mintty

NAME

mintty – Cygwin terminal emulator

SYNOPSIS

mintty [OPTION]... [ - | PROGRAM [ARG]... ]

DESCRIPTION

Mintty is a terminal emulator for Cygwin with a native Windows user interface and minimalist design. Its terminal emulation is largely compatible with xterm, but it does not require an X server.

INVOCATION

If a program name is supplied on the command line, this is executed with any additional arguments given. Otherwise, mintty looks for a shell to execute in the SHELL environment variable. If that is not set, it reads the user’s default shell setting from /etc/passwd. As a last resort, it falls back to /bin/sh.

If a single dash is specified instead of a program name, the shell is invoked as a login shell.

Invocation by a name of wsl*[-distro] implies a --WSL[=distro] parameter.

Mintty supports being started from a Windows desktop shortcut; it honours window and icon settings of the shortcut, aligns taskbar grouping with the shortcut, disables daemonizing, and sets environment variable MINTTY_SHORTCUT to its pathname.

OPTIONS

The standard GNU option formats are accepted, with single dashes introducing short options and double dashes introducing long options.
Note that setting ShortLongOpts enables single-dash long options.
-c, --config FILENAME

Read settings from the specified configuration file, in addition to the default config files. Configuration changes are saved to the last file thus specified.

-C, --loadconfig FILENAME

Read settings from the specified configuration file, in addition to the default config files. The file is not taken into account for saving configuration changes. This is useful to mix-in partial configuration variants, particularly colour schemes. However, -o ThemeFile=FILENAME may be preferable.

--configdir DIRNAME

Use the given directory to check for resource subdirectories (themes, sounds, lang, emojis, icon); also read settings from the configuration file DIRNAME/config, in addition to the default config files, and save configuration changes here.

--dir directory

Change initial directory to start in. This is especially useful for invocation of mintty from a Windows context menu via registry entry.

-e, --exec PROGRAM [ARG ...]

Execute the specified program in the terminal session and pass on any additional arguments.

This option is present for compatibility with other terminal emulators only. It can be omitted, in which case the first non-option argument, if any, is taken as the name of the program to execute.

-h, --hold never|start|error|always

Determine whether to keep the terminal window open when the command has finished and no more processes are connected to the terminal. The argument can be abbreviated to a single letter.

By default, the window is closed immediately, except if the child process has exited with status 255, which is used to indicate failure to execute the shell command. (Exit status 255 is also used by ssh to indicate connection errors.)

Alternatively, the window can be set to never stay open, to always stay open, or to stay open only if the child process terminates with an error, i.e. with a non-zero exit status or due to a signal indicating a runtime error.

-i, --icon FILE[,INDEX]

Load the window icon from an executable, DLL, or icon file. The optional comma-separated index can be used to select a particular icon in a file with multiple icons.

Note: About interaction problems of icon, shortcut, and the Windows taskbar: In a Windows desktop shortcut, it is suggested not to use this option in the Target command line, as mintty will detect and use the icon from the invoking shortcut (Change Icon...), also resolving a leading Windows environment variable (like %SystemRoot%).

-l, --log FILE|-

Copy all output into the specified log file, or standard output if a dash is given instead of a file name. (Implies -o Logging=yes.)

If FILE contains %d it will be substituted with the process ID. See description of equivalent option "Log file" (Log=) below for further formatting options and hints.

Note that logging can be toggled from the extended context menu.

--logfile FILE|-

Like --log but with logging initially disabled, so just specifying a potential log file name in case logging is enabled from the extended context menu. (Equivalent to combining --log with -o Logging=no.)

-o, --option NAME=VALUE

Override the named config file option with the given value, e.g. -o ScrollbackLines=1000.

-p, --position X,Y

Open the window with its top left corner at the specified coordinates. Instead of coordinates, "centre" or "center" can be specified to place the window in the screen centre, and "right" or "bottom" can be specified to align the right or bottom window border with the right or bottom screen border (together with another option -p to specify an offset).

Option value "@N" where N is a number places the window on monitor N.

Multiple -p options can be combined; coordinates have a different meaning depending on other options:
– With "left", "top", or "@N", related coordinates are relative to the monitor.
– With "right" or "bottom", related coordinates adjust the right or bottom window border relative to the monitor.
– Otherwise, coordinates are absolute and address the common multi-monitor address space as provided by Windows.

Note: For another option to select the monitor for a new mintty window, see the description of Alt+F2.

-s, --size COLS,ROWS

Set the default size of the window in character columns and rows. (The xterm-like syntax COLSxROWS is accepted too.) Instead of coordinates, "maxwidth" or "maxheight" can be specified; this can be combined with another parameter -s for the other dimension. The dimension for which "max" is applied is ignored in further -s or -p parameters. For example, mintty -s maxwidth -p 0,0 -s 0,10 will start a window at full screen width, positioned at the top of the screen, with 10 lines.

--nobidi, --nortl

Disable bidi display (right-to-left support). Same as -o Bidi=0.

-t, --title TITLE

Use TITLE as the initial window title. By default, the title is set to the executed command.

-T, --Title TITLE

Use TITLE as the permanent window title. The title is not changeable by control sequences. This feature is only available on the command line.

-B, --Border frame|void

Suppress window title, display only a frame or no border. This feature is only available on the command line. Note that frame border operations are also disabled. However, a window move can also be done with Ctrl+Alt+click-drag.

-u, --utmp

Create a utmp entry.

-w, --window normal|min|max|full|hide

Set the initial window state: normal, minimized, maximized, full screen, or hidden.

--class CLASS

Use CLASS as the window class name of the main window. This allows scripting tools to distinguish different mintty instances. The default is "mintty".

-d, --nodaemon

Do not apply "daemonizing". By default, mintty tries to detach itself from the invoking terminal when started from a Cygwin Console in order to avoid disabled signal reception, and when cloning the window (Alt+F2) in order to avoid a remaining zombie process.

-D, --daemon

Enforce "daemonizing". By default, mintty tries to detach itself from the invoking terminal only as described above. With this option, it tries to detach always. This makes a difference if a Windows "Shortcut key" is configured in a Windows desktop shortcut for starting mintty. Without daemonizing, the shortcut key will focus an already running instance of mintty, with daemonizing it always starts a new instance.

-R, --Report info/mode

Report requested information.

With values "s" or "o", mintty reports the position and size of the window when it exits. This can be used to manage last window positions and reopen mintty windows accordingly. Reporting mode is "s" or "o" to choose short or long option syntax for the restored (i.e. neither maximized nor minimized) geometry; min/max/fullscreen information is added.

With value "m", mintty reports the system’s monitor configuration (listing all connected monitors and their geometry and position in Windows’ virtual monitor coordinate system), and exits.

With value "f", mintty reports the monospace fonts installed on the system as determined by mintty, and exits.

With value "W", mintty lists installed WSL distributions and properties, and exits.

With value "p", mintty reports the PID of the child process (e.g. the shell). With value "P", mintty reports the cygwin PID and the Windows PID of the mintty process (i.e. running the terminal).

--trace OUTPUT

This option redirects reporting (and debug) output to a file.

--store-taskbar-properties

Enable persistent storage of Windows taskbar properties together with options AppName and AppLaunchCmd.

--nopin

Prevent pinning of the mintty window to the Windows taskbar.

--wsl (preferred option: --WSL, see below)

Adjust to WSL (the Windows Subsystem for Linux, or Bash/Ubuntu on Windows):
– When dragging a Windows file or folder into mintty, it will be pasted using the Linux path name.
– When Ctrl+clicking a file name, it will be interpreted in the Linux namespace and converted before opening in Windows.
– Options DropCommands and setting MINTTY_PROG for UserCommands are disabled.
– The working directory of the current foreground process (for click-opening pathnames) cannot be detected.
– Locale modification (@cjk...) is disabled.

--WSL WSL DISTRIBUTION NAME

Run a WSL session, setting other parameters as appropriate and involving the wslbridge2 gateway implicitly (which should be installed in /bin for this purpose). If the distribution name is empty, the default WSL installation is run; otherwise, it refers to the installed WSL packages as listed by the Windows tool wslconfig /l. Implies --wsl -o Locale=C -o Charset=UTF-8, --rootfs=..., and --icon=... if a respective icon file exists for the distribution.

--WSLmode WSL DISTRIBUTION NAME

Setup a WSL session for the given distribution (like --WSL) but do not actually launch WSL which must be achieved with explicit invocation of a suitable gateway. The preferred option is --WSL which invokes /bin/wslbridge2 with proper arguments as determined from the selected WSL distribution, in login mode if requested and home directory preference if requested.

--rootfs ROOTFOLDER

Provide the root filesystem folder to adjust path conversion properly for the respective WSL installation.

-H, --help

Display a brief help message and exit.

-V, --version

Print version information and exit.

A number of xterm-style convenience options are also available:

--selfg

Sets HighlightForegroundColour.

--selbg

Sets HighlightBackgroundColour.

--fn, --font

Sets Font.

--geometry COLSxROWS[[-+]X[-+]Y][@MONITOR]

Sets size and position, extending xterm syntax by an optional monitor number.

USAGE

Mintty tries to adhere to both Windows and Unix usage conventions. Where they conflict, an option is usually provided. This section primarily describes the default configuration; see the CONFIGURATION section on how it can be customised.

Font rendering
Mintty uses Windows Uniscribe font rendering to display a wider range of characters; the TextOut API is automatically used instead if suitable.

Bidirectional rendering
In addition to its default implicit bidirectional rendering with automatic direction detection (according to the Unicode Bidi algorithm), mintty supports ECMA-48 bidi modes and private bidi modes to control switchable bidi behaviour per line and partially per paragraph (i.e. within an auto-wrapped line), as listed in https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#bidirectional-rendering . They follow the current status of the bidi mode model of the BiDi in Terminal Emulators recommendation ( https://terminal-wg.pages.freedesktop.org/bidi/ ).

Menus
The context menu can be opened by right-clicking the mouse (with Shift in case right-click has been redefined or redirected to the application) or by pressing the Menu key that is normally located next to the right Ctrl key. If invoked while the Ctrl key is held down, an extended context menu will be opened, with some additional entries.

Mintty also adds a couple of items to the window menu, which can be accessed by clicking on the program icon or pressing Alt+Space.

Both menus have an entry that leads to the options dialog for changing mintty’s configuration.

Text selection, copy & paste
Screen contents can be selected by holding down the left mouse button and dragging the mouse. If Alt is held down before the left mouse button, a rectangular block instead of whole lines will be selected. The selection can be extended by holding down Shift while left-clicking. Double-clicking or triple-clicking selects a whole word or line, whereby word selection includes special characters that commonly appear in file names and URLs.

By default, selected text is automatically copied to the clipboard. This can be disabled on the Mouse page of the options dialog. Selected text can also be copied manually using either the Copy menu command, the Ctrl+Ins or Ctrl+Shift+C keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C with option CtrlExchangeShift=yes), or the middle mouse button combined with Shift.

The selected region is copied as "rich text" as well as normal text, which means it can be pasted with colours and formatting into applications that support it, e.g. word processors ("true colour" attributes are not supported).

The window title can be copied using the Copy Title command in the window menu.

The clipboard contents can be pasted using either the Paste menu command, the Shift+Ins or Ctrl+Shift+V keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+V with option CtrlExchangeShift=yes), or the middle mouse button. Not only text but also files and directories can be pasted, whereby the latter are inserted as Cygwin file names. Shell quoting is added to file names that contain spaces or special characters.

Selection highlighting is cleared on input by default. This can be disabled with option ClearSelectionOnInput=false.

The current selection size can optionally been indicated with a popup, enabled with option SelectionShowSize.

