JetBrains has made a beta version of a new terminal available in JetBrains IDEs starting with version 2024.1. The new terminal combines the look and feel of the new JetBrains UI with an expanded feature set.
Unveiled February 20, the new terminal differs visually from the old terminal mainly in presenting each command in a separate block. This helps users more easily locate the start and end of each command, thus enhancing readability of output, JetBrains said. This change brings other improvements such as easy navigation between blocks using arrows and easy switching between the prompt and output using shortcuts.
The command completion feature also has been improved. The feature now supports commands, arguments, paths, and options, and adds a new command history that allows for filtering and makes it easier to navigate through recently executed commands, JetBrains said. However, the company noted that work on the terminal is still ongoing. Some shell shortcuts still do not fully work, and some completion options may not be available or may differ from shell-based completion.
Users can switch between old and new terminals in Settings/Preferences > Tools > Terminal > Enable New Terminal. Currently, the new terminal supports only Bash, Zsh, and PowerShell, with support for other shells in development. The company plans to roll out an IDE-based survey that allows users to share feedback on the terminal.
JetBrains is perhaps best known as the maker of the IntelliJ IDEA IDE for Java and Kotlin, but also makes development tools for C, C++, Go, JavaScript, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, databases, and data science.