# What's involved in getting a "modern" terminal setup?

DevFeed: [What's involved in getting a "modern" terminal setup?](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-s-involved-in-getting-a-modern-terminal-setup-21116.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/01/11/getting-a-modern-terminal-setup/>)

Author: Julia Evans

Published: 2025-01-11T09:46:01Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Julia Evans](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/julia-evans.md>)

Topics: [Terminal](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/terminal.md>), [Shell](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/shell.md>), [Neovim](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/neovim.md>), [Vim](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/vim.md>), [Git](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/git.md>), [Firefox](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/firefox.md>)

Tags: [autocomplete](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/autocomplete.md>), [commands](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/commands.md>), [config](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/config.md>), [firefox](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/firefox.md>), [git](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/git.md>), [history](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/history.md>), [ls](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ls.md>), [terminal](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/terminal.md>), [vim](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/vim.md>)

## AI overview

The article discusses what a modern terminal setup means to the author, including safe multiline paste, persistent shell history, useful prompts, 24-bit color, clipboard integration, command-specific autocomplete, shell colors, synchronized themes, automatic terminal recovery, keybindings, and scroll-wheel support. It emphasizes that achieving these conveniences requires coordinating the shell, terminal emulator, text editor, operating system, and applications.

## Source excerpt

Hello! Recently I ran a terminal survey and I asked people what frustrated them. One person commented: There are so many pieces to having a modern terminal experience. I wish it all came out of the box. My immediate reaction was "oh, getting a modern terminal experience isn't that hard, you just need to....", but the more I thought about it, the longer the "you just need to..." list got, and I kept thinking about more and more caveats. So I thought I would write down some notes about what it means to me personally to have a "modern" terminal experience and what I think can make it hard for people to get there. what is a "modern terminal experience"? Here are a few things that are important to me, with which part of the system is responsible for them: multiline support for copy and paste: if you paste 3 commands in your shell, it should not immediately run them all! That's scary! (shell, terminal emulator) infinite shell history: if I run a command in my shell, it should be saved forever, not deleted after 500 history entries or whatever. Also I want commands to be saved to the history immediately when I run them, not only when I exit the shell session (shell) a useful prompt: I can't live without having my current directory and current git branch in my prompt (shell) 24-bit colour: this is important to me because I find it MUCH easier to theme neovim with 24-bit colour support than in a terminal with only 256 colours (terminal emulator) clipboard integration between vim and my operating system so that when I copy in Firefox, I can just press p in vim to paste (text editor, maybe the OS/terminal emulator too) good autocomplete: for example commands like git should have command-specific autocomplete (shell) having colours in ls (shell config) a terminal theme I like: I spend a lot of time in my terminal, I want it to look nice and I want its theme to match my terminal editor's theme. (terminal emulator, text editor) automatic terminal fixing: If a programs prints out some