Selection can also be managed using the keyboard. Shift+middle-keypad-key (Shift+"5") enters keyboard selecting mode (modifier configurable).
Elastic text selection

The traditional selection behaviour of cell-based terminals is that a character touched with the mouse is included in the selection. With option ElasticMouse, text selection can be changed to include the first and last characters only if they are spanned at least halfway by the mouse dragging, like many GUI application do.

Drag & drop
Text, files and directories can be dropped into the mintty window. They are inserted in the same way as if they were pasted from the clipboard.

Opening files, directories and URLs
Files, directories, URLs and web addresses beginning with "www." can be opened either by holding Ctrl while left-clicking on them (or double-clicking, if and as enabled by option OpeningClicks), or by selecting them and choosing the Open command from the context menu. Embedded spaces are considered if escaped with a backslash; for selected pathnames, also embedding quote marks are considered.

A relative pathname is interpreted as relative to the current working directory of the terminal foreground process if that can be determined, overridden by the working directory interactively communicated by the respective control sequence (OSC 7).

Mintty also supports the OSC 8 control to embed explicit hyperlinks (similar to links on web pages), see https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#hyperlinks .

Note: While application mouse modes are enabled (as used by many screen oriented applications), Ctrl+Shift+click can be used to override it.
Hovering files, directories and URLs

The file names and links subject to opening are indicated by underlining when mouse-hovering over them (i.e. when moving the mouse) while the Control key is pressed. The colour used for hovering underlines can be configured with HoverColour. Explicit hyperlinks are displayed in the window title when hovering them; this can be disabled with HoverTitle.

Font zoom
The font size can be increased or decreased using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+(keypad-)plus and Ctrl+(keypad-)minus, or by holding Ctrl while rolling the mouse wheel. Ctrl+zero or Ctrl+middle-mouse click returns the font size to the default.
Shift-coupled window-with-font zooming: If Shift is also held while zooming, the window will be resized to scale together with the font, keeping the terminal character size if possible. This is not applied to the shifted numeric keypad "0" (which has other meaning) and to the shifted normal (non-keypad) "-" and "+" keys (because the shifted key could have a valid mapping, e.g. Ctrl+_, or the "+" key could be shifted itself already).
Zooming by keyboard or mouse can be disabled, respectively, with options ZoomShortcuts=no or ZoomMouse=no.

Drag resize
The usual windows function to drag on the window border resizes the terminal.
Shift-coupled font-with-window zooming: If Shift is also held while resizing, but Control is not held, the font will be scaled along with the resizing, unless disabled with ZoomFontWithWindow=false (which would help to avoid interference with certain shifted hotkeys configured to resize the window).
Note that due to the different height/width factors, coupled font zooming is not a precise operation.

DPI change
When DPI setting changes (by reconfiguration of display properties "what’s on your screen ... smaller/medium/larger" or moving the mintty window between monitors with different DPI settings), mintty adapts its screen size to avoid Windows blurred auto-adaptation. If Shift is also held during the change, the font will be scaled too, roughly maintaining the screen dimensions.

Full screen
Full screen mode can be toggled using either the Full Screen command in the menu or either of the Alt+Enter and Alt+F11 keyboard shortcuts, or the generic window title functions.

Default size
If the window has been resized, it can be returned to the default size set in the Window pane of the options using the Default size command in the menu or the Alt+F10 shortcut. Shift+Alt+F10 also restores the font size to its default.

Reset
Sometimes a faulty application or printing a binary file will leave the terminal in an unusable state. In that case, resetting the terminal’s state via the Reset command in the menu or the Alt+F8 keyboard shortcut may help.

Scrolling
Mintty has a scrollback buffer that can hold up to 10000 lines in the default configuration. It can be accessed using the scrollbar, the mouse wheel, or the keyboard. Hold the Shift key while pressing the Up and Down arrow keys to scroll line-by-line or the PageUp and PageDown keys to scroll page-by-page. With option KeyFunctions, user-defined keys can be used for scrolling.

Searching in the text and scrollback buffer
The Search menu command and Alt+F3 shorcut open a search bar with an input field for a search string. Matches are highlighted in the scrollback buffer. Enter/Shift+Enter find the next/previous position of the match and scrolls the scrollback buffer accordingly. Tab focusses back into the terminal pane of the window. The appearance of the search bar and the matching highlight colours can be customized.
Matching is case-insensitive and ignores combining characters.

Shift+cursor-left/right offers another scrolling feature. If prompt lines are marked with scroll markers they navigate to the previous/next prompt, to provide a better orientation among the output of previously invoked commands. See the Control Sequences wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#scroll-markers for details.

Flip screen
Applications such as editors and file viewers normally use a terminal feature called the alternate screen, which is a second screen buffer without scrollback. When they exit, they switch back to the primary screen to restore the command line as it was before invoking the application.

The Flip Screen menu command and Alt+F12 shortcut allow looking at the primary screen while the alternate screen is active, and vice versa. For example, this allows to refer to past commands while editing a file.

Switching session
The Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab shortcuts can be used to cycle through mintty windows. Minimized windows are skipped unless both Ctrl keys are used.

Virtual Tabs
The Virtual Tabs feature provides a list of all running mintty sessions (session switcher) as well as configurable launch parameters for new sessions (session launcher). The session list is shown when right-clicking the title bar (if virtual tabs mode is configured or with Ctrl) or ctrl+left-clicking it. By default, the list is also shown in the extended context menu (Ctrl+right-click), the mouse button 5 menu, and the menus opened with the Ctrl+Menu key and the Ctrl+Shift+I shortcut (if enabled). (Menu contents for the various context menu invocations is configurable.) For configuration, see settings SessionCommands, Menu*, and SessionGeomSync. Distinct sets of sessions can be set up with the setting -o Class=....

Virtual Tabs can be switched quickly with user-defined key assignments, using user-definable functions switch-[visible-](prev|next).

Closing a session
Clicking the window’s close button, pressing Alt+F4, or choosing Close from the window menu sends a SIGHUP signal to the process running in mintty, which normally causes it to exit.

That signal can be ignored, though, in which case the program might have to be forced to terminate by sending a SIGKILL signal instead. This can be done by holding down Shift when using the close button, shortcut or menu item.

Terminal Break
A traditional BRK event on a serial terminal connection can be simulated. The Break is available in the extended context menu and it can be mapped to the Break key (or other user-defined key) by configuration. Note, however, that a BRK can be ignored by configuration of the terminal device (pty) or can be ignored by an application by catching the SIGINT signal. For more forceful interruption of the terminal client application, see the Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#terminating-the-foreground-program .

Note that Ctrl+C is often configured to raise a SIGINT signal. However, this is not a terminal feature and can also be reconfigured (stty), so in fact BRK and Ctrl+C are inherently different functions.

Mouse tracking
When an application activates mouse tracking, mouse events are sent to the application rather than being treated as window events. This is indicated by the mouse pointer changing from an I shape to an arrow. Holding down Shift overrides mouse tracking mode and sends mouse events to the window instead, so that e.g. text can be selected and the context menu can be accessed.

Mintty supports 5-button mice, handling mouse buttons 4 / 5 like Alt+click-left / right in most mouse modes.

Alt codes
The Windows Alt+Numpad method for entering character codes is supported, whereby the Alt key has to be held while entering the character code. Only the first key has to be on the numpad; subsequent digits can be entered both on the numpad or the main part of the keyboard.

If the first key is the '+' on the numpad, the code is interpreted as hexadecimal, whereby digits A through F can be entered using the letter keys. If the first key is a zero, the code is interpreted as octal. If the first key is any other digit from 1 to 9, the code is interpreted as decimal.

For UTF-8 and other Unicode encodings such as GB18030, the entered code is interpreted as a Unicode codepoint and encoded accordingly before it is sent. For other encodings, the entered code is sent as is. If it doesn’t fit into one byte, it is sent as multiple bytes, with the most significant non-zero byte first.

Keyboard shortcuts
This section gives an overview of all the keyboard shortcuts. See also the final subsection on user-defined shortcuts.
Scrollback and Selection via keyboard

– Shift+Up: Line up
– Shift+Down: Line down
– Shift+PgUp: Page up
– Shift+PgDn: Page down
– Shift+Home: Top
– Shift+End: Bottom
– Alt+F3: Search
– Shift+cursor-left: Go to previous scroll marker (e.g. in prompt)
– Shift+cursor-right: Go to next scroll marker (e.g. in prompt)
– Shift+middle-keypad-key: Enter keyboard selecting mode

Note: The modifier can be configured with setting ScrollMod.

Keyboard selecting mode: Alt sets rectangular selection. Once keyboard selecting mode is entered, the following keys are applied:
– Up, Down, Up, Up: Modify selection
– PgUp, PgDn, Home, End: Scroll/Modify selection
– [Alt+]middle-keypad-key: Restart [rectangular] selection
– Insert or Enter: Copy selection and exit selection mode
– Delete or ESC: Exit selection mode

Copy and paste

– Ctrl+Ins: Copy
– Shift+Ins: Paste
– Ctrl+Shift+Ins: Copy and paste

Window commands

– Alt+F2: New (clone window at current size); see notes below
– Shift+Alt+F2: New (clone window at configured size); see notes below
– Alt+F3: Search (in scrollback buffer)
– Alt+F4: Close
– Alt+F8: Reset
– Alt+F10: Default terminal size (rows/columns)
– Shift+Alt+F10: Default terminal size (rows/columns) and font size
– Alt+F11 or Alt+Enter: Toggle full screen
– Shift+Alt+F11 or Shift+Alt+Enter: Toggle full screen and zoom font (Note that due to the different height/width factors, this is not a precise operation)
– Alt+F12: Flip screen
– Alt+Space: Window menu
– Ctrl+Tab: Next visible window (as sorted by creation time)
– Ctrl+Shift+Tab: Previous visible window (as sorted by creation time)
– Ctrl+Ctrl+Tab: Next window (as sorted by creation time)
– Ctrl+Ctrl+Shift+Tab: Previous window (as sorted by creation time)
– Ctrl+Alt+mouse-click/drag: Move window

Multi-monitor selection support: Alt+F2 (or user-defined "new" key as defined with option KeyFunctions) will only spawn a new window after F2 has been released. While the key is being held, the target monitor can be selected with a sequence of numeric keypad keys:
– cursor-up/down/left/right (8/2/4/6) navigate the target focus to the respective neighbour in the monitor grid;
– the diagonal keys (7/9/1/3) combine two directions respectively;
– the central key (5) sets the target focus to the Windows "primary" monitor;
– the Ins key (0) or Del resets the focus to the current monitor.
These navigation controls can be applied repeatedly to select a monitor further away.

Note that a heuristic algorithm is used, based on the size of the smallest monitor attached to the system, so the target may not always be selected as expected if multiple monitors of different size are available or monitors are not arranged in a regular grid. Note also that this feature is overridden by option SessionGeomSync.

Font zoom

– Ctrl+(keypad-)plus: Zoom font in
– Ctrl+(keypad-)minus: Zoom font out
– Ctrl+Shift+(keypad-)plus: Zoom font and window in
– Ctrl+Shift+(keypad-)minus: Zoom font and window out
– Ctrl+zero: Back to configured font size

Ctrl+Shift+letter shortcuts

An alternative set of shortcuts for clipboard and window commands using Ctrl+Shift+letter combinations is available. These can be enabled on the Keys pane of the options dialog.
– Ctrl+Shift+A: Select all
– Ctrl+Shift+C: Copy
– Ctrl+Shift+V: Paste
– Ctrl+Shift+N: New
– Ctrl+Shift+H: Search scrollback buffer
– Ctrl+Shift+W: Close
– Ctrl+Shift+R: Reset
– Ctrl+Shift+D: Default terminal size (rows/columns)
– Ctrl+Shift+F: Full screen (not zooming font despite Shift)
– Ctrl+Shift+S: Flip screen
– Ctrl+Shift+O: Toggle scrollbar
– Ctrl+Shift+P: Cycle pointer styles
– Ctrl+Shift+T: Cycle or tune transparency levels

Ctrl+Shift+T cycles through transparency levels in steps, whenever Ctrl+Shift+T is released. Alternatively, while Ctrl+Shift+T is held down, the navigation keys on the numeric keypad can be used for further fine-tuning:
Up/Dn to increase/decrease, PgUp/PgDn for steps, Del/Ins for no/max transparency, End for highest preconfigured transparency, Home for previous value, Clear ("5") for glass.
If OpaqueWhenFocused is set, opaqueness is temporarily disabled to provide visible feedback for the changes.

