hashterm

A tmux-native quake terminal for Linux with a two-dimensional tab matrix and browser-style session resurrection.

Every tab is a session on a dedicated private tmux server — the GUI only attaches. Kill the window, crash it, kill -9 it: your shells, scrollback and running programs keep going, and the next launch re-adopts them exactly where they were.

Quick start

sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev libgtk4-layer-shell-dev tmux
cargo build --release
./target/release/hashterm     # then press F12 to drop the console down

Ctrl+Shift+T opens a tab, Ctrl+, opens Settings. Prefer a package? See Install.

Features

• Quake-style drop-down — a global hotkey (default F12) slides the frameless console from the screen edge and keeps it above all other windows. X11 (EWMH), wlroots/KDE (layer-shell) and GNOME Wayland (via XWayland, like tilda/guake) are all handled; hotkeys go through the desktop portal with XGrabKey fallback.
• Tab matrix — tabs are organized in two dimensions: groups (rows) on one window edge, the active group's terminals (columns) on the perpendicular edge. Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn moves between groups, Ctrl+Home/End between terminals. Groups get colors, drawn as nested accent rings around the terminal (outer = group, inner = per-tab accent). Drag a tab onto another to reorder, onto a group row to move it there, onto the group bar's + for a brand-new group. Drag a group row onto another (or right-click > Move Left/Right) to reorder groups; the order is remembered.
• Remembers its window — size and position are saved when you move or resize the window and restored next time ([window] in the config; position needs X11/XWayland, native Wayland remembers size only).
• Session resurrection, browser-style — full dumps capture layout, working directories, scrollback and the foreground program of every pane. Restores relaunch safe-listed programs (vim -S sessions included), and pre-type everything else at the prompt so a single Enter re-runs it. Autosaves rotate on a timer and on exit; named saves never expire. sudo/ssh-add-class commands are never replayed.
• Settings window and a plain config file — Ctrl+, opens a Settings window with live preview; it edits ~/.config/hashterm/config.toml in place (your comments survive), and the file stays fully commented and live-reloaded on save, so you can still hand-edit or keep it in your dotfiles. Hotkey conflicts are detected and surfaced on-screen instead of silently picking a winner.
• Splits — a tab can hold several panes. tmux draws them, so they survive a crash and come back on restore. The tab's ✕ closes the whole tab and asks first when it holds more than one pane.
• Search and links — Ctrl+Shift+F searches the whole tmux scrollback (lowercase ignores case, the bar shows the match count). Ctrl+click opens http, https and mailto links, including hyperlinks programs print; hover with Ctrl held to see where a link really goes. Other schemes are refused.
• Colour schemes — twelve bundled (scheme = "dracula" …), your own in ~/.config/hashterm/schemes/, optional switching with the desktop's light/dark setting; tmux's copy-mode colours follow the scheme.
• Tabs named for what they are — a tab shows its folder (or vim · shop while a program runs) instead of the host name, follows cd, and yields to any title a program sets itself or you give it ([tabbar] auto_titles). Tab and group chrome is derived from your terminal colours, so it stays readable on any GTK theme.
• Tells you when something is off — hashterm --doctor checks tmux, the hotkey portal, the config and the log in one screen (--doctor --log adds the last log lines). A global hotkey the desktop refused or limited is shown in Settings and once on screen, with the always-working fallback hashterm --toggle. A log file is kept in ~/.local/state/hashterm/ ([general] log_to_file).
• Small touches — per-tab names and accent colors, switch OSD toasts, auto-hiding tab bar on any edge, separate terminal/tab-bar/window opacity, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+scroll live window transparency (remembered across restarts), clipboard bridged into tmux copy-mode.

In motion

The console drops from the top edge, the mouse wheel over the tab bar scrolls through tabs (the dial shows where you are), and Ctrl+PgDn/PgUp hops between groups — each with its own color, tab strip and terminals.

_{The slide-in and slide-out frames in this clip are re-created from real captured frames (same ease-out motion, wallpaper behind); the headless capture server has no compositor to record the app's own transparent slide.}

The tab matrix

Groups run along one edge, the active group's terminals along the perpendicular one. Each group has a color, drawn as a ring around the terminal; drop a tab on a group to move it, or on + for a new one.

