PyCharm 2023.1 Help

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 aren't available, make sure that you didn't disable the plugin.

  1. Press Control+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 Terminal 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

  • To start a new session in a separate tab, click the Add button on the toolbar or press Control+Shift+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 PyCharm. 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.

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 select Tools | Terminal. For more information, see Terminal settings.

Last modified: 21 June 2023