User-defined shortcuts

Function keys, special keys, and Ctrl+Shift+key combinations can be redefined to generate user-defined input or invoke functions. See option KeyFunctions for details.

Embedding graphics in terminal output
The Sixel graphics support feature facilitates a range of applications that integrate graphic images in the terminal, animated graphics, and even video and interactive gaming applications.

An example of the benefit of this feature is the output of ‘gnuplot‘ with the command
GNUTERM=sixel gnuplot -e "splot [x=-3:3] [y=-3:3] sin(x) * cos(y)"

Note: The number of Sixel images displayed on the screen is limited in order to prevent Windows handle resource exhaustion.
Image support

In addition to the legacy Sixel feature, mintty supports graphic image display (using iTerm2 controls). Image formats supported comprise PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, Exif.

Emoji display support
Mintty supports display of emojis as defined by Unicode using emoji presentation, emoji style variation and emoji sequences. The option Emojis can choose among sets of emoji graphics if deployed in a mintty configuration directory. See the Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#emojis about deployment of emoji graphics for mintty.

HTML Screen dump
Mintty can create an HTML representation of the screen, from the extended context menu or using the respective xterm Media Copy escape sequence. The HTML page is created in the start directory of mintty and uses a filename pattern of mintty.date_time.html. Screen layout and character attributes are reproduced as closely as possible. If there is a current selection, the selected text will be included in the HTML dump, otherwise the current screen view is used. In the latter case, also a background image or pattern is reproduced, if its filename was configured as a relative path name using POSIX syntax (forward slashes).

If Shift is held, the function also opens the HTML page.

Diagnostic support
Screen logging

A couple of options are available to enable logging initially (Log=... or -l ... on the command line), or to specify a log file name for later logging (Log=... combined with Logging=no, or --logfile ... on the command line). In either case, logging can be toggled from the extended context menu.

Character information display

Diagnostic display of current character information can be toggled from the extended context menu.
Unicode character codes at the current cursor position will then be displayed in the window title bar. (Note that mintty may precompose a combining character sequence into a combined character which is then displayed.)
Unicode character names will be included in the display if the unicode-ucd package is installed in /usr/share (or the file charnames.txt generated by the mintty script src/mknames is installed in the mintty resource subfolder info).
Emoji sequence "short names" will be indicated if Emojis display is enabled.
Note that the "normal" window title setting sequence and the character information output simply overwrite each other.

CONFIGURATION

Mintty has a graphical options dialog that can be reached via the context menu or the window menu. It has the following action buttons:
– Cancel: discards changes.
– Save: applies and saves changes and closes the dialog.
– Apply: applies changes to the current instance of mintty
but does not save them to the configuration file. So using Apply
then Cancel, local changes can be applied (and tested) without
affecting further instances of mintty.

In configuration files, settings are stored as NAME=VALUE pairs, with one per line. By default, they are read from any file of /etc/minttyrc, $APPDATA/mintty/config, ~/.config/mintty/config, ~/.minttyrc, in this order. Additional configuration files can be specified using the -c/--config or -C/--loadconfig command line options. These are read in order after the default config files, with settings in later files overriding those in earlier ones. Configuration changes are saved to the last writable file read by default or ~/.minttyrc if none is given, or (with precedence) to a configuration file specified with -c/--config or --configdir. Individual settings can also be specified on the command line using the -o/--option.

Note: Many string values in the config files, especially those referring to file names or Windows items, are Unicode-enabled, meaning they are expected to be UTF-8-encoded in the configuration file independently of the encoding the terminal runs in; as a fallback, if the configuration value is not valid UTF-8, it is interpreted in the system ANSI encoding. (This does not apply to the same configuration settings when given on the command-line.)
Unicode-enabled settings: BellFile, ThemeFile, Background, Title, ExitTitle, Icon, Log, Language, Font, Font1..., FontSample, FontChoice, SearchBar, Printer, Answerback, SixelClipChars, Class, AppID, AppName, AppLaunchCmd, DropCommands, UserCommands, SessionCommands, TaskCommands, KeyFunctions, SysMenuFunctions, CtxMenuFunctions, UserCommandsPath.

Be careful when running multiple instances of mintty. If options are saved from different instances, or the config file is edited manually, options can obviously be overwritten; if older mintty versions are run (e.g. from cygwin and msys sharing the same home directory), options may even get dropped from the configuration file; mintty versions since 261 preserve unknown options and comment lines.

Additional resource files are used for colour schemes (option ThemeFile, subdirectory themes), wave files (option BellFile, subdirectory sounds), and localization translation files (option Language, subdirectory lang) within the mintty resource directories /usr/share/mintty, $APPDATA/mintty, ~/.config/mintty, ~/.mintty, or as specified with command line option --configdir.

The following sections explain the settings on each pane of the options dialog, followed by settings that do not appear in the dialog. For each setting, its name in the config file is shown in parentheses, along with its default value.

If there is only a name in parentheses, there is currently no GUI configuration facility for that option (see also Hidden settings below).

Looks
Settings affecting mintty’s appearance.
Colours

Clicking on one of the buttons here opens the colour selection dialog.
In the settings (config file or command-line options), colours are represented as comma-separated RGB triples with decimal 8-bit values ranging from 0 to 255. X-style hexadecimal colour specifications such as #RRGGBB, rgb:RR/GG/BB or rgb:RRRR/GGGG/BBBB, cmy:C.C/M.M/Y.Y or cmyk:C.C/M.M/Y.Y/K.K can be used as well. Also X11 color names are supported.
– Foreground text colour (ForegroundColour=191,191,191)
– Background colour (BackgroundColour=0,0,0)
– Cursor colour (CursorColour=191,191,191)
– Underline, Strikeout, Overline colour (UnderlineColour=-1)
– Ctrl+mouse-move hovering colour (HoverColour=-1)

– Theme (ThemeFile=): The popup menu offers theme files as stored in a resource subdirectory themes for selection as a colour scheme. The option can also be set to a filename (like D:/.../solarized-light.minttyrc).

The field can also be used as a drag-and-drop target for colour schemes downloaded from the Color Scheme Configurator, or for theme files from the web. See the Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#using-colour-schemes-themes about this mechanism.

Note: Mintty also provides the command-line script mintheme which can display the themes available in the mintty configuration directories or activate one of them in the current mintty window.

Transparency (Transparency=off)

Window transparency level, with the following choices:
– Off
– Low
– Medium
– High
– Glass

The Glass option is only available on Vista and above with desktop compositing enabled. To make this reasonably usable, the glass colour needs to be set to be as dark as possible in the Windows control panel: choose Personalize from the desktop context menu, click on Window Color, turn the colour intensity up to the maximum, show the colour mixer, and turn the brightness down to black.

Numeric transparency values ranging from 4 to 254 can be specified in config files or on the command line. (Values below 4 are multiplied by 16, for backward compatibility reasons.)

Opaque when focused (OpaqueWhenFocused=no)

Enable to make the window opaque when it is active (to avoid background distractions when working in it).

Cursor (CursorType=line)

The following cursor types are available:
– Line
– Block
– Underscore

The line cursor is displayed with the width set in the Accessibility Options control panel / Ease of Access Center, mouse panel or Optimize visual display.

Cursor blink (CursorBlinks=yes)

If enabled, the cursor blinks at the rate set in the Keyboard control panel.

Text
Settings controlling text display.
Font selection

Clicking on the Select button opens a dialog where the font and its properties can be chosen. Font styles other than Bold are ignored. In the config file, this corresponds to the following entries:
– Font (Font=Lucida Console); only monospace fonts are listed
– Font style (FontWeight=400, FontIsBold=no)
– Size (FontHeight=9)
The font selection dialog also offers an Apply button for convenient testing how the selected font looks. Its function is the same as the Apply button of the options dialog.

Further settings can be given in the config file:

– Font boldness (FontWeight=400): This is an implicit value after selecting a font in the font selection menu, or can be specified in the config file or on the command line for font selection. Typical weights are Normal/Regular (FontWeight=400) and Bold (FontWeight=700 or FontIsBold=yes) but if a font family has a different scheme or more than 2 font weights, the weight value can be used for more specific selection. If a font family has no bold weight but boldness was requested, mintty does not adhere to this scheme but enforces bold font selection; however, in this case the bold attribute may not be effective.

– Alternative fonts (Font1= ... Font10= , Font1Weight= ... Font10Weight=): With these settings, up to 10 alternative fonts (and optionally weights) can be configured which would then be selectable via ECMA-48 SGR character attributes (see Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#text-attributes-and-rendering ).
They can also be used as secondary fonts with option FontChoice.
Note: Font10 has a special preference property; if it is not configured, mintty will try to activate it anyway, looking for an installed Fraktur or Blackletter font (ECMA-48 "Gothic").
Note: The control sequence for alternative font 1 overrides the identical control sequence to select the VGA character set, which would thus be disabled. Configuring alternative font 1 is therefore discouraged.

– Choice of script-specific secondary fonts (FontChoice=): With this setting, alternative fonts can be specified as secondary font for specific scripts. The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of script name and alternative font number. Script names are as specified in the Unicode file Scripts.txt, listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_(Unicode) column "Alias". (The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.)
A special name is PictoSymbols to assign an alternative font to ranges of pictographic symbols from Unicode blocks matching Arrows, Mathematical Operators, Technical, Enclosed Alphanumerics, Pictographs, Control Pictures, Optical, Box Drawing, Miscellaneous.*Symbols, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes, Dingbats, Tiles, Cards, Emoticons, Transport, Alchemical, Chess.
Another special name is CJK which comprises Han, Hangul, Katakana, Hiragana, Bopomofo, Kanbun, Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms (except Latin). A later more specific entry will override an earlier one (see CJK example below).
Finally, special name Private covers the Private Use ranges, which are often used for additional icon symbols (e.g. by "Nerd Fonts" or "Powerline" fonts).

Example:
FontChoice=Hebrew:6;Arabic:7;CJK:5;Han:8;Hangul:9
Font6=David
Font7=Simplified Arabic Fixed
Font5=Malgun Gothic
Font8=FangSong
Font9=MingLiU
FontChoice=PictoSymbols:2
Font2=DejaVu Sans Mono

– Font sample text (FontSample=): This hidden setting overrides the text for the "Sample" box in the Font chooser dialog.

– Show "hidden" fonts (ShowHiddenFonts=no): This hidden setting enables display of monospace fonts in the font selection menu even if they are marked to Hide in the Windows Font settings (from the Control Panel — Fonts folder).

– Configure font chooser (FontMenu=-1): This hidden setting selects and tunes the font chooser dialog element. Value 1 selects the Windows system font chooser unmodified; value 2 enables font chooser localization, adding value 4 (to 6 or 14) enables horizontal item scaling (making space for localized labels), adding value 8 (to 10 or 14) enables item and size adjustments, value -1 enables all tuning; value 0 selects a built-in inline font chooser.

Text lines (UnderlineManual=false)

By enabling this hidden setting, text attributes underline, doubly underline, strikeout and overline are enforced to be drawn manually. The default is to use Windows font variants for strikeout and for underline, unless mintty detects that the underlined font would not display properly. Note that font smoothing may be affected by Windows-generated underline modes.

