Shell profiles

A profile is a name, a command and, optionally, a starting directory. It is what a tab is opened as. A single “path to your shell” setting can name only one program, and a machine often has several: zsh and fish, or on Windows Command Prompt, two PowerShells and every WSL distribution.

Where profiles come from

The list has three parts, always in this order:

1. Default Shell: your own login shell, as the system reports it. It is always first and is the one profile that cannot be hidden, so a window can always open a tab.
2. Discovered: shells found installed on this machine, re-detected at every launch.
3. Yours: profiles you add in Settings or in the settings file.

Nothing discovered is written down. Uninstall a shell and it leaves the list rather than becoming an entry that fails to start. Discovery runs in the background at launch, so a menu opened in the first moment may be shorter until it finishes.

What is discovered

macOS and Linux

The shells named in /etc/shells, plus those found on your PATH and in the usual package directories (/opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin and others). Only these are listed, in this order:

• One entry per shell. A machine with Homebrew has two zsh executables; the menu offers one. Two names for the same binary also count as one.
• Your own shell is not listed twice. If your login shell is zsh, the Default Shell entry is it, and no separate Zsh entry appears.
• sh, dash and rbash are not offered. Add a profile if you want one.

The Default Shell is $SHELL with -l, or the path set under Settings → Terminal → Session → Shell, falling back to /bin/zsh on macOS and /bin/bash on Linux.

Windows

The WSL list comes from wsl.exe --list --quiet. Docker Desktop’s and Rancher Desktop’s internal pseudo-distributions are left out. The Default Shell on Windows is PowerShell 7, then Windows PowerShell, then Command Prompt, whichever is found first.

Opening a tab with a profile

• The chevron beside the + drops the list. Each entry has its shell’s mark, the default has a tick, and Configure Profiles… at the bottom opens Settings.
• File → New Tab With, and New Tab With in a tab’s right-click menu, carry the same list.
• Ctrl+Shift+1…Ctrl+Shift+9 (Cmd+Shift+1…Cmd+Shift+9 on macOS) open the first nine profiles in the list. A number past the end does nothing.
• The command palette lists every profile as New Tab: name.

A profile with no starting directory opens in the current tab’s directory, like a plain new tab. The default is marked rather than moved to the top, so the numbers bound to chords do not shift.

The default profile

Settings → Profiles → Profile for new tabs chooses what + and New Tab open. It applies to the next tab. Profiles are keyed by a stable id, not by position, so installing a shell never changes which profile the + opens. A default that names a shell since removed falls back to the first profile.

If the default profile’s command cannot start, the error names the command, and the Default Shell opens in its place so the window is never left empty.

Hiding and adding profiles

Settings → Profiles lists every profile, hidden ones included:

• Show in the profile menu hides or shows a discovered profile or one of yours.
• Add creates a profile of your own with a Name, a Command and a Starting directory (leave it empty to follow the current tab). The fields check as you type and say Not found, Not executable or Not a directory.
• Remove deletes one of yours.

Discovered profiles cannot be edited, since they are re-detected at every launch. To run one differently, add a profile of your own: a shell with other arguments, ssh build.example.com, or a shell in a directory you keep coming back to.

In settings.properties

The whole list lives in ~/.termina/settings.properties, which you can edit by hand while Termina is closed:

# The default profile, by id. Empty means the first profile.
profiles.default=shell-fish

# Discovered or user profiles to leave out of the menus, by id.
profiles.hidden=shell-tcsh,wsl-ubuntu

# Your own profiles, numbered from 1.
profile.1.id=user-build
profile.1.name=Build server
profile.1.command=ssh build.example.com
profile.2.name=Notes
profile.2.command=/bin/zsh -l
profile.2.directory=/home/me/notes

• User profiles are numbered from 1, up to 64. A gap is skipped rather than ending the list, so deleting one block removes one profile.
• name and command are required. command is split as a shell would split it, honoring single and double quotes. directory is optional.
• id is optional and defaults to user-N. Give one if anything points at the profile: the default and the hidden list refer to profiles by id, so a stable id survives renaming.
• Discovered ids are system for the Default Shell, shell-zsh, shell-bash and so on for Unix shells, and pwsh, powershell, cmd, git-bash and wsl-<name> on Windows.

Reset to Defaults in Settings keeps your profiles, the default profile and the hidden list.

A command given on the command line with -e still replaces the shell, and -d still wins over a profile’s own directory. See Command line.