foot.ini(5) File Formats Manual foot.ini(5)
NAME
foot.ini - configuration file for foot(1)
DESCRIPTION
foot uses the standard unix configuration format, with section based
key/value pairs. The default section is usually unnamed, i.e. not pre-
fixed with a [section]. However it can also be explicitly named [main],
say if it needs to be reopened after any of the other sections.
foot will search for a configuration file in the following locations,
in this order:
• XDG_CONFIG_HOME/foot/foot.ini (defaulting to $HOME/.con-
fig/foot/foot.ini if unset)
• XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/foot/foot.ini (defaulting to
/etc/xdg/foot/foot.ini if unset)
An example configuration file containing all options with their default
value commented out will usually be installed to
/etc/xdg/foot/foot.ini.
SECTION: main
shell
Executable to launch. Typically a shell. Default: $SHELL if set,
otherwise the user's default shell (as specified in /etc/passwd).
You can also pass arguments. For example /bin/bash --norc.
login-shell
Boolean. If enabled, the shell will be launched as a login shell,
by prepending a '-' to argv[0]. Default: no.
term
Value to set the environment variable TERM to. Default: foot
font, font-bold, font-italic, font-bold-italic
Comma separated list of fonts to use, in fontconfig format. That
is, a font name followed by a list of colon-separated options. Most
noteworthy is :size=n, which is used to set the font size. Note
that the font size is also affected by the dpi-aware option.
Examples:
• Dina:weight=bold:slant=italic
• Courier New:size=12
• Fantasque Sans Mono:fontfeatures=ss01
For each option, the first font is the primary font. The remaining
fonts are fallback fonts that will be used whenever a glyph cannot
be found in the primary font.
The fallback fonts are searched in the order they appear. If a
glyph cannot be found in any of the fallback fonts, the dynamic
fallback list from fontconfig (for the primary font) is searched.
font-bold, font-italic and font-bold-italic allow custom fonts to
be used for bold/italic/bold+italic fonts. If left unconfigured,
the bold/italic variants of the regular font(s) specified in font
are used. Note: you may have to tweak the size(s) of the custom
bold/italic fonts to match the regular font.
To disable bold and/or italic fonts, set e.g. font-bold to exactly
the same value as font.
Default: monospace:size=8 (font), not set (font-bold, font-italic,
font-bold-italic).
include
Absolute path to configuration file to import.
The import file has its own section scope. I.e. the including con-
figuration is still in the default section after the include, re-
gardless of which section the included file ends in.
• The path must be an absolute path, or start with ~/.
• Multiple include directives are allowed, but only one path
per directive.
• Nested imports are allowed.
Default: not set.
line-height
An absolute value, in points, that override line height from the
font metrics.
You can specify a height in pixels by using the px suffix: e.g.
line-height=12px.
See also: vertical-letter-offset.
Default: not set.
letter-spacing
Spacing between letters, in points. A positive value will increase
the cell size, and a negative value shrinks it.
You can specify a letter spacing in pixels by using the px suffix:
e.g. letter-spacing=2px.
See also: horizontal-letter-offset.
Default: 0.
horizontal-letter-offset, vertical-letter-offset
Configure the horizontal and vertical offsets used when positioning
glyphs within cells, in points, relative to the top left corner.
To specify an offset in pixels, append px: e.g. horizontal-letter-
offset=2px.
Default: 0.
underline-offset
Use a custom offset for underlines. The offset is, by default, in
points and relative the font's baseline. A positive value positions
the underline under the baseline, while a negative value positions
it above the baseline.
To specify an offset in pixels, append px: underline-offset=2px.
If left unset (the default), the offset specified in the font is
used, or estimated by foot if the font lacks underline positioning
information.
Default: unset.
box-drawings-uses-font-glyphs Boolean. When disabled, foot generates
box/line drawing characters itself. The are several advantages to
doing this instead of using font glyphs:
• No antialiasing effects where e.g. line endpoints appear
dimmed down, or blurred.
• Line- and box characters are guaranteed to span the entire
cell, resulting in a gap-less appearance.
• No alignment issues, i.e. lines are centered when they
should be.
• Many fonts lack some, or all, of the line- and box drawing
characters, causing fallback fonts to be used, which re-
sults in out-of-place looking glyphs (for example, badly
sized).
When enabled, box/line drawing characters are rendered using font
glyphs. This may result in a more uniform look, in some use cases.
Default: no.
dpi-aware
auto, yes, or no.
When set to yes, fonts are sized using the monitor's DPI, making a
font of a given size have the same physical size, regardless of
monitor. In other words, if you drag a foot window between differ-
ent monitors, the font size remains the same.
In this mode, the monitor's scaling factor is ignored; doubling the
scaling factor will not double the font size.