Emoji support (Emojis=none)

With this option, mintty emoji support is enabled and the emojis style is chosen. Mintty will match output for valid emoji sequences, presentation forms and emoji style selectors. (Note that up to cygwin 2.10 it may be useful to set Charwidth=unicode in addition.)

Supported styles are:
– none Emoji support disabled; symbols are taken from the font.
– emojione Use EmojiOne graphics.
– noto Use graphics from the Noto Emoji font.
– apple Use Apple emoji graphics.
– google Use Google emoji graphics.
– twitter Use Twitter emoji graphics.
– facebook Use Facebook emoji graphics.
– samsung Use Samsung emoji graphics.
– windows Use Windows emoji graphics.

Note that all style options only work if the respective emoji graphics repository is deployed in a mintty resource directory, subdirectory emojis. See the Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#emojis for details.

Emoji placement (EmojiPlacement=stretch)

Emojis are displayed in the rectangular character cell group determined by the cumulated width of the emoji sequence characters. The following options are provided to tune their display:
– stretch Emojis are scaled to fit in their display area.
– align Emojis are aligned in their display area.
– middle Emojis are centered in their display area.
– full Emojis are full-size with original aspect ratio; note that they may overlap into the next character(s).

Show bold as font (BoldAsFont=no)

This option sets the preferred rendering of the ANSI bold (or ’intense’) text attribute to use a bold-style font; where a suitable bold variant of the selected font (that has the same width as the base font) is available, that is used; otherwise, the bolding is simulated by rendering the text twice with a one-pixel offset (’overstrike’).
(Corresponds roughly to the xterm resource allowBoldFonts.)

This option is not fully independent. If both BoldAsFont and BoldAsColour are true, both display methods are combined where applicable. If both are false, xterm default behaviour is applied. See Bold Behaviour for an overview.

Show bold as colour (BoldAsColour=yes)

This option sets the preferred rendering of the ANSI bold (or ’intense’) text attribute to use a different colour, usually with increased brightness; it maps ANSI colours 0..7 (unless selected with the palette colour escape sequences) to their bright variants 8..15, and the default colour to a brightened variant. Rendering of other colours is not affected.
(Corresponds largely to the xterm resource boldColors.)

This option is not fully independent. If both BoldAsColour and BoldAsFont are true, both display methods are combined where applicable. If both are false, xterm default behaviour is applied. See Bold Behaviour for an overview.

Show bold like xterm default

With this interactive option, you can choose xterm default boldening behaviour by switching both bold as font and colour off. It can be switched off by switching one of the other options on.

Bold substitution colour (BoldColour=)

This hidden option sets a colour to be used to render the bold attribute of text that would otherwise have the default foreground colour, overriding other bold rendering; it is only applied if option BoldAsColour is true. The bold substitution colour can also be set, modified, enabled or disabled with the respective xterm OSC control sequences.
(Corresponds to the xterm resources colorBD and colorBDMode.)

Bold as special background (BoldAsRainbowSparkles=false)

This hidden option displays the bold attribute by underlaying special background. Overrides BoldAsFont. This is a fun option, use at your own risk.

Note: Bold Behaviour

When the bold text attribute is set, mintty distinguishes three classes of colours:
– Default: The default terminal foreground colour.
– ANSI-8: The ANSI colours 0..7 (used for SGR 30..37).
– Extended: True colours and the rest of the 256 colours palette.

The colour classes are affected by the bold text attribute as follows:
– Extended colours are always shown with a boldened font only.
– When both BoldAsFont and BoldAsColour are disabled, mintty engages a mode similar to the xterm default behaviour: ANSI-8 is displayed with a bold font and a different colour, Default colour only uses a bold font.
– Otherwise, Default and ANSI-8 colours are affected by BoldAsFont and BoldAsColour independently, such that it is possible to choose only bold font, or only different colour, or both.
– Note that Default bold display can be overridden by a BoldColour setting.

Allow blinking (AllowBlinking=no)

When text blinking is disabled, as it is by default, the blink attribute is displayed as a bold background colour instead.

Font smoothing (FontSmoothing=default)

Select the amount of font smoothing in font rendering from the following choices:
– Default: Use Windows setting.
– None: With all the jaggies.
– Partial: Greyscale anti-aliasing.
– Full: Subpixel anti-aliasing ("ClearType").

Note that font smoothing may be affected by some Windows-generated font attributes; see UnderlineManual.

Font rendering (FontRender=uniscribe)

Select the rendering system used for text display:
– textout: Use the Windows ExtTextOut API.
– uniscribe: Use the Windows Uniscribe API.

Ligatures support

These options affect support for ligatures. They are not capable of disabling ligatures, however, as those are applied by Windows font handling. Setting FontRender=textout disables Uniscribe, including ligatures support.

– Interactive Ligatures support (LigaturesSupport=0): By default, ligatures, as supported by the selected font, are rendered if they are output to the terminal in one chunk. When this option is set =1, mintty redisplays the left part of the line whenever a character is output, so ligatures are also supported while being input. With LigaturesSupport=2, mintty also redisplays the previous cursor line after the cursor is moved.

– Ligatures supported (Ligatures=1): This setting can affect the set of ligatures applied, as supported by the selected font. When this option is set =1, the default set of ligatures is applied. With a value greater than 1, additional ligatures are enabled, e.g. turning "<-", "->", "<--", "-->" into arrows, and "<=", ">=" into less/greater or equal symbols. Note the ambiguity of ligature transformation as e.g. "<=" could as well be meant to be an arrow. There is currently no mechanism to affect ligature transformation in more detail.

Locale (Locale=)

The locale setting consists of a lowercase two-letter or three-letter language code followed by a two-letter country code, for instance en_US or zh_CN. The Windows default system and user locales are shown in the drop-down list for this setting. Alternatively, the language-neutral "C" locale can be selected.

If no locale is set here, which is the default, mintty uses the locale and character set specified via the environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG.

If the locale option is set, however, it will override any environment variable setting: LC_ALL and the LC_* variables for specific locale categories are cleared, while LANG is set according to the selected locale and character set.

Note: This means, while not strictly necessary, that also locale variables unrelated to the terminal character set (e.g. LC_MESSAGES) are cleared to avoid confusion.

Note: If the Locale option is set, mintty further checks whether the locale is a "wide" locale (i.e. ambiguous-width characters are wide in a CJK locale) but the selected font is actually "ambiguous-narrow" (i.e. ambiguous-width characters are narrow in the font, as detected at characters U+03B1 and U+2500) in which case it appends the "@cjknarrow" locale modifier, in order to adapt the selected locale to the chosen font. (This would be overridden by setting Charwidth=ambig-wide.)

By default, the selected locale also determines the character width assumptions used for screen rendering. For exceptions, see the setting Charwidth and the control sequences for special wide character handling ( https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#wide-characters ).

Character set (Charset=)

The character set to be used for encoding input and decoding output. If no locale is set, this setting is ignored.

Note: While changing the character set takes effect immediately for text input and ouput, it does not affect the processes already running in mintty. This is because the environment variables of a running process cannot be changed from outside that process. Therefore mintty should be restarted for a character set change to take full effect, or the locale environment of the shell should be changed accordingly.

Note: The locale and character set can also be changed with an escape sequence, see the Control Sequences wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#locale . That setting takes precedence; changes from the Options menu will silently have no effect unless an escape sequence with empty locale is sent to the terminal to restore to "default".

Keys
Settings controlling keyboard behaviour.
Auto-repeat keys (AutoRepeat=on)

When setting this off, keyboard auto-repeat is ignored. Auto-repeat can also be switched dynamically with DECSET 8.

Backarrow sends ^H (BackspaceSendsBS=no)

By default, mintty sends ^? (ASCII DEL) as the keycode for the backspace key. If this option is enabled, ^H is sent instead. This also changes the Ctrl+Backspace code from ^_ to ^?.
(Corresponds to the xterm resource backarrowKey.)

Delete sends DEL(DeleteSendsDEL=no)

By default, mintty sends VT100 Remove as the keycode for the keypad Del key. If this option is enabled, ^? (ASCII DEL) is sent instead.
(Corresponds to the xterm resource deleteIsDEL.)

Ctrl+LeftAlt is AltGr (CtrlAltIsAltGr=no)

The AltGr key on non-US Windows systems is a strange beast: pressing it is synonymous with pressing the left Ctrl key and the right Alt key at the same time, and Windows programs usually treat any Ctrl+Alt combination as AltGr.

Some programs, however, chief among them Microsoft’s very own Office, do not treat Ctrl+LeftAlt as AltGr, so that Ctrl+LeftAlt combinations can be used in command shortcuts even when a key has an AltGr character binding.

By default, mintty follows Office’s approach, because a number of terminal programs make use of Ctrl+Alt shortcuts. The "standard" Windows behaviour can be restored by ticking the checkbox here.

The setting makes no difference for keys without AltGr key bindings (e.g. any key on the standard US layout).

Allow delay for AltGr detection (CtrlAltDelayAltGr=0)

Some software managing and providing keyboard input does not handle AltGr properly; particularly TeamViewer is known for buggy behaviour as it does not provide Ctrl and Menu virtual key codes like Windows does. With this option, some delay in milliseconds (suggested 16 or 20) can be allowed to detect a Ctrl+Menu sequence as AltGr.

Old method of AltGr detection (OldAltGrDetection=no)

Setting this hidden option would disable a workaround for an incompatibility in the Windows on-screen keyboard, just in case it has any side effects.

Support injection of external hotkeys (SupportExternalHotkeys=2)

This setting supports external Alt+hotkey combinations, esp. Alt+F4 to close the window, independently of general Alt+Fn shortcuts support (if option value is 2) and by fixing the buggy hotkey sequence sent by StrokeIt.

Copy and Paste shortcuts (ClipShortcuts=yes)

Checkbox for enabling the clipboard shortcuts Ctrl+Ins for copying and Shift+Ins for pasting.

Menu and Full Screen shortcuts (WindowShortcuts=yes)

Checkbox for enabling the Alt+Space and Alt+Enter shortcuts for showing the window menu and toggling full screen mode.

Switch window shortcuts (SwitchShortcuts=yes)

Checkbox for enabling the Ctrl+Tab shortcuts for switching between mintty windows cyclically.

Zoom shortcuts (ZoomShortcuts=yes)

Checkbox for enabling the font zooming shortcuts Ctrl+plus/minus/zero.

Alt+Fn shortcuts (AltFnShortcuts=yes)

Checkbox for enabling the use of combinations of Alt and functions keys as shortcuts, for example Alt+F4 for closing the window or Alt+F11 fortoggling full screen mode. Disable to have Alt+Fn combinations sent to applications instead.

Ctrl+Shift+letter shortcuts (CtrlShiftShortcuts=no)

Checkbox for enabling alternative clipboard and window command shortcuts using Ctrl+Shift+letter combinations such as Ctrl+Shift+V for paste or Ctrl+Shift+N for starting a new session.

These can replace the Ctrl/Shift+Ins and Alt+Fn shortcuts, whereby they show up in menus only if the corresponding default shortcuts are disabled.

See the shortcuts section above for the list of shortcuts controlled by this option. When it is disabled, Ctrl+Shift+letter combinations are sent to applications as C1 control characters instead.

Compose key selection (ComposeKey=off)

The modifier key selected here will have the function of a Compose key. Pressing and releasing the key, following by a sequence of composing keys, will enter a composition of them, according to X11 compose key data.
The Off setting disables the Compose key.
– Shift
– Ctrl
– Alt
– Off

Mouse
Settings controlling mouse support.
Copy on select (CopyOnSelect=yes)

If enabled, the region selected with the mouse is copied to the clipboard as soon as the mouse button is released, thus emulating X Window behaviour.

