Terminal emulator

PyCharm 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 PyCharm by default. If the relevant features are not available, make sure that you did not disable the plugin.

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

Right-click a project item in the Project tool window and choose Open in terminal from the context menu. This way the terminal will start with the directory corresponding to the selected item.

Start a new session

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

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 PyCharm. It preserves tab names, the current working directory, and even the shell history.

To close a tab, click 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.

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

Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and select Tools | Terminal.

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 PyCharm instance.

Shell path	Specify the shell that will run by default. PyCharm 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.
Cursor shape	Select the shape of the cursor: block, underline, or vertical.
Activate virtualenv	For the Python interpreter being a virtual environment, with this checkbox selected, the virtual environment is automatically activated (`activate` is performed automatically). This option is available only if you have the Python plugin installed.

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.

Last modified: 07 February 2023