When set to no, the monitor's DPI is ignored. The font is instead
sized using the monitor's scaling factor; doubling the scaling fac-
tor does double the font size.
Finally, if set to auto, fonts will be sized using the monitor's
DPI if all monitors have a scaling factor of 1. If at least one
monitor as a scaling factor larger than 1 (regardless of whether
the foot window is mapped on that monitor or not), fonts will be
scaled using the scaling factor.
Note that this option typically does not work with bitmap fonts,
which only contains a pre-defined set of sizes, and cannot be dy-
namically scaled. Whichever size (of the available ones) that best
matches the DPI or scaling factor, will be used.
Also note that if the font size has been specified in pixels (:pix-
elsize=N, instead of :size=N), DPI scaling (dpi-aware=yes) will
have no effect (the specified pixel size will be used as is). But,
if the monitor's scaling factor is used to size the font (dpi-
aware=no), the font's pixel size will be multiplied with the scal-
ing factor.
Default: auto
pad
Padding between border and glyphs, in pixels (subject to output
scaling), in the form XxY.
This will add at least X pixels on both the left and right sides,
and Y pixels on the top and bottom sides. The grid content will be
anchored in the top left corner. I.e. if the window manager forces
an odd window size on foot, the additional pixels will be added to
the right and bottom sides.
To instead center the grid content, append center (e.g. pad=5x5
center).
Default: 2x2.
resize-delay-ms
Time, in milliseconds, of "idle time" before foot sends the new
window dimensions to the client application while doing an interac-
tive resize of a foot window. Idle time in this context is a period
of time where the window size is not changing.
In other words, while you are fiddling with the window size, foot
does not send the updated dimensions to the client. Only when you
pause the fiddling for resize-delay-ms milliseconds is the client
updated.
Emphasis is on while here; as soon as the interactive resize ends
(i.e. when you let go of the window border), the final dimensions
is sent to the client, without any delays.
Setting it to 0 disables the delay completely.
Default: 100.
initial-window-size-pixels
Initial window width and height in pixels (subject to output scal-
ing), in the form WIDTHxHEIGHT. The height includes the titlebar
when using CSDs. Mutually exclusive to initial-window-size-chars.
Default: 700x500.
initial-window-size-chars
Initial window width and height in characters, in the form WIDTHx-
HEIGHT. Mutually exclusive to initial-window-size-pixels.'
Note that if you have a multi-monitor setup, with different scaling
factors, there is a possibility the window size will not be set
correctly. If that is the case, use initial-window-size-pixels in-
stead.
Default: not set.
initial-window-mode
Initial window mode for each newly spawned window: windowed, maxi-
mized or fullscreen. Default: windowed.
title
Initial window title. Default: foot.
locked-title
Boolean. If enabled, applications are not allowed to change the ti-
tle at run-time. Default: no.
app-id
Value to set the app-id property on the Wayland window to. The com-
positor can use this value to e.g. group multiple windows, or apply
window management rules. Default: foot.
bold-text-in-bright
Semi-boolean. When enabled, bold text is rendered in a brighter
color (in addition to using a bold font). The color is brightened
by increasing its luminance.
If set to palette-based, rather than a simple yes|true, colors
matching one of the 8 regular palette colors will be brightened us-
ing the corresponding bright palette color. Other colors will not
be brightened.
Default: no.
word-delimiters
String of characters that act as word delimiters when selecting
text. Note that whitespace characters are always word delimiters,
regardless of this setting. Default: ,│`|:"'()[]{}<>
notify
Command to execute to display a notification. ${title} and ${body}
will be replaced with the notification's actual title and body
(message content).
${app-id} is replaced with the value of the command line option
--app-id, and defaults to foot.
${window-title} is replaced with the current window title.
Applications can trigger notifications in the following ways:
• OSC 777: \e]777;notify;<title>;<body>\e\\
By default, notifications are inhibited if the foot window has key-
board focus. See notify-focus-inhibit.
Default: notify-send -a ${app-id} -i ${app-id} ${title} ${body}.
notify-focus-inhibit
Boolean. If enabled, foot will not display notifications if the
terminal window has keyboard focus.
Default: yes
selection-target
Clipboard target to automatically copy selected text to. One of
none, primary, clipboard or both. Default: primary.
workers
Number of threads to use for rendering. Set to 0 to disable multi-
threading. Default: the number of available logical CPUs (including
SMT). Note that this is not always the best value. In some cases,
the number of physical cores is better.
SECTION: environment
This section is used to define environment variables that will be set
in the client application, in addition to the variables inherited from
the terminal process itself.
The format is simply:
name=value
Note: do not set TERM here; use the term option in the main (default)
section instead.
SECTION: bell
urgent
When set to yes, foot will signal urgency to the compositor through
the XDG activation protocol whenever BEL is received, and the win-
dow does NOT have keyboard foccus.
