Terminals And Panes

Every terminal tab is a real PTY owned by the runtime host, running your shell in the workspace folder; agents run in the same tabs.

Where Tabs Live#

The center holds the workspace’s main terminal. The right panel holds the tools (Explorer, Search, Source Control, Pull Request) and the terminals you open with Mod+T (Mod is ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl on Windows and Linux). Toggle Context Panel (Mod+Alt+B) shows or hides it.

Each pane has a tab strip with Add Tab and Pane Actions; the center shows its strip once it holds more than one tab. Add Tab offers the tools that are not open yet, Terminal, and each agent profile with Show In New Tab Menu turned on (it starts off) under Settings → Agent Profiles. A profile asks for an optional starting prompt, or a session to resume (Agent Profiles).

Right-click a tab for Close, Close Others, Close Tabs to the Right, and Change Title, plus Generate Title when AI Assist can name agent tabs. Closing a terminal tab ends its shell and everything running in it.

Split Panes#

Pane Actions and a tab’s right-click menu offer Split Right, Split Down, Split Left, and Split Up, each opening a new terminal in the new pane. Close Split merges a pane’s tabs into its neighbor without closing any. Drag an existing tab onto a pane’s edge to split with it, into its middle to move it, or along a strip to reorder. Tabs move between the center and the right panel the same way.

Keyboard#

Tab commands act on the focused pane; rebind anything under Settings → Keyboard (Keyboard Shortcuts).

Action	Default
New Terminal Tab	Mod+T
Close Tab	Mod+W
Next Tab, Previous Tab	Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Shift+Tab; also Mod+Shift+BracketRight, Mod+Shift+BracketLeft on macOS
Go to Tab 1 to 8, Go to Last Tab	Mod+1 to Mod+8, Mod+9
Split Right	Mod+D on macOS, Mod+Shift+D elsewhere
Split Down	Mod+Shift+D on macOS, Mod+Alt+D elsewhere
Close Split	Mod+Shift+W
Focus Next Pane, Focus Previous Pane	Mod+Alt+ArrowRight, Mod+Alt+ArrowLeft

Settings → Keyboard → When a Terminal Is Focused decides who gets a chord. App First (the default) lets Alera win, so on Windows and Linux Mod+W closes the tab instead of deleting a word. Terminal First leaves New Terminal Tab, Close Tab, Split Right, Split Down, Save File, Go Back, and Go Forward to the shell; every other shortcut still works.

Terminal Toolbar#

Each terminal has a floating toolbar:

• Configure Terminal Pulse (when the runtime supports it) sends Terminal Input, such as r to reload a dev server, a fixed Wait after the workspace’s tracked or new untracked files change. It stays Armed until the terminal process restarts.
• Show Terminal Composer opens the composer.
• Refresh Terminal makes a garbled TUI redraw by resizing the terminal for a moment.
• Move Toolbar drags it to another corner; right-clicking the toolbar or Settings → Terminal → Toolbar Corner picks one.

Terminal Composer#

The composer is a prompt box under the terminal, toggled with Mod+Shift+Enter. Enter sends, Shift+Enter adds a line, and Escape hides it. Pasted or dropped files and images become attachments, sent as paths after your text. A program that supports bracketed paste receives it as one paste, then Enter. Show Terminal Composer By Default opens it with every new terminal.

Search, Copy, And Paste#

• Mod+F opens Search Terminal over the scrollback. It ignores case, Enter jumps to the next match, and Escape closes it.
• Copy On Select (on by default) copies whatever you select. You can also copy with ⌘C on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+C on Windows and Linux, and paste with ⌘V or Ctrl+V.
• Pasting an image, or dropping files, pastes file paths.
• Drag To Select In TUIs (on by default) lets a drag select text even in agents that capture the mouse, such as OpenCode, Copilot, Amp, and Grok Build; clicks and scrolling still reach them. Shift+drag selects anywhere.
• Allow OSC 52 Clipboard Writes (off by default) lets programs set your clipboard.
• Mod+click opens a web link.

Appearance And Behavior#

Settings → Terminal sets the Font Family (JetBrains Mono by default), size, weight, line height, and cursor, plus a Theme Preset from 31 built-in themes (Alera Dark by default), background opacity, padding, and color overrides.

Advanced has Use Login Shell (on by default only on macOS), Reload Shell Environment, Scrollback Lines (10,000), Host Scrollback Size (10 MB), Word Separators, and Terminal Memory Budget (256 MB). Over the budget, terminals you have not viewed lately are unloaded and restored when you return, and their agents keep running.

Sessions Outlive The Window#

Terminals belong to the runtime host, not the window; see Projects And Workspaces. With Show Tray Icon on, closing the window only hides Alera. Quitting with terminals open asks whether to Quit And Leave Runtime Open or Force Stop And Quit, unless Keep Runtime Open When App Quits is on under Settings → Application → Runtime. With nothing attached, a runtime the app started keeps terminals for Detached Session Shutdown (one hour by default) unless other work, such as mobile access, keeps it up. One started with alera runtime start never times out.

A terminal showing Terminal unavailable offers Reconnect and, when the runtime supports it, Restart Terminal, which starts a new shell but keeps the history.