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Terminal

Last modified: 07 February 2023

Open: View | Tool Windows | Terminal or Alt+F12

Configure: Settings Ctrl+Alt+S | Tools | Terminal

PhpStorm includes an embedded terminal emulator for working with your command-line shell from inside the IDE. Use it to run Git commands, set file permissions, and perform other command-line tasks without switching to a dedicated terminal application.

Enable the Terminal plugin

This functionality relies on the Terminal plugin, which is bundled and enabled in PhpStorm by default. If the relevant features aren't available, make sure that you didn't disable the plugin.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and select Plugins.

  2. Open the Installed tab, find the Terminal plugin, and select the checkbox next to the plugin name.

Initially, the terminal emulator runs with your default system shell, but it supports many other shells, such as Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt cmd.exe, sh, bash, zsh, csh, and so on. For information about changing the shell, see Configure the terminal emulator.

Open the Terminal tool window

  • From the main menu, select View | Tool Windows | Terminal or press Alt+F12.

    By default, the terminal emulator runs with the current directory set to the root directory of the current project. For information about changing the default start directory, see Configure the terminal emulator.

  • Right-click any file (for example, in the Project tool window or any open editor tab) and select Open in Terminal to open the Terminal tool window with a new session in the directory of that file.

tip

You can open the terminal as an editor tab: right-click the Terminal tool window header and select Move to Editor.

Start a new session

  • Click the Add button on the toolbar to start a new session in a separate tab.

    New session in the terminal

To run multiple sessions inside a tab, right-click the tab and select Split Right or Split Down in the context menu.

The Terminal saves tabs and sessions when you close the project or PhpStorm. It preserves tab names, the current working directory, and even the shell history.

To close a tab, click the Close button on the Terminal toolbar or right-click the tab and select Close Tab from the context menu.

Press Alt+Right and Alt+Left to switch between active tabs. Alternatively, you can press Alt+Down to see the list of all terminal tabs.

To rename a tab, right-click the tab and select Rename Session from the context menu.

tip

Just like with system terminal tabs, you can rename PhpStorm Terminal tabs programmatically. For example, use title MyTitle if your interpreter is Windows Command Prompt or echo -en "\033]0;MyTitle\a" for bash and zsh.

Search in terminal

  • To search for a certain string in a Terminal session, press Ctrl+F. This searches all text in the session: the prompt, commands, and output.

Configure the terminal emulator

Project Settings

These settings affect the terminal only for the current project:

Start directory

Specify the working directory where every new shell session should start. By default, it starts in the root directory of the current project.

Environment variables

Specify custom environment variables for every new shell session.

Application Settings

These settings affect the terminal in any project that you open with the current PhpStorm instance.

Shell path

Specify the shell that will run by default. PhpStorm should automatically detect the default shell based on your environment. Here are some examples of different shells:

  • Bash: /bin/bash

  • Z shell: /bin/zsh

  • Bash for Windows: bash.exe

  • WSL: wsl.exe

  • PowerShell: powershell

  • Command Prompt: cmd.exe

  • Cygwin: "C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe" --login -i

Default Tab name

Specify the default name for new tabs.

Audible bell

Play the bell sound on various events.

Close session when it ends

Close the current session when the corresponding process ends (for example, by kill).

Mouse reporting

Enable the mouse pointer support in the embedded local terminal.

Copy to clipboard on selection

Copy text selected in the terminal to the clipboard.

Paste on middle mouse button click

Paste clipboard contents by clicking the middle mouse button.

Override IDE shortcuts

Use shell-specific shortcuts instead of IDE shortcuts when the Terminal tool window is active.

Click Configure terminal keybindings to open the Keymap settings page and configure the shortcuts that are available int the Terminal tool window under Plugins | Terminal. For example, Switch Focus to Editor is mapped to Escape by default, which means that if you don't override the IDE shortcuts, Escape will switch focus from the terminal to the editor.

Shell integration

Integrate the terminal with the system shell to properly keep track of your command history for sessions and load a custom config file with required environment variables.

Shell integration works for sh, bash, zsh, and fish shells.

Highlight hyperlinks

Highlight HTTP links in the terminal and make them clickable.

Use Option as Meta key

On macOS, use the Option key as the Meta key.

Run Commands using IDE

Detect and highlight commands that can be used as IDE features instead of running them in the terminal and reading console output.

When enabled, instead of pressing Enter, which runs the command in the terminal, press Ctrl+Enter to open the corresponding GUI element. For more information, see Run IDE features from the terminal.

Cursor shape

Select the shape of the cursor: block, underline, or vertical.

The embedded terminal emulator also inherits the following IDE settings:

  • On the Keymap page, you can configure the copy Ctrl+C and paste Ctrl+V shortcuts.

  • On the Editor | General | Appearance page, you can configure blinking frequency for the caret. The Terminal does not inherit the Use block caret option because there is a separate option for that: Cursor shape.

  • On the Editor | Color Scheme | Console Font page, you can configure line spacing and fonts.

  • On the Editor | Color Scheme | Console Colors page, you can configure font colors.

  • On the Editor | Color Scheme | General page, you can configure the selection foreground and background colors.

Run IDE features from the terminal

Instead of running a specific command in the integrated terminal and reading console output, you can use the relevant IDE feature, like a tool window or a dialog that implements this functionality. For example, the diff viewer actually runs the diff command in the system shell to produce results. Another example is the Log tab in the Git tool window, which is based on the output of the git log command.

Open the Log tab of the Git tool window from the terminal

  1. Type a supported command in the terminal and notice how it is highlighted.

    Smart command execution highlighting for git log in the terminal

  2. Instead of pressing Enter, which runs the command in the terminal, press Ctrl+Enter to open the corresponding GUI element. In this example, it will open the Log tab of the Git tool window and filter commits for the docker branch.

    Log tab in the Git tool window filtered by branch

If you want to disable this feature, click The Show Options Menu button on the title bar of the Terminal window and clear the Run Commands using IDE option. Alternatively, clear Run Commands using IDE on the Tools | Terminal page of the IDE settings Ctrl+Alt+S.