The switch dial

Switching tabs shows a wheel: the current tab bright in the center, neighbors receding above and below.

Auto-hiding tab bar

With tabbar.auto_hide = true the bar stays out of the way: it is concealed until the pointer touches its edge, then slides in over the terminal, so revealing it never reflows the panes. Below, tabbar.edge = "left" — first hidden, then revealed (the terminal text does not move). Ctrl+Shift+B toggles it from the keyboard.

Settings

Ctrl+, opens a Settings window. It applies changes live and edits config.toml in place, keeping your comments, so the file remains the single source of truth. Details: docs/settings.md.

Organizing tabs and groups

Closing is predictable: when you close the tab you are on (Ctrl+Shift+W, its x, or the shell exiting) you land on the previous tab in the group — or the next one if it was the first. Closing a group's last tab asks whether to close the group; "Keep group" opens a fresh tab in your home directory instead. Hover a group row and click its x to close the whole group (after a confirmation — it ends the programs in all its tabs and cannot be undone).

Right-click a tab to rename it, change its accent color, move it to another group or close it. Right-click a group to rename it, color it, or move it up and down (you can also just drag it).

Install

On Debian 13 (or anything with GTK ≥ 4.18 and VTE ≥ 0.80), download hashterm_*_amd64.deb from the latest release and install it:

sudo apt install ./hashterm_*_amd64.deb

Every release .deb is built by CI with signed SLSA provenance; see docs/RELEASING.md to verify one. To build the package yourself instead:

cargo build --release
./packaging/build-deb.sh
sudo apt install ./dist/hashterm_*.deb

Runtime dependencies: GTK 4 (≥ 4.18), VTE4 (≥ 0.80), gtk4-layer-shell, tmux. Styling hint: ~/.config/hashterm/user.css is loaded on top of the built-in style at user priority.

Building from source

sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev libgtk4-layer-shell-dev
cargo build --release          # needs Rust 1.90+
./target/release/hashterm

Default keys

Key	Action
F12	toggle the drop-down (global)
Ctrl+Shift+T	new tab
Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End	previous / next terminal in the group
Ctrl+PgUp / Ctrl+PgDn	previous / next group
Ctrl+Shift+N	new group (a second row of tabs)
Ctrl+Shift+E / Ctrl+Shift+O	split the tab right / down (tmux panes, same folder)
Alt+Shift+arrows	move between panes
Ctrl+Shift+X	zoom the active pane
Ctrl+Shift+W	close the active pane, then the tab
Ctrl+Shift+F	find in the scrollback (Enter / Shift+Enter move, Esc closes)
Ctrl+Shift+plus / Ctrl+minus / Ctrl+0	text bigger / smaller / reset (this window only)
Ctrl+click	open the link under the pointer
Alt+1..0	jump to tab 1–10
Ctrl+Shift+B	show/hide the tab bar
Ctrl+Shift+S	session picker (save / restore)
Ctrl+,	Settings window
Ctrl+Shift+,	open config.toml in your editor
Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V	copy / paste
Ctrl+Alt+Shift + scroll	window opacity
mouse wheel over the tab bar	previous / next tab in the group
mouse wheel over a group's title	previous / next tab of that group
right-click tab / group row	rename, properties, colors, move to group

Everything is rebindable in [hotkeys].

Architecture

crates/
  hashterm-core       config, persisted UI state, IPC types
  hashterm-tmux       dedicated-server controller, bundled tmux conf, hooks
  hashterm-session    dump/restore engine (zstd scrollback, /proc discovery)
  hashterm-platform   overlay backends (EWMH / layer-shell / plain), hotkeys
  hashterm-ui         GTK4 shell: window, tab bar, group bar, VTE pages
  hashterm            the binary (+ headless dump/restore subcommands)
  hashterm-ctl        tiny helper the tmux hooks call to notify the GUI

The tmux server runs on its own socket — tmux -L hashterm ls shows your tabs from any terminal, and everything hashterm knows about a tab (title, group, colors) lives in tmux session options, so it survives detach, restart and dump/restore.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.