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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/termux/termux-app/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Termux exposes several properties that control how the terminal looks — from the overall color theme and cursor shape to padding, scrollback depth, and toolbar size. You set most of these in ~/.termux/termux.properties, while fonts and color palettes live in dedicated files under ~/.termux/. Reload settings after any change via the Termux notification or by restarting the app.

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Night mode

The night-mode property sets the overall app theme.
ValueBehavior
systemFollow the Android system dark/light mode setting (default)
trueAlways use the dark theme
falseAlways use the light theme
night-mode=system
The deprecated use-black-ui property previously forced a pure-black OLED-friendly theme. Use night-mode=true instead.

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Cursor style

The terminal-cursor-style property sets the shape of the text insertion cursor.
ValueAppearance
blockFilled rectangle over the current character (default)
underlineThin line drawn under the current character
barVertical bar to the left of the current character
terminal-cursor-style=bar
The terminal-cursor-blink-rate property sets the cursor blink interval in milliseconds.
  • Default: 0 (blinking disabled)
  • Valid range: 0, or 100–2000
Setting any value outside the valid non-zero range disables blinking and logs an error. 
# Blink roughly twice per second
terminal-cursor-blink-rate=600
A blink rate around 500–800 ms is comfortable for most users. Set to 0 to keep the cursor always visible without blinking.

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Terminal margins

Two properties control the padding between the terminal text and the edges of the screen, both in density-independent pixels (dp).

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Horizontal margin

Left and right padding:
  • Property: terminal-margin-horizontal
  • Default: 3
  • Range: 0–100
terminal-margin-horizontal=8

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Vertical margin

Top and bottom padding:
  • Property: terminal-margin-vertical
  • Default: 0
  • Range: 0–100
terminal-margin-vertical=4

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Toolbar height

The terminal-toolbar-height property scales the height of the extra keys toolbar. The value is a multiplier applied to the default height.
  • Default: 1.0
  • Range: 0.4–3.0
# Make the toolbar 50% taller than default
terminal-toolbar-height=1.5
Setting this below 1.0 shrinks the toolbar and may make buttons harder to tap. Values above 2.0 work well for large-screen devices or when using many key rows.

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Scrollback rows

The terminal-transcript-rows property sets how many lines Termux keeps in memory above the visible area for scrolling back through output.
  • Default: 2000
  • Range: 100–50000
terminal-transcript-rows=5000
Very large scrollback buffers (above ~10 000) increase memory usage. On memory-constrained devices this can cause Termux to be killed by Android’s low-memory killer.

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Terminal colors

Create or edit ~/.termux/colors.properties to customize the 16 ANSI terminal colors. The file uses Java .properties format with color names as keys and hex color values (with #) as values.

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Color names

background=#1e1e2e
foreground=#cdd6f4
cursor=#f5e0dc

# Normal colors (0-7)
color0=#45475a
color1=#f38ba8
color2=#a6e3a1
color3=#f9e2af
color4=#89b4fa
color5=#f5c2e7
color6=#94e2d5
color7=#bac2de

# Bright colors (8-15)
color8=#585b70
color9=#f38ba8
color10=#a6e3a1
color11=#f9e2af
color12=#89b4fa
color13=#f5c2e7
color14=#94e2d5
color15=#a6adc8
Many popular terminal color schemes (Catppuccin, Dracula, Solarized, Nord, etc.) publish ready-made colors.properties files. Check the Termux:Styling plugin for a GUI color picker and font manager.
After saving colors.properties, reload settings from the Termux notification drawer or run: 
# Reload with termux-reload-settings (from termux-tools package)
termux-reload-settings

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Custom font

Place a TrueType font file at ~/.termux/font.ttf to replace the default monospace font. Termux will use it automatically after reloading settings. 
# Example: copy a Nerd Font for icon support in tools like lsd or starship
cp ~/storage/downloads/JetBrainsMono.ttf ~/.termux/font.ttf
termux-reload-settings
Only TTF files are supported. The font must be a monospace typeface; proportional fonts will cause alignment issues in the terminal.
For a GUI interface to manage fonts and colors, install the Termux:Styling plugin from F-Droid. It provides a built-in browser for Nerd Fonts and preset color themes that write directly to ~/.termux/font.ttf and ~/.termux/colors.properties.

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Configuration directory layout

~/.termux/
├── termux.properties   # Main settings file
├── colors.properties   # 16-color ANSI palette
└── font.ttf            # Custom monospace font (optional)

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Quick reference

PropertyDefaultRange / Values
night-modesystemsystem | true | false
terminal-cursor-styleblockblock | underline | bar
terminal-cursor-blink-rate00, or 100–2000 ms
terminal-margin-horizontal30–100 dp
terminal-margin-vertical00–100 dp
terminal-toolbar-height1.00.4–3.0
terminal-transcript-rows2000100–50000

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