Customization

Secondary Terminal exposes more than 90 settings, so you can tune the terminal to match your editor, your accessibility needs, and the density of your workflow. The most important areas are typography, cursor behavior, spacing, theme control, ANSI rendering, contrast, active terminal borders, and the webview header UI.

Main Customization Areas

Area	Examples
Font	Family, size, weight, bold weight
Cursor	Style, blink, width
Spacing	Line height, letter spacing, scrollback
Theme	Auto, dark, light
ANSI rendering	Bright bold colors, full ANSI support
Accessibility visuals	Minimum contrast ratio
Focus indicators	Active terminal border mode
Header UI	Show or hide header, title text, icon sizes

Typography

Setting	Default	Description
secondaryTerminal.fontFamily	"monospace"	Terminal font family.
secondaryTerminal.fontSize	12	Font size in pixels.
secondaryTerminal.fontWeight	"normal"	Font weight for standard text.
secondaryTerminal.fontWeightBold	"bold"	Font weight for bold text.
secondaryTerminal.lineHeight	1	Line-height multiplier.
secondaryTerminal.letterSpacing	0	Extra pixels between characters.

Cursor and Input Appearance

Setting	Default	Description
secondaryTerminal.cursorStyle	"block"	Cursor shape: block, underline, or bar.
secondaryTerminal.cursorBlink	true	Enables cursor blinking.
secondaryTerminal.cursorWidth	1	Width used when cursor style is bar.
secondaryTerminal.features.vscodeStandardCursor	true	Uses VS Code-like cursor behavior.

Theme and Color Controls

Setting	Default	Description
secondaryTerminal.theme	"auto"	Follows VS Code or forces dark/light.
secondaryTerminal.drawBoldTextInBrightColors	true	Uses bright ANSI variants for bold text.
secondaryTerminal.minimumContrastRatio	1	Adjusts foreground cells to meet a target ratio.
secondaryTerminal.features.fullANSISupport	true	Enables richer ANSI color and formatting support.

The minimumContrastRatio setting is important if you want stricter accessibility or use a low-contrast editor theme. A value of 4.5 targets WCAG AA minimum contrast.

Border and Header UI

Setting	Default	Description
secondaryTerminal.activeBorderMode	"multipleOnly"	Controls when the active terminal border is shown.
secondaryTerminal.showWebViewHeader	true	Shows or hides the webview header.
secondaryTerminal.webViewTitle	"Terminal"	Custom title text in the header.
secondaryTerminal.headerFontSize	14	Header title font size.
secondaryTerminal.headerIconSize	20	Terminal icon size in the header.
secondaryTerminal.showSampleIcons	true	Shows extra sample icons in the header.
secondaryTerminal.sampleIconSize	16	Size of sample icons.
secondaryTerminal.sampleIconOpacity	0.4	Opacity for sample icons.

Scrollback and Density

Setting	Default	Description
secondaryTerminal.scrollback	2000	In-memory terminal scrollback size.
secondaryTerminal.persistentSessionScrollback	1000	Restored saved scrollback lines.
secondaryTerminal.maxSplitTerminals	10	Max visible terminals in split view.
secondaryTerminal.minTerminalHeight	100	Minimum split terminal height.

Example Theme Configuration

{
  "secondaryTerminal.fontFamily": "JetBrains Mono",
  "secondaryTerminal.fontSize": 13,
  "secondaryTerminal.cursorStyle": "bar",
  "secondaryTerminal.cursorWidth": 2,
  "secondaryTerminal.theme": "auto",
  "secondaryTerminal.minimumContrastRatio": 4.5,
  "secondaryTerminal.activeBorderMode": "always",
  "secondaryTerminal.showWebViewHeader": true,
  "secondaryTerminal.webViewTitle": "Workspace Terminal"
}

Suggested Starting Points

Goal	Suggested changes
Match the editor	Keep theme on auto and use the same font family.
Improve readability	Raise fontSize, lineHeight, and minimumContrastRatio.
Fit more content	Lower fontSize slightly and keep lineHeight near 1.
Highlight the active terminal	Set activeBorderMode to "always".

Related Pages

• Accessibility
• Session Persistence
• Settings Reference
• Quick Start