How to install and use Terminator Terminal Emulator on Ubuntu 20.04

Terminator is a terminal emulator program that helps users easily manage multiple terminals. It provides flexibility for arranging multiple terminals side by side. Besides the normal features of a gnome-terminal, it provides extra features like:

1. Horizontal and vertical splitting of the main terminal window.
2. The broadcast feature allows users to simultaneously issue commands to different terminals.
3. With the group feature, users can combine different terminals on the same and different windows. The broadcast feature also works on a group basis.
4. It has different keyboard shortcuts or key bindings for different operations.

What will we cover?

In this guide, we will explain to you how to install and use Terminator on Ubuntu 20.04. Let’s get started with the Terminator tour.

Installation of Terminator

Most Linux distributions come pre-shipped with the Terminator package which can be installed from their regular software repository. On Ubuntu 20.04 one can install Terminator in the way similar to installing any software from its repository:

$ sudo apt install terminator

<img alt="Installing Terminator" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/echo/image1.png6193a95bdf1ee.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb5 src ng ngcb5" height="303" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”722″>

Using Terminator

Once terminator is installed on your system, it becomes the default terminal whenever you open a folder or directory in the terminal window. Let us explore some of its functions:

1) Open a terminator window by simultaneously hitting the key combination: (alt ctrl T). Now when you right-click inside the terminal window, you will see different options. First, select the option ‘Split Horizontally’. Now right-click again and select ‘Split Vertically’. This will create the following grid type terminal:

<img alt="Horizonatl and Vertical Split of Terminator" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/echo/image5.png6193a95c29af3.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb5 src ng ngcb5" height="528" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”736″>

2) Now click on the grid icon on the left top side of any terminal window. Here you will see options for creating groups, broadcasting, etc.

<img alt="Options in Terminator" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/echo/image2.png6193a95c5d7b4.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb5 src ng ngcb5" height="528" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”736″>

3) If you select the ‘Broadcast all’ option, any command you type and run on one terminal will also run on the other terminals.

<img alt="The Broadcasting Feature of Terminator" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/echo/image3.png6193a95c979af.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb5 src ng ngcb5" height="524" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”732″> 

4) We can create groups and add multiple terminals to them:

Key-bindings  or Keyboard Shortcuts

Terminator has several keyboard shortcuts or keybindings to simplify terminal management. Below we have listed 

• Ctrl Shift O: Use this to horizontally split the terminals.
• Ctrl Shift E: Use this to vertically split the terminals.
• Ctrl Shift Right: It will move the parent dragbar towards the right.
• Ctrl Shift Left: It will move the parent dragbar towards the left.
• Ctrl Shift Up: It will move the parent dragbar towards upside.
• Ctrl Shift Down: This will move the parent dragbar towards downside.
• Ctrl Shift S: Use this to hide and unhide the scrollbar.
• Ctrl Shift F: Use to search within terminal scrollback.
• Ctrl Shift N or Ctrl Tab: Focus to the next terminal within the same terminal window.
• Ctrl Shift P or Ctrl Shift Tab: Move in a backward manner to the previously active terminal within the same tab.
• Alt Up: Shift the focus to the terminal above the active one.
• Alt Down: Shift the focus to the terminal below the active one.
• Alt Left: Shift the focus to the terminal left of the active one.
• Alt Right: Shift the focus to the terminal right of the active one.
• Ctrl Shift C: This will copy the selected text.
• Ctrl Shift V:  This will paste the copied text.
• Ctrl Shift W: This will terminate the active terminal session.
• Ctrl Shift Q: This will close the terminator itself.
• Ctrl Shift X: It will switch the terminals among showing all and only showing the active one.
• Ctrl Shift Z: It will switch the terminals between showing all terminals and only showing a zoomed version of the current one. For this to work, at least three terminals should be open and at least one terminal should have a different alignment than the other two.

Table showing different Tab operations

Besides the above-mentioned terminator operations, there are also other ones like full-screen mode, grouping terminals, Drag and Drop etc. 

Uninstalling The Terminator

If you are unhappy with the Terminator, you can always switch back to your old days terminal by uninstalling it by running:

sudo apt remove terminator

Conclusion

Terminator is also available on Github. For those who want to install it from source code can use Github. But this is a long way to install Terminator, in fact we recommend installing it from your OS’s package system. The source code will require you to satisfy different dependencies, creating unnecessary hurdles in the installation process. Use source code only if you don’t have a way around it.

Terminator is a great piece of mind for those who extensively use the Linux terminal. It is much better as compared to normal Gnome terminals. If you have not previously used Terminator, give it a try and we hope you will really fall in love with it.