Iciclecreek.Avalonia.Terminal

Iciclecreek.Avalonia.Terminal For Avalonia 12.x

A cross-platform XTerm terminal emulator control for Avalonia UI applications.

Introduction

Iciclecreek.Avalonia.Terminal provides Avalonia controls for embedding a fully-featured terminal emulator in your cross-platform desktop applications. Built on top of XTerm.NET for terminal emulation and Porta.Pty for pseudo-terminal support, it offers:

• Full XTerm-compatible terminal emulation
• Cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, macOS)
• Scrollback buffer with configurable size
• Text selection and clipboard support
• Terminal window manipulation commands (resize, move, minimize, maximize, etc.)
• Dynamic title updates from terminal escape sequences
• Customizable fonts, colors, and styling

Installation

Install via NuGet Package Manager:

dotnet add package Iciclecreek.Avalonia.Terminal

Or via the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio:

Install-Package Iciclecreek.Avalonia.Terminal

Usage

TerminalControl

TerminalControl is a templated control that provides a terminal view with an integrated scrollbar. Use this when you want to embed a terminal within your own window or layout.

XAML:

<Window xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:terminal="using:Iciclecreek.Terminal"
        x:Class="MyApp.MainWindow">
    
    <terminal:TerminalControl x:Name="Terminal"
                              FontFamily="Cascadia Mono"
                              FontSize="14"
                              BufferSize="1000"
                              ProcessExited="OnProcessExited"/>
</Window>

Code-behind:

using Avalonia.Controls;
using Iciclecreek.Terminal;

public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
    public MainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void OnProcessExited(object? sender, ProcessExitedEventArgs e)
    {
        // Handle process exit (e.g., close window)
        Close();
    }
}

Properties:

Methods:

Events:

TerminalWindow

TerminalWindow is a complete window implementation that automatically handles terminal events like title changes and window manipulation commands. Use this when you want a standalone terminal window.

XAML:

<terminal:TerminalWindow xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui"
                         xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
                         xmlns:terminal="using:Iciclecreek.Terminal"
                         x:Class="MyApp.TerminalWindow"
                         Title="Terminal"
                         Width="800"
                         Height="600"
                         FontFamily="Consolas"
                         FontSize="12"
                         Background="Black"
                         Foreground="White"
                         CloseOnProcessExit="True"
                         UpdateTitleFromTerminal="True"/>

Or create programmatically:

using Iciclecreek.Terminal;

var terminalWindow = new TerminalWindow
{
    Title = "My Terminal",
    Width = 800,
    Height = 600,
    FontFamily = new FontFamily("Cascadia Mono"),
    FontSize = 14,
    StartingDirectory = Environment.CurrentDirectory,
    Process = "pwsh.exe",  // PowerShell Core
    Args = new[] { "-NoLogo" },
    CloseOnProcessExit = true
};

terminalWindow.Show();

Methods:

Additional Properties (beyond TerminalControl):

Window manipulation commands from the terminal (resize, move, minimize, maximize, raise, lower, fullscreen) are always handled. Handle the corresponding bubbling event from TerminalView and mark it Handled to suppress the default behaviour for any of them.

TerminalWindow exposes everything TerminalControl does, forwarding each member to the control it hosts, and TerminalControl in turn exposes everything TerminalView does. A test walks all three surfaces by reflection and fails if they drift apart, so a member added to the view without a forwarder breaks the build rather than going unnoticed.

Events:

Render frame rate

Terminals repaint on a shared, throttled frame rather than on every chunk of output, so a window hosting several of them does one invalidation pass instead of one per terminal per chunk. The rate defaults to 30 FPS and is settable:

using Iciclecreek.Terminal;

TerminalRenderThrottle.TargetFrameRate = 60;   // valid range 1–1000

Raise it for a smoother repaint on a high-refresh display, or lower it to hand UI-thread time back to the rest of the app — a terminal streaming build output at 10 FPS is still perfectly readable and costs a third of the invalidations. Because the frame is shared, the setting is global rather than per-terminal: it applies to every terminal already open, from the next frame scheduled. Safe to set from any thread.

Links

• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/tomlm/Iciclecreek.Avalonia.TerminalWindow
• NuGet Package: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Iciclecreek.Avalonia.Terminal
• XTerm.NET: https://github.com/tomlm/XTerm.NET
• Porta.Pty: https://github.com/tomlm/Porta.Pty
• Avalonia UI: https://avaloniaui.net/

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.