Copy as rich text (CopyAsRTF=yes)

If this option is enabled, which it is by default, text is copied to the clipboard in rich text format (RTF) in addition to plain text format. RTF preserves colours and styles when pasting text into applications that support it, e.g. word processors.

Note: Copy as rich text is also available as an explicit item in the extended context menu.

The font used in RTF may be changed by the settings CopyAsRTFFont and CopyAsRTFFontHeight, to accommodate the case that the configured mintty font is not available when reading the contents (e.g. after sending it by mail).

Copy as HTML (CopyAsHTML=0)

With this option, mintty also copies text in HTML format, using flexible levels of HTML formatting, when applying the normal copy function.
– 0: do not include HTML
– 1: copy HTML text only (no font information)
– 2: copy HTML text (no global background)
– 3: copy HTML (close to screen layout)

Note: Copy as HTML levels are also available as explicit items in the extended context menu.

Clicks place command line cursor (ClicksPlaceCursor=no)

If enabled, the command line cursor can be placed by pressing the left mouse button. This works by sending the number of cursor keycodes needed to get to the destination.

Right mouse button (RightClickAction=menu)

Action to take when the right mouse button is pressed.
– Paste: Paste the clipboard contents.
– Extend: Extend the selected region.
– Enter: Simulate Enter/Return key.
– Menu: Show the context menu.

If this is set to Paste, the middle button extends the selected region instead of pasting the clipboard. If it is set to Extend, a left click with Shift pressed pastes the clipboard instead of extending the selection.

Middle mouse button(MiddleClickAction=paste)

Action to take when the middle mouse button is pressed.
– Paste: Paste the clipboard contents.
– Extend: Extend the selected region.
– Enter: Simulate Enter/Return key.
– Void: Do nothing.

Default click target (ClicksTargetApp=yes)

This applies to application mouse mode, i.e. when the application activates xterm-style mouse reporting. In that mode, mouse clicks can be sent either to the application to process as it sees fit, or to the window for the usual actions such as select and paste.
– Window
– Application

Modifier key for overriding default (ClickTargetMod=shift)

The modifier key selected here can be used to override the click target in application mouse mode. With the default settings, clicks are sent to the application and Shift needs to be held to trigger window actions instead.
The Off setting disables overriding.
– Shift
– Ctrl
– Alt
– Win
– Off

Mouse auto-hiding(HideMouse=on)

By default, mintty automatically hides the cross-hair mouse cursor when keyboard input is being entered. Setting this option =false keeps the cursor.
(Corresponds to the xterm resource value pointerMode:2.)

Elastic text selection(ElasticMouse=off)

With this option set, text selection with mouse dragging only includes first and last characters if they are spanned at least halfway, so just slightly touching a character leaves it out.

Window
Window properties.
Columns (Columns=80)

Default width of the window, in character cells.

Rows (Rows=24)

Default height of the window, in character cells.

Current size

Pressing this button sets the default width and height to the window’s current size.

Vertical spacing adjustment (RowSpacing=0)

Additional row padding.

Note: Mintty adjusts row spacing according to the font metrics, to compensate for tight or tall spacing of some fonts (e.g. Courier, Consolas, FreeMono, Monaco). The RowSpacing value is added to that.
(Corresponds roughly to the xterm resource scaleHeight.)

Horizontal spacing adjustment (ColSpacing=0)

Additional column padding; ColSpacing=1 can avoid boldened glyphs being clipped.

Border spacing(Padding=1)

Window padding; margin between text and window border. The effective value is limited by the character cell width (scaling with font zooming).
(Corresponds to the xterm resource internalBorder.)
A negative value indicates that always the character cell width shall be used, without fixed limit.

Scrollback lines (ScrollbackLines=10000)

The maximum number of lines to keep in the scrollback buffer.

Scrollbar (Scrollbar=right)

The scrollbar can be shown on either side of the window or just hidden. By default, it is shown on the right-hand side.
– Left
– None
– Right

Modifier for scrolling (ScrollMod=shift)

The modifier key that needs to be pressed together with the arrow-up/down, PgUp/PgDn, Home/End, or arrow-left/right keys to access the scrollback buffer.
The default is Shift. The Off setting disables scrolling with keyboard shortcuts. A combined numeric value selects the respective combination of modifier keys.
– Shift (1)
– Alt (2)
– Ctrl (4)
– Win (8)
– Super (16)
– Hyper (32)
– Off (0)

PgUp and PgDn scroll without modifier (PgUpDnScroll=no)

If this is enabled, the scrollback buffer can be accessed by just pressing PgUp or PgDn, without the ’modifier for scrolling’ selected above. If the modifier is pressed anyway, plain PgUp/PgDn keycodes are sent to the application. This option does not affect the arrow keys or Home/End keys.

UI localization language (Language=)

This selects the language or language/region code to use for localization of the mintty user interface, the options dialog, menus, message boxes, and terminal in-line error messages.
– (empty) an empty entry disables localization
– @ use the Windows user language setting
– * use environment settings (variables LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, LANG)
– = use the same language as the Locale setting (section Text)
– (language[_region]) use the given language or language/region code

See the Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#localization about how to configure localization.

Note that Windows may already have localized the default entries of the system menu, which makes the system menu language inconsistent because mintty adds a few items here. Select Language=en to "reverse-localize" this.

Terminal
Terminal emulation settings.
Terminal type (Term=xterm)

The terminal type. This determines the setting of the TERM environment variable at mintty startup. Choices available from the dropdown list are xterm, xterm-256color, xterm-vt220, vt100, vt220, vt340, vt420, vt525, xterm-direct, mintty, mintty-direct.

The last three options are only offered if the respective terminfo entries are installed in the system. The *-direct entries provide terminfo capabilities to set true-colour (24 bit colour) attributes. Note, however, that this only affects usage of the terminfo API to drive the terminal; the respective control sequences are always available.

If the setting contains "vt220" or higher, xterm VT220-style function key mode is enabled instead of the default PC-style function key mode. (This can otherwise be set with the DECSET 1061 control sequence.)

Apart from that, this setting has no effect on mintty’s terminal emulation, i.e. all the features are always available. However, the TERM setting may be used by applications to choose what features they can use, alternatively to the preferrable device attributes queries (see https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips for hints).

The xterm-256color setting enables 256-color mode in some applications, but may not be recognised at all by others, which is why plain xterm is the default.

The vt340 setting facilitates a terminal ID indication corresponding to the Sixel graphics feature. However, particularly the gnuplot tool uses a dedicated variable (GNUTERM) to trigger its usage.

(Corresponds roughly to the combined xterm resources decTerminalID, termName, keyboardType.)

Answerback (Answerback=)

The answerback string is sent in response to the ^E (ENQ) character. By default, this is empty.

Alternate screen (NoAltScreen=false)

With this setting, the alternate screen can be disabled. (Corresponds to the xterm resource titeInhibit, switchable by an escape sequence.)

Enable 132-column mode switching (Enable132ColumnSwitching=false)

With this setting, DECSET 3 escape sequences to switch 80/132 column modes are enabled initially. This can be changed later dynamically (DECSET 40). (Corresponds to the xterm resource c132, switchable by an escape sequence.)

Apply old wraparound behaviour (OldWrapModes=false)

Setting this compatibility option disables some tweaks and fixes of mintty 2.7.5:
– Backspace after pending Wraparound goes to previous column
– Reverse Wraparound mode initially disabled (but switchable), complying with xterm default and terminfo

Allow control sequence to set selection (AllowSetSelection=false)

If enabled, the terminal control sequence OSC 52 is allowed to set the clipboard selection for pasting (using base64-encoded contents, like xterm).

– Bell system sound (BellType=1): Preferred system sound, values:

-1 : Simple Beep
0 : No Beep (overrides BellFile and BellFreq)
1 : Default Beep
2 : Critical Stop
3 : Question
4 : Exclamation
5 : Asterisk

– Wave (BellFile=): The popup menu offers wave files as stored in a resource subdirectory sounds for selection. The option can also be set to a filename (like D:/.../soundfile.wav); this can be achieved also by drag-and-drop from a local file. This setting overrides the Bell system sound except No Beep.
– Play: The button plays the selected sound for testing. The sound is also played when it is changed.
– Flash (BellFlash=no): Briefly flash the terminal or window. (Corresponds to the xterm resource visualBell.)
– Flash style (BellFlashStyle=4): Tune the style to flash the terminal or window; this is a bitmask composed of the following values:

1 : Flash the window frame (using Windows)
2 : Flash the outer character cells; not recommended;
will look ragged with double-width characters
4 : Flash the whole terminal pane (all character cells)
8 : cell flash briefly inverts foreground and background;
default is to moderately brighten the background colour
12 : (combining 4 and 8) classic bright full flash

– Highlight in taskbar (BellTaskbar=yes): Change the colour of mintty’s taskbar entry if the mintty window is not active. (Corresponds to the xterm resource bellIsUrgent, switchable by an escape sequence.)
– Popup on bell (BellPopup=no): Popup mintty to desktop foreground. (Corresponds to the xterm resource popOnBell, switchable by an escape sequence.)
– Minimum delay between bells (BellInterval=100): Multiple bells within this many milliseconds will sound as one.

A simple frequency beep can be configured in the configuration file or on the command line:
– (BellFreq=0): Beep sound frequency (overrides system sounds).
– (BellLen=400): Beep sound length (applies to frequency beep).

Printer (Printer=)

The ANSI standard defines control sequences ("Media Copy") for sending text to a printer, which are used by some terminal applications such as the mail reader pine. The Windows printer to send such text to can be selected here. By default, printing is disabled. If printing gets disabled in the Options menu, an active print connection will be ended; if the printer is changed, an active print connection will be continued with the previous printer.

Prompt about running processes on close (ConfirmExit=yes)

If enabled, ask for confirmation when the close button or Alt+F4 is pressed and the command invoked by mintty still has child processes. This is intended to help avoid closing programs accidentally. If possible, mintty also displays a list of running child processes, using the procps command if installed, or the ps command.

Suppress properties and features controlled by escape sequences

Using these options, the listed feature numbers are suppressed. Each option may contain a comma-separated list of respective numbers. Usage of these options is discouraged; users are not entitled to complain about side effects.
– (SuppressSGR=) Character attributes (CSI ... m).
– (SuppressDEC=) DECSET private modes (CSI ? ... h/l).
– (SuppressWIN=) Window operations (CSI ... t); 24 means >= 24.
– (SuppressOSC=) Window configuration commands (OSC ... ST).

See https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#text-attributes-and-rendering for an overview of SGR attributes.
See http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.txt for a full listing of escape control sequences.
For some of the option values, more specific configuration parameters exist:
– AllowBlinking=false ↔ SuppressSGR=5,6
– Enable132ColumnSwitching=false ≈ SuppressDEC=3 (permanent)
– NoAltScreen=true ≈ SuppressDEC=47,1047,1048,1049 (switchable)
– AllowSetSelection=false ↔ SuppressOSC=52

Suppress mouse wheel (SuppressMouseWheel=)

With this setting, certain effects of mouse wheel rolling can be disabled. The option is a list of action tags:
– scrollwin do not mouse-scroll the scrollback buffer (scrollbar not affected)
– scrollapp do not simulate scrolling in applications by sending cursor escape sequences
– zoom do not mouse-zoom font size (same as ZoomMouse=no)
– report do not report mouse wheel events in application mouse modes

Command line
The settings here are config file versions of command line options described in the OPTIONS section. They do not appear in the options dialog.
Holding the window open (Hold=start)

The Hold setting determines whether to keep the terminal window open when the command has finished and no more processes are connected to the terminal. It takes the following values:
– never: Don’t keep the window open.
– start: Only keep the window open if the command exited with status 255, which is used to indicate failure to start the command. This is the default.
– error: Keep the window open if the command exited with a non-zero status or it was terminated by a signal indicating a runtime error.
– always: Always keep the window open.