If the compositor does not implement this protocol, the margins
will be painted in red instead.
Applications can enable/disable this feature programmatically with
the CSI ? 1042 h and CSI ? 1042 l escape sequences.
Default: no
notify
When set to yes, foot will emit a desktop notification using the
command specified in the notify option whenever BEL is received. By
default, bell notifications are shown only when the window does not
have keyboard focus. See notify-focus-inhibit.
Default: no
command
When set, foot will execute this command when BEL is received. De-
fault: none
command-focused
Whether to run the command on BEL even while focused. Default: no
SECTION: scrollback
lines
Number of scrollback lines. The maximum number of allocated lines
will be this value plus the number of visible lines, rounded up to
the nearest power of 2. Default: 1000.
multiplier
Amount to multiply mouse scrolling with. It is a decimal number,
i.e. fractions are allowed. Default: 3.0.
indicator-position
Configures the style of the scrollback position indicator. One of
none, fixed or relative. none disables the indicator completely.
fixed always renders the indicator near the top of the window, and
relative renders the indicator at the position corresponding to the
current scrollback position. Default: relative.
indicator-format
Which format to use when displaying the scrollback position indica-
tor. Either percentage, line, or a custom fixed string. This option
is ignored if indicator-position=none. Default: empty string.
SECTION: url
launch
Command to execute when opening URLs. ${url} will be replaced with
the actual URL. Default: xdg-open ${url}.
osc8-underline
When to underline OSC-8 URLs. Possible values are url-mode and al-
ways.
When set to url-mode, OSC-8 URLs are only highlighted in URL mode,
just like auto-detected URLs.
When set to always, OSC-8 URLs are always highlighted, regardless
of their other attributes (bold, italic etc). Note that this does
not make them clickable.
Default: url-mode
label-letters
String of characters to use when generating key sequences for URL
jump labels.
If you change this option to include the letter t, you should also
change the default [url-bindings].toggle-url-visible key binding to
avoid a clash.
Default: sadfjklewcmpgh.
protocols
Comma separated list of protocols (schemes) that should be recog-
nized in URL mode. Note that only auto-detected URLs are affected
by this option. OSC-8 URLs are always enabled, regardless of proto-
col. Default: http, https, ftp, ftps, file, gemini, gopher, irc,
ircs.
uri-characters
Set of characters allowed in auto-detected URLs. Any character not
included in this set constitutes a URL delimiter.
Default: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU-
VWXYZ0123456789-_.,~:;/?#@!$&%*+="'()[]
SECTION: cursor
This section controls the cursor style and color. Note that applica-
tions can change these at runtime.
style
Configures the default cursor style, and is one of: block, beam or
underline. Note that this can be overridden by applications. De-
fault: block.
blink
Boolean. Enables blinking cursor. Note that this can be overridden
by applications. Default: no.
color
Two RRGGBB values (i.e. plain old 6-digit hex values, without pre-
fix) specifying the foreground (text) and background (cursor) col-
ors for the cursor.
Default: inverse foreground/background colors.
Note that this value only applies to the block cursor. The other
cursor styles are always rendered with the foreground color.
beam-thickness
Thickness (width) of the beam styled cursor. The value is in
points, and its exact value thus depends on the monitor's DPI. To
instead specify a thickness in pixels, use the px suffix: e.g.
beam-thickness=2px. Default: 1.5
underline-thickness
Thickness (height) of the underline styled cursor. The value is in
points, and its exact value thus depends on the monitor's DPI.
To instead specify a thickness in pixels, use the px suffix: e.g.
underline-thickness=2px.
Note that if left unset, the cursor's thickness will scale with the
font size, while if set, the size is fixed.
Default: font underline thickness.
SECTION: mouse
hide-when-typing
Boolean. When enabled, the mouse cursor is hidden while typing. De-
fault: no.
alternate-scroll-mode
Boolean. This option controls the initial value for the alternate
scroll mode. When this mode is enabled, mouse scroll events are
translated to up/down key events when displaying the alternate
screen.
This lets you scroll with the mouse in e.g. pagers (like less)
without enabling native mouse support in them.
Alternate scrolling is not used if the application enables native
mouse support.
This option can be modified by applications at run-time using the
escape sequences CSI ? 1007 h (enable) and CSI ? 1007 l (disable).
Default: yes.
SECTION: colors
This section controls the 16 ANSI colors, the default foreground and
background colors, and the extended 256 color palette. Note that appli-
cations can change these at runtime.
