PyCharm 2023.3 Help

Terminal settings

Use this page to customize the settings of the embedded terminal emulator.

Settings | Tools | Terminal

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 Ctrl+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.

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 in 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).

The embedded terminal emulator also inherits the following IDE settings:

  • On the Keymap settings 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 March 2024