IntelliJ IDEA 2023.2 Help

Terminal

IntelliJ IDEA includes an embedded terminal emulator for working with your command-line shell from inside the IDE. Use it to run Java tools, 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 IntelliJ IDEA by default. If the relevant features aren't available, make sure that you didn't disable the plugin.

  1. Press Control+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and then 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 more information about changing the shell, refer to Terminal settings.

Open the Terminal tool window

  • Go to 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 more information about changing the default start directory, refer to Terminal settings.

  • 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.

Start a new local session

  • To start a new session in a separate tab, click the Add button on the toolbar or press Command T.

    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 IntelliJ IDEA. 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 press Control+F4.

Press Alt+ArrowRight and Alt+ArrowLeft to switch between active tabs. Alternatively, you can press Alt+ArrowDown to see the list of all terminal tabs.

Start a new SSH session

  1. On the toolbar, click Start a new SSH session.

  2. Click New SSH Session, enter the address of a host to which you want to connect, and provide authentication data.

    Or, if you have configured SSH configurations, you can select one of them from the list.

Start a new SSH session

To terminate the connection, click Terminate session in the terminal tab.

Rename terminal tab

  • Right-click the tab and select Rename Session from the context menu.

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

By default, the search is not case-sensitive. You can click the Match case icon Match case in the search box to make it case-sensitive.

Configure the terminal emulator

  • Press Control+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and then select Tools | Terminal. For more information, refer to Terminal settings.

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, you can launch a gradle or mvn command from the Terminal tool window and view its output in the Run or Debug tool window.

Run a command in the Run or Debug tool window from the terminal

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

    Smart command execution highlighting for gradle command in the Terminal
  2. Instead of pressing Enter, which runs the command in the terminal, press Control+Enter to open the corresponding GUI element.

    To run the command in the Debug tool window, press Control+Shift+Enter.

This feature also works with most of the commands recognized by Run Anything (press Control twice), for example npm or rails depending on what plugins you have installed. To run a highlighted command in debug mode (use the Debug tool window instead of Run) press Control+Shift+Enter.

Disable running IntelliJ IDEA commands from the Terminal

  • Click the Options icon on the title bar of the Terminal tool window and clear the Run Commands using IDE option.

  • Alternatively, open the Settings dialog (Control+Alt+S), go to Tools | Terminal, and clear the Run Commands using IDE checkbox.

Last modified: 13 September 2023