Window icon (Icon=)

The Icon setting with format FILE[,INDEX] allows to load the window icon from an executable, DLL, or icon file. The optional comma-separated index can be used to select a particular icon in a file with multiple icons.

If the setting is empty, as it is by default, mintty’s program icon is used, unless mintty was invoked from a desktop shortcut in which case it uses the shortcut icon.

For interaction problems of icon, shortcut, and the Windows taskbar, see the note for the -i option above.

Log file (Log=)

The Log setting can be used to specify a log file that all output is copied into. If it is empty, as it is by default, no logging is done. If it contains %d it will be substituted with the process ID. If it contains % placeholders other than a single %d, the log file name will be constructed by calling strftime(3) on the pattern; note that this is likely to fail if a placeholder expands with "/" (%D).

If the log file name is a relative path name, it is relative from the working directory mintty was started in. To avoid failure to create a log file (especially when starting from the Start menu), the following tweak is applied: If mintty was started from a Windows shortcut with no working directory ("Start in:") specified and the effective start directory is within the Windows system directory hierarchy, mintty changes to the user’s home directory first, except in WSL support mode where %LOCALAPPDATA%/Temp is used.

Note: If the requested log file exists already, mintty does not overwrite it but reports an error. To configure logging in the config file, use some % placeholders to create distinct log files. Note that logging can be toggled from the extended context menu.

See also the script(1) utility for a more flexible logging solution.

Logging initially enabled (Logging=yes)

Disabling this setting disables logging initially. If a log file name is specified with Log=... and Logging=no, logging can be enabled (and toggled) from the extended context menu.

Window title (Title=)

The Title setting can be used to determine the initial window title. If it is empty, as it is by default, the title is set to the command being run.

Utmp record (Utmp=no)

If enabled, an entry for the session is written into the system’s utmp file for recording logins, so that the session appears for example in the output of the who(1) utility.

Initial window state (Window=normal)

This setting determines how the terminal window should be shown at startup:
– normal (default)
– min (minimized)
– max (maximized)
– full (full screen)
– hide (invisible)

Window position (X=, Y=)

X and Y are integer settings that can be used to determine the initial coordinates of the top left corner of the terminal window. By default, these are unset, which means that the position suggested by the window manager is used.

Window class name (Class=mintty)

The Class setting determines the name of the window class of the terminal window. It can be used to distinguish or group different mintty windows, e.g. for the mintty session switcher, or for Windows scripting tools such as AutoHotKey.

For a flexible grouping configuration, the Class option supports the same %s placeholder parameters as the AppID option.

Hidden settings
The following settings appear neither in the options dialog nor as command line options, which means they can only be set in config files or using the --option or -o command line option.
Customize Options dialog (OldOptions=)

Listing comma-separated tags in this setting will disable extended or enhanced parts of the Options dialog.
– bold Disable "Show bold" section with "xterm" pseudo option.
– emoji Disable emoji style section in "Text" panel.
– selection Disable separate "Selection" panel.

Accelerate display speed (DisplaySpeedup=6)

If mintty processes high volume of output, it will skip up to the given number of refresh intervals (of 16ms each) in order to save output that is visually scrolled off right away, so effectively increasing output speed. The maximum value is 9.

Decelerate display speed to virtual serial transmission rate (Baud=0)

This setting can demonstrate a legacy feeling of a serial terminal connection. Typical baud rates (as supported by DEC VT420) were 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 56700, 76800, 115200.

Bloom effect around characters (Bloom=0)

This setting enables a rough simulation of old CRT terminals’ bloom effect.

Clear selection highlighting on input (ClearSelectionOnInput=true)

When this is disabled, keyboard input or pasting does not clear selection highlighting.

Suspend output while selecting (SuspendWhileSelecting=8080)

During drag-selects, the user may want the screen to hold still to be selected from. Mintty can suspend processing of terminal output for a while; if the buffer exceeds the size configured with this parameter (in bytes), output is flushed. Setting it to 0 disables the feature.

Trim trailing space from selection on copy (TrimSelection=true)

When this is disabled, trailing space that was written to the terminal in a line is included in the selection buffer. (Corresponds to the xterm resource trimSelection.)

Selection size indication (SelectionShowSize=0)

The current selection size can optionally been indicated with a popup, with a value between 1 and 12, setting the popup position by clock hour.

Show hyperlink in window title when hovering (HoverTitle=true)

With this setting, display of an explicit hyperlink (OSC 8 attribute) in the window title when hovering can be disabled.

Single-dash long options (ShortLongOpts=false)

This settings enables names options ("long options") on the command line to be given with only one dash rather than a double dash.

Character width handling (Charwidth=locale)

With this option, locale-determined character width properties can be overridden:
– locale Use locale width properties.
– unicode Use built-in width properties, likely based on a more up-to-date Unicode version. (Corresponds to the xterm resource mkWidth.)
– ambig-wide Use built-in width properties, with ambiguous-width characters assumed to be wide. (Corresponds to the xterm resource cjkWidth.)
– single Enforce single-width (no double width rendering).
– single-unicode Enforce single-width (no double width rendering), with built-in width properties to determine combining characters.

Note: With setting ambig-wide, if the effective locale does not define ambiguous-width characters wide already, mintty appends the "@cjkwide" locale modifier, in order to adapt the selected locale to the width preference.

Note: With settings single or single-unicode, mintty appends the "@cjksingle" locale modifier, in order to adapt the selected locale to the width preference.

Note: If this option selects using built-in width properties, the response to the Secondary Device Attributes request will report the built-in Unicode version as its third parameter.

Warning: With this option, actual width properties as rendered on the screen and width assumptions of the wcwidth function may be inconsistent for the impacted characters, which may confuse screen applications (such as editors) that rely on wcwidth information.

Character narrowing factor (CharNarrowing=75)

Depending on the font and font fallback (either by Windows means or via option FontChoice), some glyphs may be too wide for the character cell grid. Mintty applies automatic narrowing heuristics to fit such glyphs into a character cell so they do not overlap subsequent characters. With this setting, the horizontal scaling for narrowed characters can be adjusted between 50% and 100%.

Bidirectional rendering (Bidi=2)

With this option, bidi rendering support can be disabled conditionally or completely. Note that this can also be changed by an escape sequence. Also there is another escape sequence to disable bidi per screen line.
– 0 Disable bidi completely.
– 1 Disable bidi on alternate screen, support it on normal screen.
– 2 Enable bidi (default).

Application ID (AppID=)

Windows 7 and above use the application ID for grouping taskbar items. By default this setting is empty, in which case Windows groups taskbar items automatically based on their icon and command line. This can be overridden by setting the AppID to a custom string, in which case windows with the same AppID are grouped together.

The AppID option supports up to 5 %s placeholder parameters for a flexible grouping configuration, also supporting positional parameters %N$s (N = 1..5), to be replaced with these values:
– %1$s: system name (e.g. CYGWIN)
– %2$s: system release
– %3$s: machine type (i686/x86_64)
– %4$s: icon name if started from shortcut
– %5$s: WSL distribution name if selected

The special value AppID=@ causes mintty to derive an implicit AppID from the WSL system name, in order to achieve WSL distribution-specific taskbar grouping. This resolves taskbar grouping problems in some cases (wsltty issue #96) but causes similar problems in other cases (issue #784).

Warning: Using this option for a mintty window started from a Windows shortcut (desktop, taskbar, start menu) may cause trouble with taskbar grouping behaviour. If you need to do that, the shortcut itself should also get attached with the same AppId.

Note: Since 2.9.6, if mintty is started via a Windows shortcut which has its own AppID, it is reused for the new mintty window in order to achieve proper taskbar icon grouping. This takes precedence over an explicit setting of the AppID option.

Explanation: Note that Windows shortcut files have their own AppID. Hence, if an AppID is specified in the mintty settings, but not on a taskbar-pinned shortcut for invoking mintty, clicking the pinned shortcut will result in a separate taskbar item for the new mintty window, rather than being grouped with the shortcut.

Hint: To avoid AppID inconsistence and thus ungrouped taskbar icons, the shortcut’s AppID should to be set to the same string as the mintty AppID, which can be done using the winappid utility available in the mintty utils repository https://github.com/mintty/utils . As noted above, since mintty 2.9.6, the mintty AppID does not need to be set anymore in this case.

Application Taskbar Shortcut Title (AppName=)

The title of the Windows 7 taskbar shortcut. If the shortcut is pinned, the title is kept only if it was made persistent as described for AppLaunchCmd.

Application Taskbar Shortcut Launch Command (AppLaunchCmd=)

The command to use if a shortcut pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar is invoked. This is only effective if combined with an AppName option and the command-line option --store-taskbar-properties to make it persistent. It should also be combined with an explicit and unique AppID.

Note: The command must be given in Windows pathname syntax (e.g. AppLaunchCmd='C:\cygwin\bin\mintty -T mytitle -').

Note: An explicit icon supplied with the -i option can also be stored with the persistent properties; note, however, that for this purpose, it must be given in Windows pathname syntax and it must include a resource index; also, for consistent appearance, another -i option referring to the same icon should be included in the AppLaunchCmd (if the mintty invocation does not include an icon parameter but was started from a desktop shortcut, the icon in the AppLaunchCmd should be consistent with that one, respectively).

Example: mintty -o AppID=Mintty.PinTest.1 -o AppName=Mintty.PinTest -o AppLaunchCmd="C:\cygwin\bin\mintty -i /cygdrive/c/Windows/System32/calc.exe -" -i C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe,0 --store-taskbar-properties -

Warning: Once made persistent, the stored properties associated with a specific AppID cannot be removed or even modified again with normal means. For this reason, it is advisable to use temporary AppIDs for testing (like MyMintty.1).

Word selection characters (WordChars=)

By default, this string setting is empty, in which case double-click word selection uses the default algorithm that is geared towards picking out file names and URLs.

If a string is specified here, word selection only picks out characters in the string along with alphanumeric characters. For example, specifying just the underscore character (WordChars=_) would allow selecting identifiers in many programming languages.

Word selection exclusion characters (WordCharsExcl=)

This string can list characters that are to be excluded from word selection.

Filtering pasted text (FilterPasteControls=)

With this setting, pasted text can be filtered for selected control characters which are then replaced by space. Filtering is not applied when Control is held while pasting. The option is a comma-separated list of character tags:
– BS Backspace
– HT TAB
– NL Line feed (new line)
– CR Carriage return (enter)
– FF Form feed
– ESC Escape
– DEL DEL
– C0 other control characters < ' '
– C1 control characters 0x80...0x9F
(Corresponds to the xterm resource disallowedPasteControls.)

Special key remapping [DEPRECATED, see KeyFunctions]

These options can attach a specific string to some special keys. If the string is a number, a corresponding Escape sequence will be generated, applying Shift/Ctrl/Alt modifiers, following the pattern of function keys.
If the string value contains a single control character, some generic Alt or Shift modification is applied. For Pause and Break, control characters are the default values, they can be cleared with an empty assignment. For empty values, the default layout of the keyboard is applied. The Break key can also be assigned the traditional terminal line Break function.
– Key_Pause=^] (Ctrl+])
– Key_Break=^\ (Ctrl+\)
– Key_Menu=
– Key_ScrollLock=
– Key_PrintScreen= (key press event typically not sent)

Examples:
Key_Menu=29 would make the Menu key send the same escape sequence as in xterm
Key_Break=2 would turn the Break key into an Insert key
Key_Break=_BRK_ would assign the simulated terminal line Break function

User-defined shortcuts (KeyFunctions=)

With this setting, function keys, modified function keys, and Ctrl+Shift+key combinations can be mapped to invoke specific functions or generate user-defined input. The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of key and action descriptors (if a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the action descriptors, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it). The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.
(Corresponds roughly to the xterm resource translations.)

