gnome-terminal

Open a new GNOME terminal window

$ gnome-terminal

$ gnome-terminal -- [command]

$ gnome-terminal --tab

$ gnome-terminal --tab [[-t|--title]] "[title]"

gnome-terminal [OPTION...] [COMMAND [ARG...]]

--help
    Print help and exit

--version
    Print version information

--tab[=COMMAND [ARGS]]
    Open a new tab running optional COMMAND

--window[=COMMAND [ARGS]]
    Open a new window running optional COMMAND

--tab-with-profile=PROFILE-ID
    Open tab with specified profile

--window-with-profile=PROFILE-ID
    Open window with specified profile

--title=TITLE
    Set window/tab title

--geometry=GEOMETRY
    Set window geometry (WIDTHxHEIGHT+X+Y)

--working-directory=DIR
    Set starting directory

--profile=PROFILE-ID
    Use specified profile (deprecated)

gnome-terminal is the standard terminal emulator application for the GNOME desktop environment on Linux and Unix-like systems. It provides a user-friendly graphical interface for interacting with the shell, supporting essential features like multi-tabbed windows, customizable profiles, and integration with GNOME's settings system.

Built on the VTE (Virtual Terminal Emulator) library, it accurately emulates popular terminals such as xterm, handling escape sequences for colors, fonts, and advanced text attributes. Users can launch new tabs or windows running specific commands, set working directories, titles, and geometries. Profiles allow saving configurations for different scenarios, such as SSH sessions, root access with custom prompts, or dark/light themes.

It supports transparency, bold fonts, ligatures, and Nautilus integration for opening terminals in folders. Keyboard shortcuts enable quick actions like splitting panes (in newer versions), copying/pasting, and searching output. As a GApplication, it handles multiple invocations gracefully, often opening new tabs in existing windows unless specified otherwise.

Ideal for developers, sysadmins, and casual users, gnome-terminal balances simplicity with power, evolving alongside GNOME releases.

Some options deprecated in favor of profiles; requires running GNOME session for full integration; single-instance by default (use --wait for blocking).

Customize via Edit > Preferences: fonts, colors, transparency, encodings.

Ctrl+Shift+T: new tab; Ctrl+Shift+N: new window; Ctrl+Shift+V: paste.

Introduced with GNOME 1.0 (1998), rewritten for GNOME 2 using VTE (2002); major updates in GNOME 3/40+ for Wayland, profiles, and Nautilus integration.

xterm(1), konsole(1), terminator(1), vte(7)