The colors are in RRGGBB format (i.e. plain old 6-digit hex values,
without prefix). That is, they do not have an alpha component. You can
configure the background transparency with the alpha option.
foreground
Default foreground color. This is the color used when no ANSI color
is being used. Default: dcdccc.
background
Default background color. This is the color used when no ANSI color
is being used. Default: 111111.
regular0, regular1 .. regular7
The eight basic ANSI colors (Black, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Ma-
genta, Cyan, White). Default: 222222, cc9393, 7f9f7f, d0bf8f,
6ca0a3, dc8cc3, 93e0e3 and dcdccc (a variant of the zenburn theme).
bright0, bright1 .. bright7
The eight bright ANSI colors (Black, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Ma-
genta, Cyan, White). Default: 666666, dca3a3, bfebbf, f0dfaf,
8cd0d3, fcace3, b3ffff and ffffff (a variant of the zenburn theme).
dim0, dim1 .. dim7
Custom colors to use with dimmed colors. Dimmed colors do not have
an entry in the color palette. Applications emit them by combining
a color value, and a "dim" attribute.
By default, foot implements this by reducing the luminance of the
current color. This is a generic approach that applies to both col-
ors from the 256-color palette, as well as 24-bit RGB colors.
You can change this behavior by setting the dimN options. When set,
foot will match the current color against the color palette, and if
it matches one of the regularN colors, the corresponding dimN color
will be used.
If instead the current color matches one of the brightN colors, the
corresponding regularN color will be used.
If the current color does not match any known color, it is dimmed
by reducing the luminance (i.e. the same behavior as if the dimN
options are unconfigured). 24-bit RGB colors will typically fall
into this category.
Note that applications can change the regularN and brighN colors at
runtime. However, they have no way of changing the dimN colors. If
an application has changed the regularN colors, foot will still use
the corresponding dimN color, as configured in foot.ini.
Default: not set.
0 .. 255
Arbitrary colors in the 256-color palette. Default: for 0 .. 15,
see regular and bright defaults above; see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#8-bit for an expla-
nation of the remainder.
alpha
Background translucency. A value in the range 0.0-1.0, where 0.0
means completely transparent, and 1.0 is opaque. Default: 1.0.
selection-foreground, selection-background
Foreground (text) and background color to use in selected text.
Note that both options must be set, or the default will be used.
Default: inverse foreground/background.
jump-labels
Two color values specifying the foreground (text) and background
colors to use when rendering jump labels in URL mode. Default: reg-
ular0 regular3.
scrollback-indicator
Two color values specifying the foreground (text) and background
(indicator itself) colors for the scrollback indicator. Default:
regular0 bright4.
search-box-no-match
Two color values specifying the foreground (text) and background
colors for the scrollback search box, when there are no matches.
Default: regular0 regular1.
search-box-match
Two color values specifying the foreground (text) and background
colors for the scrollback search box, when the search box is either
empty, or there are matches. Default: regular0 regular3.
urls
Color to use for the underline used to highlight URLs in URL mode.
Default: regular3.
SECTION: csd
This section controls the look of the CSDs (Client Side Decorations).
Note that the default is to not use CSDs, but instead to use SSDs
(Server Side Decorations) when the compositor supports it.
Note that unlike the colors defined in the colors section, the color
values here are in AARRGGBB (i.e. plain old 8-digit hex values) format.
I.e. they contain an alpha component - 00 means completely transparent,
and ff fully opaque.
Examples:
• ffffffff: white, fully opaque
• ff000000: black, fully opaque
• 7fffffff: white, semi-transparent
• ff00ff00: green, fully opaque
preferred
Which type of window decorations to prefer: client (CSD), server
(SSD) or none.
Note that this is only a hint to the compositor. Depending on com-
positor support, and how it has been configured, it may instruct
foot to use CSDs even though this option has been set to server, or
render SSDs despite client or none being set.
Default: server.
size
Height, in pixels (subject to output scaling), of the titlebar.
Setting it to 0 will hide the titlebar, while still showing the
border (if border-width is set to a non-zero value). Default: 26.
color
Titlebar color. Default: use the default foreground color.
font
Font to use for the title bar. This is a list of fonts, similar to
the main font option. Note that the font will be sized using the
title bar size. That is, all :size and :pixelsize attributes will
be ignored. Default: primary font.
hide-when-maximized
Boolean. When enabled, the CSD titlebar is hidden when the window
is maximized. The completely disable the titlebar, set size to 0
instead. Default: no.
border-width
Width of the border, in pixels (subject to output scaling). Note
that the border encompasses the entire window, including the title
bar. Default: 0.
border-color
Color of border. By default, the title bar color is used. If the
title bar color has not been set, the default foreground color
(from the color scheme) is used. Default: titlebar color.
button-width
Width, in pixels (subject to output scaling), of the minimize/maxi-
mize/close buttons. Default: 26.
button-color
Foreground color on the minimize/maximize/close buttons. Default:
use the default background color.
button-minimize-color
Minimize button's background color. Default: use the default regu-
lar4 color (blue).
button-maximize-color
Maximize button's background color. Default: use the default regu-
lar2 color (green).
button-close-color
Close button's background color. Default: use the default regular1
color (red).
