AppCode 2023.1 Help

Terminal

AppCode 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 AppCode 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 sh, bash, zsh, csh, and so on. For information about changing the shell, seeTerminal settings.

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 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 AppCode. 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.

  • 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.

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 Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and select Tools | Terminal. For more information, see 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, 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.

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

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.

Last modified: 31 March 2023