Settings

Use Settings to customize Terminay's terminal behavior, AI and MCP permissions, recordings, remote access, appearance, command shortcuts, themes, and accessibility.

Terminay Settings window showing searchable terminal appearance settings and preview

Finding Settings

Settings are organized by category in the sidebar. Use search to filter matching categories, sections, fields, descriptions, setting keys, and keywords. Choosing a category clears the search and jumps to that category.

When more than one server is attached, the server selector at the top chooses whose settings you are editing. It starts on the server that owns the active project, and a change applies to that server only.

Changes save automatically as you edit. The footer shows Saving..., Loading..., or Saved. Use Reset to defaults to restore all settings after confirming the reset.

Categories

Settings is one window, with categories grouped in its sidebar. Categories that hold a list, such as Macros, Workflows, and Extensions, add a list column between the sidebar and the detail.

  • General: Appearance (font, size, weight, line height, glyph rendering, transparency), Theme (colours, Tab Theme Hue, ANSI palette), Shortcuts, Accessibility (minimum contrast, screen reader mode), Files (refresh interval, ignored folders, the Changes view, sidebar panes), and AI (agent status, AI tab titles and notes, the Git push agent, Terminay MCP and its permissions, connected MCP servers, dictation).
  • Terminal: Shell (shell profiles, the default working directory, close-on-success, Keep terminals running after quit, and Move terminals into new worktree folders), Cursor, Interaction, and Scrolling.
  • Connections: Remote Access, for sharing this server (exposure, pairing, approvals, trusted devices, live connections) and the saved servers this computer connects to.
  • Automation: Macros, Workflows, and Recording.
  • Extensions: the extensions installed on the selected server, including the bundled agents, TypeScript, Gitea, and GitHub extensions, and installing new ones.
  • System: Updates (Stable or Beta releases of Terminay Desktop) and Diagnostics.

Search also matches the items inside list categories: server names, macro names and script text, and extension names. Recordings live in Home, and Bots are configured in their own Home tabs.

Live Preview

Appearance, cursor, and theme changes show a live terminal preview. The preview updates immediately, can be resized, and can be hidden or shown again.

Theme Colors

Theme color fields can use a fixed custom color, and supported cursor and selection fields can use Tab Theme Hue. Tab Theme Hue resolves the terminal color from the active terminal tab or project color, so each tab can carry its own cursor and selection accent.

Terminay uses Tab Theme Hue for the default cursor and selection highlight, while falling back to readable static colors when a terminal has no tab color available.

When a color uses Tab Theme Hue, a brightness slider (0–100%) sets how light or dark that hue renders, so you can derive anything from a subtle dark background to a vivid accent from the same tab color. Out of the box, the terminal background is a dark tint of the tab hue, so tabs of different colors carry subtly different backgrounds.

AI Tab Metadata

Open AI to choose whether Command Bar actions can generate terminal tab titles or notes. Each target can be disabled or configured independently with Codex or Claude Code, then assigned a provider-specific model.

Codex models are discovered through the Codex CLI. Claude Code exposes a small built-in model list because its CLI does not currently provide model discovery.

AI generation uses recent terminal output as bounded context. If the selected provider cannot load models or generate text, Terminay leaves the existing title or note unchanged.

Shell Profiles

New terminals start from a shell profile owned by the connected server. System default follows that server account's shell. Custom profiles can choose an executable or WSL distribution, keep each argument separate, add environment variables, and carry an optional name, icon, and color.

Open Shell → Shell Profiles to pick the server default and the default working-directory policy. Projects and individual terminals can override the server default. Discovered shells can be used once or copied into a custom profile. Changing a profile only affects terminals created afterward.

Environment values are visible only in the profile editor. They are never included in workspace, session, recording, diagnostic, or remote summary data.

Enable Close tabs on successful exit to automatically close a terminal tab when its shell exits with code 0.

Tab Indicators

Terminals without a recognized agent show activity from their output. Under Appearance → Tab Indicators, Use terminal signals for activity reads OSC 9;4 progress, OSC 133/633 command markers, OSC 9/777 notifications, and the terminal bell before falling back to recent output. Signals never override agent status, and escape sequences still reach the terminal unchanged.

Progress signal timeout (default 15 seconds) sets how long a progress signal without an update can keep a tab marked busy.

Terminay MCP Permissions

Under AI → Terminay MCP, Enable Terminay MCP server turns agent terminal control on or off. Below it, Read Terminals, Full Terminal Management, Read Automations, and Full Automation Management can each be set to Ask Permission, Always Allow, or Never Allow. See Terminay MCP for what each group covers and how approval prompts work.

Remote Access Settings

Turn on Automatically expose server on startup to expose this server for remote access each time Terminay starts, without choosing Expose this server from the connections menu. It is off by default. You can still stop exposure from the connections menu for the current session, and new devices still need approval on this computer.

The same category manages access: devices waiting for approval, trusted devices, live connections, Reset server identity…, and the saved servers this computer connects to, with Add server…. WebRTC hosted domain and WebRTC ICE servers configure signaling and STUN/TURN for remote connections. Most setups can leave them at their defaults. See Remote Access for pairing.

Shortcut Settings

Open Shortcuts to customize app command key bindings. Click Listen and press a key combination. Press Esc while listening to cancel. Use Clear to disable a shortcut, Reset to restore one shortcut, or Reset All to restore every default.

Terminay normalizes shortcut names and shows platform labels. If two commands use the same shortcut, Settings shows a conflict warning.