SECTION: key-bindings
This section lets you override the default key bindings.
The general format is action=combo1...comboN. That is, each action may
have one or more key combinations, space separated. Each combination is
in the form mod1+mod2+key. The names of the modifiers and the key must
be valid XKB key names.
Note that if Shift is one of the modifiers, the key must not be in up-
per case. For example, Control+Shift+V will never trigger, but Con-
trol+Shift+v will.
Note that Alt is usually called Mod1.
xkbcli interactive-wayland can be useful for finding keysym names.
A key combination can only be mapped to one action. Lets say you want
to bind Control+Shift+R to fullscreen. Since this is the default short-
cut for search-start, you first need to unmap the default binding. This
can be done by setting action=none; e.g. search-start=none.
noop
All key combinations listed here will not be sent to the applica-
tion. Default: not bound.
scrollback-up-page
Scrolls up/back one page in history. Default: Shift+Page_Up.
scrollback-up-half-page
Scrolls up/back half of a page in history. Default: not bound.
scrollback-up-line
Scrolls up/back a single line in history. Default: not bound.
scrollback-down-page
Scroll down/forward one page in history. Default: Shift+Page_Down.
scrollback-down-half-page
Scroll down/forward half of a page in history. Default: not bound.
scrollback-down-line
Scroll down/forward a single line in history. Default: not bound.
scrollback-home
Scroll to the beginning of the scrollback. Default: not bound.
scrollback-end
Scroll to the end (bottom) of the scrollback. Default: not bound.
clipboard-copy
Copies the current selection into the clipboard. Default: Con-
trol+Shift+c XF86Copy.
clipboard-paste
Pastes from the clipboard. Default: Control+Shift+v XF86Paste.
primary-paste
Pastes from the primary selection. Default: Shift+Insert (also de-
fined in mouse-bindings).
search-start
Starts a scrollback/history search. Default: Control+Shift+r.
font-increase
Increases the font size by 0.5pt. Default: Control+plus Con-
trol+equal Control+KP_Add.
font-decrease
Decreases the font size by 0.5pt. Default: Control+minus Con-
trol+KP_Subtract.
font-reset
Resets the font size to the default. Default: Control+0 Con-
trol+KP_0.
spawn-terminal
Spawns a new terminal. If the shell has been configured to emit the
OSC 7 escape sequence, the new terminal will start in the current
working directory. Default: Control+Shift+n.
minimize
Minimizes the window. Default: not bound.
maximize
Toggle the maximized state. Default: not bound.
fullscreen
Toggles the fullscreen state. Default: not bound.
pipe-visible, pipe-scrollback, pipe-selected
Pipes the currently visible text, the entire scrollback, or the
currently selected text to an external tool. The syntax for this
option is a bit special; the first part of the value is the command
to execute enclosed in "[]", followed by the binding(s).
You can configure multiple pipes as long as the command strings are
different and the key bindings are unique.
Note that the command is not automatically run inside a shell; use
sh -c "command line" if you need that.
Example:
pipe-visible=[sh -c "xurls | uniq | tac | fuzzel | xargs -r
firefox"] Control+Print
Default: not bound
show-urls-launch
Enter URL mode, where all currently visible URLs are tagged with a
jump label with a key sequence that will open the URL (and exit URL
mode). Default: Control+Shift+u.
show-urls-persistent
Similar to show-urls-launch, but does not automatically exit URL
mode after activating an URL. Default: none.
show-urls-copy
Enter URL mode, where all currently visible URLs are tagged with a
jump label with a key sequence that will place the URL in the clip-
board. Default: none.
prompt-prev
Jump to the previous, currently not visible, prompt (requires shell
integration, see foot(1)). Default: Control+Shift+z.
prompt-next
Jump the next prompt (requires shell integration, see foot(1)). De-
fault: Control+Shift+x.
unicode-input
Input a Unicode character by typing its codepoint in hexadecimal,
followed by Enter or Space.
For example, to input the character ö (LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH
DIAERESIS, Unicode codepoint 0xf6), you would first activate this
key binding, then type: f, 6, Enter.
Another example: to input 😍 (SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES,
Unicode codepoint 0x1f60d), activate this key binding, then type:
1, f, 6, 0, d, Enter.
Recognized key bindings in Unicode input mode:
• Enter, Space: commit the Unicode character, then exit this
mode.
• Escape, q, Ctrl+c, Ctrl+d, Ctrl+g: abort input, then exit this
mode.
• 0-9, a-f: append next digit to the Unicode's codepoint.
• Backspace: undo the last digit.
