktop-schemas, and puts pycryptodomex in the venv (Gentoo’s pycryptodome exposes Crypto, not Cryptodome).
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leoberbert/zashterminal/refs/heads/main/install.sh | bashThe launcher sets GDK_BACKEND=x11 when GTK was built without Wayland but Distrobox still exports WAYLAND_DISPLAY / GDK_BACKEND=wayland.
Uses the project flake into the user profile. Enable flakes and ensure git is installed, then:
sudo nixos-rebuild switch
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leoberbert/zashterminal/refs/heads/main/install.sh | bashnix.settings.experimental-features = [ "nix-command" "flakes" ];
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ git ];Tested on Ubuntu 24.04 + WSLg. Same install.sh flow as Debian/Ubuntu. For non-English locales, set LANG / LC_ALL and, if needed, setxkbmap in ~/.bashrc, then restart WSL.
zashterminal [options] [directory]| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-w, --working-directory DIR |
Initial working directory |
-e, -x, --execute COMMAND |
Run command on startup (remaining args included); closes when the command exits by default |
--close-after-execute |
Close after execute (default with --execute) |
--no-close-after-execute |
Keep the shell open after --execute |
--ssh [USER@]HOST |
Open an SSH session |
--new-window |
Force a new window |
zashterminal ~/projects
zashterminal -e htop
zashterminal --ssh user@server.example.com
zashterminal --no-close-after-execute -e "ls -la"Files under ~/.config/zashterminal/:
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
settings.json |
Preferences, appearance, shortcuts, AI |
sessions.json |
Saved SSH/SFTP sessions and folders |
session_state.json |
Window / restore state |
layouts/ |
Saved split layouts |
logs/ |
Optional file logs |
backups/ |
Encrypted backup archives |
Highlight rules ship in data/highlights/ (docker, git, systemctl, kubectl, and more).
- Fork the repository
- Create a branch (
git checkout -b feature/your-change) - Commit and push
- Open a pull request
CI runs unit tests on Python 3.10–3.13 with coverage. Pull requests also trigger a SonarQube Cloud scan when the repository secret SONAR_TOKEN is set (optional SONAR_ORGANIZATION / SONAR_PROJECT_KEY). See sonar-project.properties.
Blur protocol regressions run headlessly over private Wayland socketpairs and an isolated D-Bus daemon. They verify compositor-visible pending/committed state, independent surface strengths, cleanup and protocol failures without connecting to the desktop session or requiring the optional KWin effect. Install libwayland-client and libwayland-server runtime libraries plus dbus-daemon for these tests; both CI workflows install them explicitly.
Important: in SonarQube Cloud → project → Administration → Analysis Method, disable Automatic Analysis. CI analysis and Automatic Analysis cannot run together.
Local checks:
python3 -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m coverage run -m unittest discover -s tests -v
PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m coverage reportLicensed under GNU GPL v3 or later — see LICENSE.
If Zashterminal helps your workflow, support development on Ko-fi.
Contact: leo4berbert@gmail.com · LinkedIn
Thanks to the GNOME, GTK, VTE, and Pygments communities.
Leonardo Berbert