xdg-terminal-exec

Launch the user's preferred terminal emulator

TLDR

Open the default terminal without running a command

$ xdg-terminal-exec

Run a command inside the preferred terminal

$ xdg-terminal-exec [command] [args...]

Set a window title for the spawned terminal

$ xdg-terminal-exec --title=[My Shell] [command]

Set a working directory before executing the command

$ xdg-terminal-exec --dir=[path/to/dir] [command]

Keep the terminal open after the command exits

$ xdg-terminal-exec --hold [command]

Print the selected Desktop Entry ID instead of launching it

$ xdg-terminal-exec --print-id

Show the resolved command line that would be executed

$ xdg-terminal-exec --print-cmd [command]

SYNOPSIS

xdg-terminal-exec [options] [--] [command [arguments ...]]

xdg-terminal-exec launches the user's preferred terminal emulator, optionally with a command to execute inside it. It is the reference implementation of the proposed XDG Default Terminal Execution Specification from freedesktop.org.Candidate terminals are discovered from Desktop Entries installed on the system that declare the TerminalEmulator category and provide an X-TerminalArgExec key. The user chooses which of those entries to prefer by listing Desktop Entry IDs in a configuration file.This mirrors tools like xdg-open: instead of hard-coding a terminal in scripts, desktop launchers, or applications, callers invoke xdg-terminal-exec and the system resolves the user's choice at runtime.

PARAMETERS

--app-id=appid_

Set the Wayland app-id (or X11 class) of the spawned window.

--title=title

Set the terminal window title.

--dir=workdir

Change to workdir before running the command.

--hold

Keep the terminal window open after the command terminates.

--print-id

Print the Desktop Entry ID that was selected.

--print-path

Print the filesystem path of the selected Desktop Entry.

--print-content

Print the full content of the selected Desktop Entry.

--print-cmd[=printfseq_]

Print the final command line that would be executed instead of running it.

--print-delimiter=printfseq_

Set the delimiter used between multiple print outputs.

Treat all following arguments as the command to execute.

CONFIGURATION

Preferred terminals are listed in the following files, searched in order of XDG config/data priority:

$ ${desktop}-xdg-terminals.list
xdg-terminals.list

Where ${desktop} is a lowercased item from XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP. Each line is a Desktop Entry ID, optionally with an action suffix:

$ foot.desktop
kitty.desktop
org.gnome.Terminal.desktop:new-window

Lines starting with # are comments. Special directives include /enable_cache, /disable_cache, /execarg_compat, /execarg_strict, and /execarg_default:entry.desktop:arg.

ENVIRONMENT

XTE_CACHE_ENABLED

Enable or disable caching of the resolved terminal.

XTE_DEBUG, DEBUG

Print debug information to stderr.

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP, XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS, XDG_DATA_DIRS

Standard XDG variables used for desktop detection and config lookup.

CAVEATS

The specification is still a proposal on the freedesktop.org terminal-wg tracker; backwards compatibility is maintained on a best-effort basis. Not every terminal emulator ships the X-TerminalArgExec key yet, so some installed terminals may be invisible to the selector until their Desktop Entry is patched.

HISTORY

xdg-terminal-exec was created by Vladimir Kudrya (Vladimir-csp) as a shell-based reference implementation accompanying a merge request against the freedesktop.org terminal-wg specifications repository. It is packaged by several distributions (Debian, Arch, Fedora) as a dependency of modern desktop launchers that need a generic way to spawn terminals.