Menus

GNOME Terminal provides a number of control features accessible via the menus located at the top of the terminal window, and a pop-up menu available by pressing the right mouse button while holding the CTRL key.

File menu

New terminal

Create a new terminal window. This is an efficient way to create multiple terminals, as this uses less system resources than starting a separate copy of GNOME Terminal. (For advanced users: the new terminal window created in this way is owned by the same process, with the same PID as the original terminal. Each window starts its own sub-shell process, however.)

Hide menubar

Hides the main menubar on the terminal, creating a neater, smaller terminal. The menubar can be retrieved using the pop-up menu.

Close terminal

Closes the current terminal. It also closes any other terminals opened via the command line in that terminal. If this is the last terminal to be closed, then the GNOME Terminal program exits.

Edit menu

Paste

Pastes the current selection or clipboard into the terminal. This can also be achieved by pressing the middle mouse button.

Settings menu

Preferences ...

Displays the Preferences dialogue, described in the Section called Configurable options.

Reset Terminal

Resets the terminal parameters. This will not clear the screen or move the cursor, but any subsequent terminal output will be reset to the default font and attributes.

Reset and Clear

Resets the terminal parameters, also clearing the screen. All character fonts and attributes are reset.

Colour selector ...

Can be used to drag-and-drop colours into the terminal. See the Section called Colour configuration for details.

Help menu

GNOME terminal users guide ...

How to get to this document from within GNOME Terminal.

About ...

A little bit of kudos for all of the very hard working guys who made it all possible.

Pop-up menu

The pop-up control menu can be invoked by clicking with the right mouse button anywhere in the terminal window with the CTRL key depressed. (It is sometimes not necessary to hold down the CTRL key to get the pop-up menu, but do not assume this is always so.). It is provided as a simple short-cut to some of the commands of the main menus; this is especailly useful when the menubar is hidden. The following items are available:

New terminal ...

Creates a new terminal window.

Preferences ...

Displays the Preferences dialogue, described in the Section called Configurable options.

Show menubar

Checking/unchecking this option shows or hides the menubar at the top of the terminal window.

Secure keyboard

This option forces all the keyboard input to be sent directly to the terminal, and bypass anything else. This is useful in the (rare) situation when the same X server is used by many users, and the X server is not using proper authentication methods, thus making it possible for other users to snoop on what you are typing. In such a situation, it is advised that you switch to "secure keyboard" mode before entering any confidential information, such as passwords.

Reset terminal

Resets the terminal attributes (font and background) without clearing the screen.

Reset and Clear

Resets the terminal attributes and clears the screen.

Open in browser

If the mouse pointer was over a URL (for example, an Internet address) when the pop-up menu was invoked, then this option is available to launch a browser to view the URL. Using CTRL-left mouse button is a shortcut for this menu item.