A native terminal for Linux and macOS

Tabs, split panes, shell integration, and plugins in any language. Drawn on the GPU, not in a webview.

curl -fsSL https://lumenshell.dev/install | sh

brew install --cask lumenshell/tap/lumen

Lumen with four tabs and three panes: a shell in a web shop project where npm test failed (its prompt marked in red) and then passed, a Vite dev server, and lumen campfire burning. The tabs carry badges: a green 128 on tests, a blue web-1.staging on deploy, and 3 to do on notes.

Everything a terminal should do, done properly

Tabs and split panes: Drag tabs to reorder them and drag the gaps to resize splits. Focus Mode zooms one pane. Every window, tab and split comes back next launch.
A quick terminal: It drops down from the top of the screen on one key, from any app, and hides again with its shells still running. How to set it up
Your shell, understood: Jump between commands, copy the last command's output, and spot failed commands by their red mark. Get a notification when a long command finishes while you're elsewhere. Works in bash, zsh and fish. Shell integration
Select and copy without the mouse: Move over the screen and scrollback with vi keys, then select by character, line or block. Keyboard select mode
Plays well with your tools: CJK input methods, the kitty keyboard protocol for Neovim and Helix, mouse reporting for vim and tmux, clickable links, and colour emoji. Everything Lumen does
A config file that applies on save: One commented config.toml. Change a line, save, and every open pane follows, no restart. Five themes recolour the whole window, chrome included. Config

Make it yours

Settings, scripts and plugins are all plain text. Here's one of each.

Every setting

~/.config/lumen/config.tomlTOML

theme = "Tokyo Night"
font-family = "JetBrains Mono"
font-size = 14
background-opacity = 0.92
cursor-style = "beam"
quick-terminal-key = "f12"
notify-after = 10
plugins = ["git-branch", "pomodoro"]

[keys]
ctrl-t = "none"          # back to the shell
alt-g = "plugin:git-branch:switch"

Scripting guide

~/shopShell

~/shop ❯ p=$(lumen msg split right --run 'npm run dev')
~/shop ❯ lumen msg tab-style --badge dev --color green
~/shop ❯ lumen msg read-screen --pane $p --lines 2
  VITE v5.4  ready in 312 ms
  Local:   http://localhost:5173/
~/shop ❯ lumen msg watch command-finished
{"event":"command-finished","command":"npm test","exit":0}

Plugin guide

plugins/git-branch/main.pyPython

from lumen_plugin import Plugin

app = Plugin()

@app.command("Switch Branch", keys="alt-b")
async def switch(pane):
    branch = await app.pick(["main", "dev"])
    if branch:
        await pane.run(["git", "switch", branch])

app.run()

Try it in your next session

Copy the command for your system and paste it into a terminal. Run it again any time to update.

curl -fsSL https://lumenshell.dev/install | sh

brew install --cask lumenshell/tap/lumen