Note that there is no visual feedback while in this mode. This is
by design; foot's Unicode input mode is considered to be a fall-
back. The preferred way of entering Unicode characters, emojis etc
is by using an IME.
Default: none.
SECTION: search-bindings
This section lets you override the default key bindings used in scroll-
back search mode. The syntax is exactly the same as the regular key-
bindings.
cancel
Aborts the search. The viewport is restored and the primary selec-
tion is not updated. Default: Control+g Control+c Escape.
commit
Exit search mode and copy current selection into the primary selec-
tion. Viewport is not restored. To copy the selection to the regu-
lar clipboard, use Control+Shift+c. Default: Return.
find-prev
Search backwards in the scrollback history for the next match. De-
fault: Control+r.
find-next
Searches forwards in the scrollback history for the next match. De-
fault: Control+s.
cursor-left
Moves the cursor in the search box one character to the left. De-
fault: Left Control+b.
cursor-left-word
Moves the cursor in the search box one word to the left. Default:
Control+Left Mod1+b.
cursor-right
Moves the cursor in the search box one character to the right. De-
fault: Right Control+f.
cursor-right-word
Moves the cursor in the search box one word to the right. Default:
Control+Right Mod1+f.
cursor-home
Moves the cursor in the search box to the beginning of the input.
Default: Home Control+a.
cursor-end
Moves the cursor in the search box to the end of the input. De-
fault: End Control+e.
delete-prev
Deletes the character before the cursor. Default: BackSpace.
delete-prev-word
Deletes the word before the cursor. Default: Mod1+BackSpace Con-
trol+BackSpace.
delete-next
Deletes the character after the cursor. Default: Delete.
delete-next-word
Deletes the word after the cursor. Default: Mod1+d Control+Delete.
extend-to-word-boundary
Extend current selection to the next word boundary. Default: Con-
trol+w.
extend-to-next-whitespace
Extend the current selection to the next whitespace. Default: Con-
trol+Shift+w.
clipboard-paste
Paste from the clipboard into the search buffer. Default: Control+v
Control+y.
primary-paste
Paste from the primary selection into the search buffer. Default:
Shift+Insert.
unicode-input
Unicode input mode. See key-bindings.unicode-input for details. De-
fault: none.
SECTION: url-bindings
This section lets you override the default key bindings used in URL
mode. The syntax is exactly the same as the regular key-bindings.
Be careful; do not use single-letter keys that are also used in
[url].label-letters, as doing so will make some URLs inaccessible.
cancel
Exits URL mode without opening a URL. Default: Control+g Control+c
Control+d Escape.
toggle-url-visible
By default, the jump label only shows the key sequence required to
activate it. This is fine as long as the URL is visible in the
original text.
But with e.g. OSC-8 URLs (the terminal version of HTML anchors,
i.e. "links"), the text on the screen can be something completey
different than the URL.
This action toggles between showing and hiding the URL on the jump
label.
Default: t.
SECTION: text-bindings
This section lets you remap key combinations to custom escape se-
quences.
The format is text=combo1...comboN. That is, the string to emit may
have one or more key combinations, space separated. Each combination is
in the form mod1+mod2+key. The names of the modifiers and the key must
be valid XKB key names.
The text string specifies the characters, or bytes, to emit when the
associated key combination(s) are pressed. There are two ways to spec-
ify a character:
• Normal, printable characters are written as-is: abcdef.
• Bytes (e.g. ESC) are written as two-digit hexadecimal numbers, with
a \x prefix: \x1b.
Example: you would like to remap Super+k to the Up key.
The escape sequence for the Up key is ESC [ A (without the spaces).
Thus, we need to specify this in foot.ini (Mod4 is the XKB name for the
Super/logo key):
\x1b[A = Mod4+k
Another example: to remap Super+c to Control+c:
\x03 = Mod4+c
SECTION: mouse-bindings
This section lets you override the default mouse bindings.
The general format is action=combo1...comboN. That is, each action may
have one or more key combinations, space separated. Each combination is
in the form mod1+mod2+BTN_<name>[-COUNT]. The names of the modifiers
must be valid XKB key names, and the button name must be a valid libin-
put name. You can find the button names using libinput debug-events.
The trailing COUNT is optional and specifies the click count required
to trigger the binding. The default if COUNT is omitted is 1.
A modifier+button combination can only be mapped to one action. Lets
say you want to bind BTN_MIDDLE to fullscreen. Since BTN_MIDDLE is the
default binding for primary-paste, you first need to unmap the default
binding. This can be done by setting action=none; e.g. primary-
paste=none.
selection-override-modifiers
The modifiers set in this set (which may be set to any combination
of modifiers, e.g. mod1+mod2+mod3, as well as none) are used to en-
able selecting text with the mouse irrespective of whether a client
application currently has the mouse grabbed. These modifiers cannot
be used as modifiers in mouse bindings. Because the order of bind-
ings is significant, it is best to set this prior to any other
mouse bindings that might use modifiers in the default set. De-
fault: Shift
The actions to which mouse combos can be bound are listed below. All
actions listed under key-bindings can be used here as well.
select-begin
Begin an interactive selection. The selection is finalized, and
copied to the primary selection, when the button is released. De-
fault: BTN_LEFT.
select-begin-block
Begin an interactive block selection. The selection is finalized,
and copied to the primary selection, when the button is released.
