Home General Usage Preferences Profiles Bookmarks Scripting Installation Misc | Preferences Panel There are five tabs in the Perferences Panel. General Enable Growl Notifications: Once enabled, iTerm will send Growl notifications for events such as bell, new output, session end, etc. You can also use ESC ]9;string^G to generate a Growl notification from within the session. For more settings of Growl, go to the Growl's own preference panel. Enable Bonjour: iTerm is able to use Bonjour to find ssh, sftp services. Check Updates When iTerm Starts: Once checked, iTerm will automatically check whether there is an updated version availabel. It is in general a good idea to keep up with the latest version. Quit When All Windows All Closed: This makes iTerm behaves more like an xterm: it quits when you close its window. Display Refreshing Rate: Set it to fastest to allow quick UI response, but slowest to reduce CPU usage. Generally, if you are having a lot of stuff scrolling across your window, and you don't really need to see every line, set the refreshing rate slower for better performance. It is however usually a safe bet to leave it in the middle (default). Window Prompt when quiting or closing window: Once checked, iTerm will ask you for confirmation when you close a session or quit the program. Zoom vertically only Open bookmark window when iTerm starts: By default, iTerm opens a default session on start. But you can enable this option to let iTerm open the bookmark window instead. Tab Style: Four styles are currently available: Metal, Aqua, Unified, and Adium. The tab can be either at the top or at the bottom of the window. Notice when you choose the metal style, newly opened window will have metal style as well, but existing windows will not be affected. Use compact tab labels: When you have a lot of tabs, you may use this to scqueeze a little bit more space. Also see below for the hidden settings for more options. Hide tab when there is only one session: Another way to get more real estate space. Mouse Copy on selection: This will automatically put any selection onto the clipboard, basically emulating Cmd-C. Note hwoever, that this preference is not needed for middle-button to act as paste. Pressing the middle mouse button will paste whatever is selected in the current session. It does not emulate Cmd-V and read from the clipboard. Middle button paste: This enables the middle mouse button. Focus follows mouse: This does just that. Focusing is applied only when iTerm is the active application. Windows are not raised, but instead just receive keyboard focus. Cmd-click to launch URL: This launchs the URL. If no protocol is specified, http:// will be added to the string. If available, iTerm's own URL handler will be used first, then the default URL handler of the system. Characters considered part of word: This is used to define the word when one uses double-click to select. URL Handler This tab allows user to specify a session to be a handler of URL schemes. When "Connect" button is clicked, iTerm offers a chance to become the default handler if it is not so yet. To disconnect a handler, choose "No Handler". However there is no way to restore the original handler application within iTerm. You can also break a URL into components and use them as parameters in the bookmark's command. Six parameters can be used: $$URL$$ The complete URL as the way it is passed in. $$HOST$$ The host name in the URL. $$USER$$ The user name $$PASSWORD$$ The password $$PORT$$ The port number $$PATH$$ The path For example, a bookmark's command is: telnet -l $$USER$$ $$HOST$$ $$PORT$$, and the URL is: telnet://joe@fancyland.com:23. This will give you this command: telnet -l joe fancyland.com 23 Hidden Settings There are a few settings that you cannot access via iTerm's own Preferences panel. However, you can use 'defaults" command to change them to your taste. The settings available along with the default numbers are: defaults write iTerm UseUnevenTabs -bool false defaults write iTerm MinTabWidth -int 75 defaults write iTerm MinCompactTabWidth -int 60 defaults write iTerm OptimumTabWidth -int 175 defaults write iTerm StrokeWidth -float 0 defaults write iTerm BoldStrokeWidth -float -2 defaults write iTerm CacheSize -float 2048 defaults write iTerm SearchCommand -string "http://google.com/search?q=%@" The first four are for setting the tab size. And the next 2 are for setting the stroke width of fonts rendering. The numbers in the example are all default settings. Experiment with different numbers. For example, to enable antialias for very small fonts, type these commands: defaults write iTerm StrokeWidth -float -1 The CacheSize is the number of characters that are cached for rendering. Increase it when you use a lot of different colors and a large character set. The last one is for the search command launched from the contextual menu. The default is to use Google. You can set it to anything you want. For example, if you like Yahoo, here is the command: defaults write iTerm SearchCommand -string "http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%@"

Modified: Dec 1st, 2006
Created: Dec 18th, 2002
Fabian and Ujwal S. Setlur
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