contour is a modern and actually fast, modal, virtual terminal emulator, for everyday use.
It is aimed at power users with a modern feature mindset and a works-good-out-of-the-box feeling.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- GPU-accelerated rendering.Font ligatures support (such as in Fira Code).
- Unicode: Emoji support: rainbow gift_heart stuck_out_tongue family – including ZWJ, VS15, VS16 emoji.
- Unicode: Grapheme cluster support
- Bold and italic fonts
- High-DPI support.
- Vertical Line Markers (quickly jump to markers in your history!)
- Vi-like input modes for improved selection and copy’n’paste experience and Vi-like scrolloff feature.
- Blurred behind transparent background when using Windows 10 or KDE window manager on Linux.
- Blurrable Background image support.
- Runtime configuration reload
- 256-color and Truecolor support
- Key binding customization
- Color Schemes
- Profiles (grouped customization of: color scheme, login shell, and related behaviours)
- Synchronized rendering (via SM ? 2026 / RM ? 2026)
- Text reflow (configurable via SM ? 2028 / RM ? 2028)
- Clickable hyperlinks via OSC 8
- Clipboard setting via OSC 52
- Sixel inline images
- Terminal page buffer capture VT extension to quickly extract contents.
- Builtin Fira Code inspired progress bar support.
- Read-only mode, protecting against accidental user-input to the running application, such as Ctrl+C.
- VT320 Host-programmable and Indicator status line support.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/contour-terminal/contour
Support:
Developer: Christian Parpart
License: Apache License 2.0

Contour is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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