Default: Control+BTN_LEFT.
select-word
Begin an interactive word-wise selection, where words are separated
by whitespace and all characters defined by the word-delimiters op-
tion. The selection is finalized, and copied to the primary selec-
tion, when the button is released. Default: BTN_LEFT-2.
select-word-whitespace
Same as select-word, but the characters in the word-delimiters op-
tion are ignored. I.e only whitespace characters act as delimiters.
The selection is finalized, and copied to the primary selection,
when the button is released. Default: Control+BTN_LEFT-2.
select-row
Begin an interactive row-wise selection. The selection is final-
ized, and copied to the primary selection, when the button is re-
leased. Default: BTN_LEFT-3.
select-extend
Interactively extend an existing selection, using the original se-
lection mode (normal, block, word-wise or row-wise). The selection
is finalized, and copied to the primary selection, when the button
is released. Default: BTN_RIGHT.
select-extend-character-wise
Same as select-extend, but forces the selection mode to normal
(i.e. character wise). Note that this causes subsequent select-ex-
tend operations to be character wise. This action is ignored for
block selections. Default: Control+BTN_RIGHT.
primary-paste
Pastes from the primary selection. Default: BTN_MIDDLE.
TWEAK
This section is for advanced users and describes configuration options
that can be used to tweak foot's low-level behavior.
These options are not included in the example configuration. You should
not change these unless you understand what they do.
Note that these options may change, or be removed at any time, without
prior notice.
When reporting bugs, please mention if, and to what, you have changed
any of these options.
scaling-filter
Overrides the default scaling filter used when down-scaling bitmap
fonts (e.g. emoji fonts). Possible values are none, nearest, bilin-
ear, cubic or lanczos3. cubic and lanczos3 produce the best re-
sults, but are slower (with lanczos3 being the best and slowest).
Default: lanczos3.
overflowing-glyphs
Boolean. When enabled, glyphs wider than their cell(s) are allowed
to render into one additional neighbouring cell.
One use case for this are fonts with wide italic characters that
"bend" into the next cell. Without this option, such glyphs will
appear "cut off".
Another use case are fonts with "icon" characters in the Unicode
private usage area, e.g. Nerd Fonts, or Powerline Fonts and legacy
emoji characters like WHITE FROWNING FACE.
Note: might impact performance depending on the font used. Espe-
cially small font sizes can cause many overflowing glyphs because
of subpixel rendering.
Default: yes.
render-timer
Enables a frame rendering timer, that prints the time it takes to
render each frame, in microseconds, either on-screen, to stderr, or
both. Valid values are none, osd, log and both. Default: none.
box-drawing-base-thickness
Line thickness to use for LIGHT box drawing line characters, in
points. This value is converted to pixels using the monitor's DPI,
and then multiplied with the cell size. The end result is that a
larger font (and thus larger cells) result in thicker lines. De-
fault: 0.04.
box-drawing-solid-shades
Boolean. When enabled, box drawing "shades" (e.g. LIGHT SHADE,
MEDIUM SHADE and DARK SHADE) are rendered as solid blocks using a
darker variant of the current foreground color.
When disabled, they are instead rendered as checker box pattern,
using the current foreground color as is.
Default: yes.
delayed-render-lower, delayed-render-upper
These two values control the timeouts (in nanoseconds) that are
used to mitigate screen flicker caused by clients writing large,
non-atomic screen updates.
If a client splits up a screen update over multiple write(3) calls,
we may end up rendering an intermediate frame, quickly followed by
another frame with the final screen content. For example, the
client may erase part of the screen (or scroll) in one write, and
then write new content in one or more subsequent writes. Rendering
the frame when the screen has been erased, but not yet filled with
new content will be perceived as screen flicker.
The real solution to this is Application Synchronized Updates
(https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifica-
tions/-/merge_requests/2).
The problem with this is twofold - first, it has not yet been stan-
dardized, and thus there are not many terminal emulators that im-
plement it (foot does implement it), and second, applications must
be patched to use it.
Until this has happened, foot offers an interim workaround; an at-
tempt to mitigate the screen flicker without affecting neither per-
formance nor latency.
It is based on the fact that the screen is updated at a fixed in-
terval (typically 60Hz). For us, this means it does not matter if
we render a new frame at the beginning of a frame interval, or at
the end. Thus, the goal is to introduce a delay between receiving
client data and rendering the resulting state, but without causing
a frame skip.