Supported keys are described as follows:
– function keys F1...F24
– modified function keys or special keys (see below), preceded with a combination of C, A, S, W, U, Y, in this order, indicating Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win, Super, Hyper as combined with the key, attached with a "+" separator, e.g. CS+F9; or a prefix "*" that applies the definition for all modified variations of the key, e.g. *Menu
– special keys (some of which do not occur on typical keyboards) and keypad keys, as well as modified special and keypad keys; Space, Enter, Esc and Tab are only considered with at least one modifier
Esc, Tab
Enter, KP_Enter
Space, Back
Pause, Break
ScrollLock, NumLock, CapsLock
(PrintScreen)
LWin, RWin
Menu
Insert, KP_Insert
Delete, KP_Delete
Home, KP_Home
End, KP_End
Prior, KP_Prior
Next, KP_Next
Left, KP_Left
Right, KP_Right
Up, KP_Up
Down, KP_Down
KP_Begin (the middle "5" key)
KP_Divide, KP_Multiply, KP_Subtract, KP_Add
Select, Print, Exec, Help, Sleep, Attn
CrSel, ExSel, ErEof
Play, Zoom
– any character reachable on the keyboard without Shift, considered if pressed while Ctrl and Shift are also held; AltGr-generated characters are supported; Alt and Win modifiers are supported, e.g. x for Ctrl+Shift+x, W+x for Ctrl+Win+x, AW+x for Alt+Win+x

Note: A key that needs a modifier already to be sent (e.g. Break which is often Ctrl+Pause) also needs that modifier in the key definition to be matched.

Note: Like in xterm, a key redefinition takes precedence over modifyOtherKeys mode (ESC sequence). Shortcut override mode however disables key redefinitions.

Note: For the "any character, with Ctrl and Shift" option, the definition is ignored if the Ctrl+Shift+key combination would generate a valid input character already. This is particularly the case if a valid control character is mapped to the key in the keyboard layout. E.g. if you add a definition for Ctrl+Shift+minus and Shift+minus is "_" (underline) on the keyboard, the user-defined key function will be ignored, in order to prevent that input of Ctrl+_ would be inhibited.

Supported actions are described as follows:
– "string" or 'string': enters the literal string
– ^char: enters a control char (’@’...’_’ or ’?’ for DEL)
– `command` (**): enters the output of the command
– number (***): enters the escape sequence CSInumber[;mod]~
– fullscreen (*): switches to fullscreen mode
– toggle-fullscreen (*): toggles fullscreen mode
– win-max: resizes to window size
– win-restore: resizes to normal size
– win-toggle-max: toggles maximized / normal size
– win-icon: turns window into icon
– close: closes terminal window
– new-key: opens a new terminal window when key is released
– new-window: opens a new terminal window
– options: opens the Options dialog
– menu-text (*): opens the context menu at the cursor position
– menu-pointer (*): opens the context menu at the mouse position
– search: opens the search bar
– default-size (*): switches to default terminal size
– scrollbar-outer: toggles the scrollbar (xterm compatible)
– scrollbar-inner: toggles the scrollbar (mintty legacy)
– cycle-pointer-style: cycles the pointer style
– cycle-transparency-level: cycles the transparency level
– copy: copies the selection to the clipboard
– copy-text: copies text only
– copy-rtf: copies rich text format
– copy-html-text: copies HTML text only (no font information)
– copy-html-format: copies HTML text (no global background)
– copy-html-full: copies HTML (close to screen layout)
– paste: pastes from the clipboard
– paste-path: pastes and tries to convert path syntax
– copy-paste: copies and pastes
– select-all: selects all text including scrollback
– clear-scrollback: clears the scrollback
– toggle-vt220: toggles VT220 keyboard mode
– toggle-auto-repeat: toggles auto-repeat keys mode
– copy-title: copies the window title to the clipboard
– lock-title: locks the window title from being changed
– reset: resets the terminal
– break: sends a break condition to the application
– flipscreen: switches the alternate screen
– open: opens the selection, e.g. a URL or filename
– toggle-logging: toggles logfile logging
– toggle-char-info: toggles character info display
– export-html (*): exports the screen as an HTML file
– print-screen: print screen contents
– toggle-bidi: toggles (global) bidi disabling
– void: do nothing
– super: use this key as Super modifier key
– hyper: use this key as Hyper modifier key
– scroll_top: scroll scrollback view to beginning
– scroll_end: scroll scrollback view to end
– scroll_pgup: scroll scrollback view one page up
– scroll_pgdn: scroll scrollback view one page down
– scroll_lnup: scroll scrollback view one line up
– scroll_lndn: scroll scrollback view one line down
– scroll_prev: scroll scrollback view to previous marker
– scroll_next: scroll scrollback view to next marker

– switch-prev: switch to previous virtual tab
– switch-next: switch to next virtual tab
– switch-visible-prev: switch to previous virtual tab which is not iconized
– switch-visible-next: switch to next virtual tab which is not iconized

Note (*): The exact behaviour of some actions depends on the state of the Shift key.

Note (**): For external commands as key functions, the same additional functionality is provided as for context menu user commands (option UserCommands): environment variables and PATH substitution; the PATH environment for the external command can be set up with option UserCommandsPath.

Note (***): An unquoted number causes mintty to form a function key sequence, applying all modifiers.

Note: To just disable the built-in shortcut (and not override it with a user-defined one), but further process the key as normal input, leave the action empty, but include the colon.

Note: To disable the built-in shortcut and not process the key either, use the "void" dummy action.

Note: An invalid action (like "foo") will make mintty beep on the key.

Note: If an assignment to any of the Lock keys is defined, mintty will compensate for its implicit state change effect.

Examples:
– KeyFunctions=d:`echo -n `date``;A+F4:;CA+F12:break;-:"minus" will input the current date on Ctrl+Shift+d, disable window closing with Alt+F4, send a BRK on Ctrl+Alt+F12, but likely not input "minus" on Ctrl+Shift+minus because Shift+minus is an underline on many keyboard layouts which has a Ctrl+_ assignment already
– KeyFunctions=c:copy;v:paste in combination with setting -o CtrlExchangeShift=true will assign copy/paste to ^C and ^V for Windows addicts
– KeyFunctions=A+Enter:void;A+KP_Enter: will disable zooming on Alt+Enter and also disable it on Alt+keypad-Enter but enter ESC Return in the latter case
– KeyFunctions=*CapsLock:super assigns the Super modifier to the CapsLock key
– KeyFunctions=*Menu:29 turns the Menu key into an F16 function key (xterm default) and applies all modifiers to it
– KeyFunctions=S+KP_Prior:scroll_pgup;C+KP_Prior:scroll_pgup;\ C+KP_Next:scroll_pgdn;S+KP_Next:scroll_pgdn enables scrollback scrolling with either of Shift or Control modifiers

Use system colours (UseSystemColours=no)

If this is set, the Windows-wide colour settings are used instead of the foreground, background, and cursor colours chosen on the Looks page of the options dialog.

IME cursor colour (IMECursorColour=)

The cursor colour can be set to change when the Input Method Editor (IME) for entering characters not available directly on the keyboard is active. The setting is a RGB triplet such as 255,0,0 for bright red.

By default, this is unset, which means that the cursor colour does not change. The colour can also be changed using xterm’s OSC 4 control sequence with colour number 262.

ANSI colours

These are the 16 ANSI colour settings along with their default values. Colours are represented as comma-separated RGB triples with decimal 8-bit values ranging from 0 to 255. X-style hexadecimal colour specifications such as #RRGGBB, rgb:RR/GG/BB or rgb:RRRR/GGGG/BBBB, cmy:C.C/M.M/Y.Y or cmyk:C.C/M.M/Y.Y/K.K can be used as well. Also X11 color names are supported.
– Black=0,0,0
– Red=191,0,0
– Green=0,191,0
– Yellow=191,191,0
– Blue=0,0,191
– Magenta=191,0,191
– Cyan=0,191,191
– White=191,191,191
– BoldBlack=64,64,64
– BoldRed=255,64,64
– BoldGreen=64,255,64
– BoldYellow=255,255,64
– BoldBlue=96,96,255
– BoldMagenta=255,64,255
– BoldCyan=64,255,255
– BoldWhite=255,255,255

Downloaded colour scheme (ColourScheme=)

This setting is not intended for manual configuration. It can store a colour scheme as downloaded from the Color Scheme Configurator or from a theme file on the web via drag-and-drop to the Theme of the Options menu. After the colour scheme is stored to a colour scheme file, this setting is not used anymore.

See the Tips wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#using-colour-schemes-themes about this mechanism.

Selection highlight colours

The highlighting colours of selected text can be configured.
– HighlightBackgroundColour= selected text background (corresponds to the xterm resource highlightColor)
– HighlightForegroundColour= selected text colour (corresponds to the xterm resource highlightTextColor with highlightColorMode); only effective if both are configured

Scrollback search colours

The highlighting colours of search matches can be configured.
– SearchForegroundColour=black
– SearchBackgroundColour=light yellow
– SearchCurrentColour=bright yellow

Background image or texture (Background=)

With this option, an image can be chosen as background. With an image file name, absolute (with an optional ~ prefix) or relative to the current terminal foreground process, the option either uses the image as a background picture, scaled to the terminal size (optional prefix _ to the filename), or initially scaling the terminal to the aspect ratio of the image (prefix % to the filename), or as a tiled background texture (prefix * to the filename), or it uses the current desktop background, achieving a virtual floating window effect (= without filename, currently only applicable if desktop wallpaper is set as being "tiled" and unscaled).

The background can be changed with an OSC 11 escape sequence, instead of a colour using a background specification prefixed with either of _, %, *, =.

If the background filename is followed by a comma and a number between 1 and 254, the background image will be dimmed towards the background colour; with a value of 255, the alpha transparency values of the image will be used.

Scrollback search bar (SearchBar=)

This string option can customize the order of items in the search bar. Use x (close button), </> (previous/next buttons), s (search string) to select the order of these fields in the search bar; missing fields will be appended in a default order. Also button symbols in the range U+25B2 ... U+25C5 can be used, as well as some other arrow and pointing index symbols and wide angle brackets, which when pointing up or left define the previous button symbol and its position, or when pointing down or right define the next button symbol and its position. Also button symbols U+2717 or U+2718 can be used to define the close button and its position.

Scrollback search context (SearchContext=0)

This option will place the search result at the given distance from the terminal top/bottom border when scrolling to the result location. If the value is negative, it will also keep the result at the (positive) distance if the result is already visible.

Write if exited (ExitWrite=no)

Together with a hold option that keeps the terminal open after its child process terminated, this option always writes an exit indication to the screen. By default, only an error exit code is displayed.

Change title if exited (ExitTitle=)

Together with a hold option that keeps the terminal open after its child process terminated, this option prefixes the window title with its string, for example -o ExitTitle="TERMINATED: ".

Configure document opening by mouse click (OpeningClicks=1)

Enabling opening files, directories or URLs with mouse clicking, in addition to the context menu. Values 1, 2, or 3 require Ctrl+mouse-click, double-click, or triple-click, respectively, to invoke the document opening. Value 0 disables click-opening.

Control key and shortcut Shift exchange (CtrlExchangeShift=no)

Exchange the range of Control characters with the range of Ctrl+Shift shortcuts, so that for example Ctrl+V will paste and Ctrl+Shift+V will enter a Control+V character.

Mouse zooming (ZoomMouse=yes)

Enabling font zooming with Ctrl+mouse-wheel/middle-mouse-click.

Disable Shift-coupled implicit font zooming (ZoomFontWithWindow=yes)

If this option is set to false, implicit font zooming coupled with window zooming by the Shift key is disabled, except for the keyboard zoom functions Shift+Alt+Enter and the Shift+menu function.

