Terminal
IntelliJ IDEA includes an embedded terminal emulator for working with your command-line shell from inside the IDE. Use it to run Java tools, Git commands, set file permissions, and perform other command-line tasks without switching to a dedicated terminal application.
Enable the Terminal plugin
This functionality relies on the Terminal plugin, which is bundled and enabled in IntelliJ IDEA by default. If the relevant features aren't available, make sure that you didn't disable the plugin.
Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and then select
.Open the Installed tab, find the Terminal plugin, and select the checkbox next to the plugin name.
Initially, the terminal emulator runs with your default system shell, but it supports many other shells, such as Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt cmd.exe, sh
, bash
, zsh
, csh
, and so on. For more information about changing the shell, refer to Terminal settings.
Open the Terminal tool window
Go to
or press Alt+F12.By default, the terminal emulator runs with the current directory set to the root directory of the current project. For more information about changing the default start directory, refer to Terminal settings.
Right-click any file (for example, in the Project tool window or any open editor tab) and select Open in Terminal to open the Terminal tool window with a new session in the directory of that file.
Start a new local session
To start a new session in a separate tab, click on the toolbar or press Ctrl+Shift+T.
To run multiple sessions inside a tab, right-click the tab and select Split Right or Split Down in the context menu.
The Terminal saves tabs and sessions when you close the project or IntelliJ IDEA. It preserves tab names, the current working directory, and even the shell history.
To close a tab, click on the Terminal toolbar or press Ctrl+F4.
Press Alt+Right and Alt+Left to switch between active tabs. Alternatively, you can press Alt+Down to see the list of all terminal tabs.
Start a new SSH session
On the toolbar, click .
Click New SSH Session, enter the address of a host to which you want to connect, and provide authentication data.
Or, if you have configured SSH configurations, you can select one of them from the list.
To terminate the connection, click in the terminal tab.
Rename terminal tab
Right-click the tab and select Rename Session from the context menu.
Search in terminal
To search for a certain string in a Terminal session, press Ctrl+F. This searches all text in the session: the prompt, commands, and output.
By default, the search is not case-sensitive. You can click Match case in the search field to make it case-sensitive.
Configure the terminal emulator
Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and then select Terminal settings.
. For more information, refer to
Run IDE features from the terminal
Instead of running a specific command in the integrated terminal and reading console output, you can use the relevant IDE feature, like a tool window or a dialog that implements this functionality. For example, you can launch a gradle or mvn command from the Terminal tool window and view its output in the Run or Debug tool window.
Run a command in the Run or Debug tool window from the terminal
Type a command in the terminal and notice how it is highlighted.
Instead of pressing Enter, which runs the command in the terminal, press Ctrl+Enter to open the corresponding GUI element.
To run the command in the Debug tool window, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
This feature also works with most of the commands recognized by Run Anything (press Ctrl twice), for example npm
or rails
depending on what plugins you have installed. To run a highlighted command in debug mode (use the Debug tool window instead of Run) press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
Disable running IntelliJ IDEA commands from the Terminal
Click on the title bar of the Terminal tool window and clear the Run Commands using IDE option.
Alternatively, open the Settings dialog (Ctrl+Alt+S) , go to , and clear the Run Commands using IDE checkbox.