While it should be possible to estimate the amount of time left un-
til the next frame, foot's algorithm is currently not that ad-
vanced, but is based on statistics I guess you could say - the de-
lay we introduce is so small that the risk of pushing the frame
over to the next frame interval is also very small.
Now, that was a lot of text. But what is it foot actually does?
When receiving client data, it schedules a timer, the delayed-ren-
der-lower. If we do not receive any more client data before the
timer has run out, we render the frame. If however, we do receive
more data, the timer is re-scheduled. That is, each time we receive
client data, frame rendering is delayed another delayed-render-
lower nanoseconds.
Now, while this works very well with most clients, it would be pos-
sible to construct a malicious client that keeps writing data at a
slow pace. To the user, this would look like foot has frozen as we
never get to render a new frame. To prevent this, an upper limit is
set - delayed-render-upper. If this timer runs out, we render the
frame regardless of what the client is doing.
If changing these values, note that the lower timeout must be set
lower than the upper timeout, but that this is not verified by
foot. Furthermore, both values must be less than 16ms (that is,
16000000 nanoseconds).
You can disable the feature altogether by setting either value to
0. In this case, frames are rendered "as soon as possible".
Default: lower=500000 (0.5ms), upper=8333333 (8.3ms - half a frame
interval).
damage-whole-window
Boolean. When enabled, foot will 'damage' the entire window each
time a frame has been rendered. This forces the compositor to re-
draw the entire window. If disabled, foot will only 'damage' up-
dated rows.
There is normally no reason to enable this. However, it has been
seen to workaround an issue with fractional scaling in Gnome.
Note that enabling this option is likely to increase CPU and/or GPU
usage (by the compositor, not by foot), and may have a negative im-
pact on battery life.
Default: no.
grapheme-shaping
Boolean. When enabled, foot will use utf8proc to do grapheme clus-
ter segmentation while parsing "printed" text. Then, when render-
ing, it will use fcft (if compiled with HarfBuzz support) to shape
the grapheme clusters.
This is required to render e.g. flag (emoji) sequences, keycap se-
quences, modifier sequences, zero-width-joiner (ZWJ) sequences and
emoji tag sequences. It might also improve rendering of composed
characters, depending on font.
• foot must have been compiled with utf8proc support
• fcft must have been compiled with HarfBuzz support
See also: grapheme-width-method.
Default: yes
grapheme-width-method
Selects which method to use when calculating the width (i.e. number
of columns) of a grapheme cluster. One of wcswidth, double-width
and max.
wcswidth simply adds together the individual width of all code-
points making up the cluster.
double-width does the same, but limits the maximum number of col-
umns to 2. This is more correct, but may break some applications
since applications typically use wcswidth(3) internally to calcu-
late the width. This results in cursor de-synchronization issues.
max uses the width of the largest codepoint in the cluster.
Default: wcswidth
font-monospace-warn
Boolean. When enabled, foot will use heuristics to try to verify
the primary font is a monospace font, and warn if it is not.
Disable this if you still want to use the font, even if foot thinks
it is not monospaced.
You may also want to disable it to get slightly faster startup
times.
Default: yes
max-shm-pool-size-mb
This option controls the amount of virtual address space used by
the pixmap memory to which the terminal screen content is rendered.
It does not change how much physical memory foot uses.
Foot uses a memory mapping trick to implement fast rendering of in-
teractive scrolling (typically, but applies to "slow" scrolling in
general). Example: holding down the 'up' or 'down' arrow key to
scroll in a text editor.
For this to work, it needs a large amount of virtual address space.
Again, note that this is not physical memory.
On a normal x64 based computer, each process has 128TB of virtual
address space, and newer ones have 64PB. This is an insane amount
and most applications do not use anywhere near that amount.
Each foot terminal window can allocate up to 2GB of virtual address
space. With 128TB of address space, that means a maximum of 65536
windows in server/daemon mode (for 2GB). That should be enough,
yes?
However, the Wayland compositor also needs to allocate the same
amount of virtual address space. Thus, it has a slightly higher
chance of running out of address space since it needs to host all
running Wayland clients in the same way, at the same time.
In the off chance that this becomes a problem for you, you can re-
duce the amount used with this option.
Or, for optimal performance, you can increase it to the maximum al-
lowed value, 2GB (but note that you most likely will not notice any
difference compared to the default value).
Setting it to 0 disables the feature.
Limitations:
• only supported on 64-bit architectures
• only supported on Linux
Default: 512. Maximum allowed: 2048 (2GB).
sixel
Boolean. When enabled, foot will process sixel images. Default: yes
SEE ALSO
foot(1), footclient(1)
2023-09-25 foot.ini(5)
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