Handling of DPI changes (HandleDPI=2)

When the window is moved to another monitor that has a different DPI value ("scaling factor") configured, newer Windows 10 versions support semi-automatic compensation by appropriate scaling. This option can be set to support either DPI handling modes 1 or 2 (if supported, respectively), or set to 0/false to suppress DPI adjustments.

Check availability of mintty version update (CheckVersionUpdate=900)

If non-zero, mintty checks whether there is a version update available whenever the Options dialog is opened and this was not checked within the last given number of seconds.

Sixel image clipboard substitution (SixelClipChars=space)

Characters to copy to clipboard as a substitute for Sixel image graphics, to indicate their positions. With an empty value, U+FFFC will be used. Double-width characters should not be used here.

Drag-and-drop application-targetted commands (DropCommands=)

With this setting, a set of string patterns can be configured for paste insertion, in dependence of the program running in the terminal foreground.

Note: Detection of terminal foreground processes works only locally; this features does not work with WSL or after remote login.

The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of program name and drop pattern; the pattern is pasted with the actual clipboard contents replaced for a "%s". If a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the drop patterns, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it. The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.

Note: This feature potentially makes mintty vulnerable against command injection. Be careful what commands you configure! For shell commands, it is advisable to embed the "%s" parameter placeholder in single quotation marks explicitly, both to avoid trouble with special characters, and to reduce the risk of injecting commands via tricky filenames.

Examples:
– DropCommands=bash:cd '%s'^M;mined:^[fo^M%s^M;vim:^[:e %s^M
– DropCommands=^_bash:cd '%s';echo $PWD^M^_vim:^[:e %s^M^_

Note: An "Enter" key has to be specified with the CR character code, control characters need to be embedded verbatim (indicated above as "^M" or "^["); there is no escape notation.

Note: If different actions for directories/folders or even different command invocations depending on file name pattern are desired, this should be handled by a suitable cooperating shell function.

User commands (UserCommands=) [DEPRECATED, see CtxMenuFunctions]

This setting lists user-defined commands for the extended context menu. The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of menu item label and command pattern; the command is invoked and its standard output is pasted into the terminal, applying bracketed-paste mode if enabled. If a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the command patterns, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it. The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.

Mintty provides useful information in environment variables:
MINTTY_SELECT for the current selection
MINTTY_BUFFER for the complete terminal contents including scrollback buffer
MINTTY_SCREEN for the current screen; if scrolled back, starting at the current scroll position
MINTTY_OUTPUT for the output of the previous command, if prompt lines are marked
MINTTY_TITLE for the window title text
MINTTY_PID for the program ID of the terminal foreground process
MINTTY_PROG for the program name of the terminal foreground process
MINTTY_CWD for the current working directory of the foreground process

Note: Menu item labels are subject to localization if they are added to the localization file of the selected UI localization language (in subdirectory lang of a mintty resource directory).

Note: Menu item labels can contain a & sign to indicate a key shortcut for menu item selection.

Note: The previous command can be detected if prompt lines are marked with the escape sequence ^[[?7711h. See the Control Sequences wiki page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#scroll-markers .

Note: The PATH environment for the external command can be set up with option UserCommandsPath.

Note: This is an experimental feature, with an experimental configuration format.

Note: Normal terminal interaction continues after the invoked commands have terminated. Be careful not to configure commands that can stall or block!

Note: This feature potentially makes mintty vulnerable against command injection. Be careful what commands you configure! Especially do not embed environment variable parameters unquoted (like echo $MINTTY_SELECT), in order to avoid the risk of injecting commands via tricky selected text.

Examples:
– UserCommands=Paste capital:echo -n "$MINTTY_SELECT" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z';Paste small:echo -n "$MINTTY_SELECT" | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z'
– UserCommands=google:cygstart https://www.google.de/search?q="$MINTTY_SELECT"

Note: Control characters need to be embedded verbatim; there is no escape notation.

User commands PATH expansion (UserCommandsPath=/bin:%s)

This setting defines the PATH environment for user-defined external commands, applicable to extended context menu commands (UserCommands=...:...) and key-attached external commands (KeyFunctions=...:`...`). If the value contains a single %s placeholder, the current environment PATH is substituted for it.

System menu user commands (CtxMenuFunctions=)

This setting lists user-defined functions or commands for the context menus (right mouse click in text area). If it is configured, it is by default included in the extended context menu (Control+right-click) but can be configured for other context menu invocations as well (see configuration of Menu contents with options Menu*), along with the deprecated configured user commands (UserCommands).

The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of key and action descriptors (if a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the action descriptors, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it). The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.

The configuration is similar to the UserCommands setting with respect to menu labels, and to KeyFunctions setting with respect to function designations; respective notes and warnings apply.

System menu user commands (SysMenuFunctions=)

This setting lists user-defined functions or commands for the system menu (right mouse click on title bar or left click on title bar icon). If it is configured, the middle items of the menu (including Options... and New) are replaced by the configured functions.

The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of key and action descriptors (if a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the action descriptors, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it). The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.

The configuration is similar to the UserCommands setting with respect to menu labels, and to KeyFunctions setting with respect to function designations; respective notes and warnings apply. Note: To include default items and keep their language localization enabled, their label strings need to be reproduced exactly as registered in the localization pattern file messages.pot, including the position of a & marker which indicates a key shortcut for menu item selection.

Examples:
– SysMenuFunctions=&Lock Title:lock-title;Copy &Title:copy-title;&Options...:options;Ne&w:new-window

Session launcher commands (SessionCommands=)

This setting lists mintty invocation parameters for the session launcher. The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of session launch names (used as menu item labels) and invocation parameter lists; when selecting one of the launch names, mintty is invoked with the respective parameters. (If a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the command patterns, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it.) The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.

Note: Session launch names are subject to localization if they are added to the localization file of the selected UI localization language (in subdirectory lang of a mintty resource directory).

Examples:
– SessionCommands=big:-w max;Ubuntu:--WSL=Ubuntu;mybox:ssh mybox
– SessionCommands=mycolours:-C ~/.minttyrc.mycolours

Note: Control characters need to be embedded verbatim; there is no escape notation.

Taskbar commands (TaskCommands=)

This setting lists mintty invocation parameters for the "Tasks" list in the taskbar icon, also known as "jump list". The value is a series of semicolon-separated, colon-combined pairs of task names and invocation parameter lists; when selecting one of the tasks from the taskbar icon, mintty is invoked with the respective parameters. (If a semicolon shall be embedded into any of the command patterns, a non-whitespace control character (i.e. none of ^I^J^K^L^M) can be specified as an alternative separator by starting the whole setting with it.) The definition list can be split over multiple lines if a separator is followed by a backslash, newline, and optional whitespace indentation.

Note: This feature only works in combination with a parameter -o AppID=.... If the taskbar icon is "pinned" to the taskbar, the task list is retained with it, initially...

Note: To make the jump list persistent, it is necessary to carefully apply additional tricks to satisfy the insane taskbar configuration paradigm of Windows. First, also configure a default taskbar icon command using options AppName and AppLaunchCmd. Second, choose a unique value for AppID and also add it to the (default) launch command and all (jumplist) task commands. Third, invoke mintty with the chosen AppID and option --store-taskbar-properties.

Note: Task names are subject to localization if they are added to the localization file of the selected UI localization language (in subdirectory lang of a mintty resource directory).

Note: If the parameter list contains "--WSL", mintty will try to determine a suitable WSL distribution icon for the jump list, or use the WSLtty default icon from the mintty resource subdirectory icon, or from the WSLtty package if installed.

Examples:
– TaskCommands=big:-w max;Ubuntu:--WSL=Ubuntu;mybox:ssh mybox
– TaskCommands=mycolours:-C ~/.minttyrc.mycolours

Note: Control characters need to be embedded verbatim; there is no escape notation.

Menu contents

These settings allow to customize the context menu as opened in various ways.
– Mouse (MenuMouse=b); the normal mouse-right-click context menu
– Ctrl+Mouse (MenuCtrlMouse=e|ls); the Ctrl+right-click menu
– Mouse button 5 (MenuMouse5=ls); the mouse button 5 menu
– Menu key (MenuMenu=bs); the Menu key (unless redefined)
– Ctrl+Menu key (MenuCtrlMenu=e|ls); the Ctrl+Menu-key
– Ctrl+Mouse title (MenuTitleCtrlRight=Ws); Ctrl+right on title
– Ctrl+left-Mouse title (MenuTitleCtrlLeft=Ws); Ctrl+left title

Menu contents can be configured by a sequence of characters with the following meaning:
– b: basic context menu
– x: extended context menu without user commands
– e: extended context menu with user commands (if configured)
– u: user commands (CtxMenuFunctions, UserCommands)
– l: session launcher
– s: session switcher (Virtual Tabs)
– |: vertical separator, adding a new column
– T: the menu is opened at the text cursor position
– P: the menu is opened at the mouse pointer position
– W: show window icon for uniconized windows in session switcher

Note: With empty values for MenuTitleCtrlLeft/Right the default session launcher for Ctrl+left/right-click on title bar can be disabled.

Session geometry synchronization / Virtual tabs (SessionGeomSync=0)

This setting defines the level of approximation of "tabbed" window operation within the Virtual Tabs feature:
– 0: no geometry handling; terminal session windows are separate
– 1: sync. position/size when switching/launching a session
– 2: sync. also when window is moved or resized
– 3: sync. also when window is minimized
– 4: sync. also when window is started separately

LIMITATIONS

Console issue
Mintty, like xterm and rxvt and other terminals, communicates with the child process through a pseudo terminal device, which Cygwin emulates using Windows pipes, causing issues with native Windows command line programs. Cygwin 3.1.0 compensates for this issue via the ConPTY API of Windows 10. See https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/Tips#inputoutput-interaction-with-alien-programs for further hints, especially on the winpty wrapper.

Termcap/terminfo
Mintty does not have its own termcap or terminfo entries; like a number of other terminal emulators, it reuses the xterm entry.

Screen control features, DEC and xterm compatibility
Mintty is compatible with xterm screen control. It supports DEC terminal screen features up to the VT500 series except DECRLM (right-to-left cursor motion), also supporting VT52 mode, thus being fully VT100-compatible. It also includes most other xterm-specific control sequences and modes.

In addition, mintty supports a maximum of ANSI and ECMA-48 character attribute controls (including RGB and CMYK true-colour support, italic, overline, strikeout, rapid blinking, alternative fonts) and additional rendering attributes (underline styles and colours, superscript and subscript, shadowed and overstrike). Mintty provides Sixel graphics and other image support, Emoji support, and Bidi reordering according to the Unicode Bidi Algorithm UBA, amended with flexible bidi controls according to the draft bidi mode model of the BiDi in Terminal Emulators recommendation ( https://terminal-wg.pages.freedesktop.org/bidi/ ).

Mintty is not as configurable as xterm; it offers essential configuration features, many of which are "hidden settings", i.e. they do not appear in the interactive "Options" configuration dialog. Of xterm’s keyboard modes, only the default PC-style and VT220-style are available. 8-bit control characters are not supported. There is no Tektronix 4014 emulation. Mouse highlighting mode is not implemented.

SEE ALSO

Additional information can be found on the wiki on the mintty project page https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki .

LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2013 Andy Koppe (C) 2019 Thomas Wolff

Mintty is released under the terms of the the GNU General Public License version 3. See http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl for the license text.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

CONTACT

Please report bugs or suggest enhancements via the issue tracker at https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues . Questions can be sent to the Cygwin mailing list at cygwin@cygwin.com, to the Mintty chat issue https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues/777 , or to the Gitter chat (experimental) https://gitter.im/mintty/mintty .