The Terminal
Breadstick's Terminal: tabs, the key bar, programs with windows, split panes, themes and fonts, saved SSH hosts and your own command buttons.
Terminal under Open on the home screen is a plain Debian shell with nothing else drawn. It starts fast, uses the least memory of the three modes, and runs alongside a Desktop or Floating session without restarting it. Android's Quick Settings panel can also carry a Breadstick Terminal tile.
The app catalog lists the Linux terminal and developer tools from Debian 13 that run in a shell like this one, from language runtimes and compilers to servers, with the ones tested on a device marked.
Tabs
Each tab is its own shell. + in the tab strip opens another, and a long press on a tab renames it: leave the name blank to let the shell name the tab itself.
The free version opens two tabs at a time. With two open, the + shows a lock, and tapping it opens the Pro screen. Breadstick Pro has no tab limit.
Reattach to your terminal session, under Settings, Input, is on by default. It keeps the shell in one tmux session, so leaving the Terminal and coming back returns you to the same shell, with its scrollback and anything still running. Force-stopping the app still ends it.
The key bar
A row of keys sits above the on-screen keyboard: Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Esc, Tab, the arrows, ^C, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, a few symbols and Paste. Fn adds a second row with F1 to F12, Ins and Del. Ctrl, Alt and Shift are sticky: tap once for the next key only, twice to hold it on, and a third time to turn it off.
The buttons at the top make the text smaller or larger and switch to full screen. The ⋮ menu has Select text, Copy everything and Paste, and Stop this shell while the shell runs.
Programs with windows
While a Desktop or Floating session is running, a program with a window started in a Terminal tab opens there: on the Linux desktop in Desktop mode, or as its own Android window in Floating mode. A tab that was already open when the session started picks it up with the next command you type, and lets it go again once the session stops.
With no session running, a program that needs a window says it cannot open a display; start
Desktop or Floating first. Command line programs work either way. This applies to your own user's
shell: a root shell does not open windows on the session. A variable you set yourself, such as
DISPLAY, is left as you set it.
Split panes
Breadstick Pro.
The ⋮ menu can split a tab into panes:
- Split side by side and Split top and bottom add a pane
- Next pane moves to the next one
- Zoom pane fills the tab with the current pane, and again puts it back
- Close pane closes the current pane
Panes are tmux's own, so these items appear while Reattach to your terminal session is on and
the tab's shell is running. tmux's usual keys work from a physical keyboard too: Ctrl+B, then %,
", o or z, and Ctrl+B then x to close a pane, which asks first.
Themes and fonts
Breadstick Pro.
Appearance… in the ⋮ menu picks the Terminal's colors and font. Anyone can open it and see each one; choosing anything but the defaults needs Pro.
| Colors | Fonts |
|---|---|
| Breadstick (the default) | DejaVu Sans Mono (the default) |
| Solarized Dark | JetBrains Mono |
| Solarized Light | Fira Code |
| Dracula | Liberation Mono |
| Nord | Noto Mono |
| Gruvbox Dark |
A theme changes the background, the text and the 16 standard terminal colors, including the text
already in the scrollback. Programs that pick their own colors from the larger 256-color or full
color ranges keep them. Every font keeps each character the same width, bold included, so columns
stay aligned. JetBrains Mono and Fira Code draw programming ligatures, such as -> and != as
single symbols, at the width of the characters they join.
If Pro ends, the Terminal goes back to Breadstick's colors and DejaVu Sans Mono, and your choice comes back with Pro.
Saved SSH hosts
Breadstick Pro.
SSH hosts… in the ⋮ menu keeps the machines you connect to: an optional name, the user, the
host and the port (22 unless you change it). Connect opens a new tab and, once its shell is
ready, types ssh -p port user@host for you.
It signs in with the SSH key you imported under Settings, Remote access, Import an SSH key, or asks for the password. User and host names are limited to letters, digits, dots, dashes and the few other characters a host name can contain, so nothing saved there can run as a command.
This is the SSH client, for reaching other machines from Linux. Reaching Linux on this device from somewhere else is the SSH server, described in Remote access.
Your commands
Breadstick Pro.
Your commands… in the ⋮ menu adds buttons above the key bar, each typing a command for you:
a long rsync, a build, a log you check every day. Give each a Button label of up to 16
characters, or leave it blank to use the start of the command. Press Enter too is on by
default; turn it off for a command you want to finish typing yourself.
Your keyboard
A physical keyboard works as it does anywhere else, and the Terminal follows the Caps Lock setting under Settings, Keyboard (Pro): Caps Lock as Ctrl or as Escape. The other keyboard settings, remapped keys and shortcuts, apply to Linux windows rather than the Terminal. See Keyboard and shortcuts.