urxvt(1)

📦
version 9.31 · 11 versions
, in epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0

👑 urxvt(1) — RXVT-UNICODE 👑

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for rxvt-unicode, aka urxvt, and it's manual section 1 (the user-commands one, iykyk). it's LONG, so we're doing it in parts. buckle up. 💖

🦋 NAME 🦋

rxvt-unicode (yes, it stands for "ouR XVT, unicode" — iconic name, no notes 💅) — a VT102 emulator for the X window system.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

urxvt [options] [-e command [ args ]]

🍓 DESCRIPTION 🍓

so rxvt-unicode, version 9.31, is a colour vt102 terminal emulator. it's intended as an xterm(1) replacement for the girlies who don't need things like Tektronix 4014 emulation or toolkit-style configurability. and because it skips all that, rxvt-unicode uses much less swap space — which is a significant advantage on a machine that's serving a whole bunch of X sessions. resource-efficient queen. 🌸

this document is also available on the World-Wide-Web at http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.1.pod. ✨

💜 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 💜

go check urxvt(7) (try man 7 urxvt) for a list of frequently asked questions and the answers to them, plus some common problems. that document is also accessible on the World-Wide-Web at http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.7.pod.

🌈 RXVT-UNICODE VS. RXVT 🌈

unlike the original rxvt, rxvt-unicode stores all text in Unicode internally. which means it can store and display most scripts in the world. 🫶

but okay, being a terminal emulator, some things are very difficult — especially cursive scripts such as arabic, vertically written scripts like mongolian, or scripts requiring extremely complex combining rules, like tibetan or devanagari. don't expect pretty output when using these scripts. most other scripts — latin, cyrillic, kanji, thai etc. — should work fine though. a somewhat difficult case are right-to-left scripts, such as hebrew: rxvt-unicode adopts the view that bidirectional algorithms belong in the application, not the terminal emulator (too many things — such as cursor-movement while editing — break otherwise), but that might change.

if you're looking for a terminal that supports more exotic scripts, let me recommend mlterm, which is a very user friendly, lean and clean terminal emulator. in fact, the reason rxvt-unicode was born was solely because the author couldn't get mlterm to use one font for latin1 and another for japanese. 😭

therefore another design rationale was the use of multiple fonts to display characters: the idea of a single unicode font which many other programs force onto its users never made sense to me — you should be able to choose any font for any script, freely. periodt.

apart from that, rxvt-unicode is also much better internationalised than its predecessor, supports things such as XFT and ISO 14755 that are handy in i18n-environments, is faster, and has a lot bugs less than the original rxvt. all this in addition to dozens of other small improvements. 🔥

it is still faithfully following the original rxvt idea of being lean and nice on resources: for example, you can still configure rxvt-unicode without most of its features to get a lean binary. it also comes with a client/daemon pair that lets you open any number of terminal windows from within a single process, which makes startup time very fast and drastically reduces memory usage. see urxvtd(1) (daemon) and urxvtc(1) (client).

it also makes technical information about escape sequences (which have been extended) more accessible: see urxvt(7) for technical reference documentation (escape sequences etc.).

💅 OPTIONS 💅

the urxvt options (mostly a subset of xterm's) are listed below. in keeping with the smaller-is-better philosophy, options may be eliminated or default values chosen at compile-time, so the options and defaults listed here may not accurately reflect the version installed on your system. urxvt -h gives a list of major compile-time options on the Options line.

option descriptions may be prefixed with which compile option each is dependent upon. e.g. Compile XIM: requires XIM on the Options line.

Note: urxvt -help gives a list of all command-line options compiled into your version.

also, heads up: urxvt permits the resource name to be used as a long-option (--/++ option) so the potential command-line options are far greater than those listed. for example: urxvt --loginShell --color1 Orange. 😌

the following options are available:

  • -help, --help — prints out a message describing the available options.
  • -display displayname — try to open a window on the named X display. (the older form -d is still respected, but it's deprecated, so like… don't.) if you don't give this option, the display specified by the DISPLAY environment variable is used.
  • -depth bitdepth — Compile frills: attempt to find a visual with the given bit depth; resource depth.
please note that many X servers (and libXft) are buggy with respect to -depth 32 and/or alpha channels, and will cause all sorts of graphical corruption. this is harmless, but we can't do anything about it, so watch out 💀
  • -visual visualID — Compile frills: use the given visual (see e.g. xdpyinfo for possible visual ids) instead of the default, and also allocate a private colormap. all visual types except for DirectColor are supported.
  • -geometry geom — window geometry (-g still respected); resource geometry.
  • -rv|+rv — turn on/off simulated reverse video; resource reverseVideo.
  • -j|+j — turn on/off jump scrolling (allow multiple lines per refresh); resource jumpScroll.
  • -ss|+ss — turn on/off skip scrolling (allow multiple screens per refresh); resource skipScroll.
  • -fps number — Compile frills: set the refresh interval (in frames per second or negative seconds); resource refreshRate.
  • -fade number — fade the text by the given percentage when focus is lost. small values fade a little only, 100 completely replaces all colours by the fade colour; resource fading.
  • -fadecolor colour — fade to this colour when fading is used (see -fade). the default colour is opaque black; resource fadeColor.
  • -icon file — Compile pixbuf: use the specified image as application icon. this is used by many window managers, taskbars and pagers to represent the application window; resource iconFile.
  • -bg colour — window background colour; resource background.
  • -fg colour — window foreground colour; resource foreground.
  • -cr colour — the cursor colour; resource cursorColor.
  • -pr colour — the mouse pointer foreground colour; resource pointerColor.
  • -pr2 colour — the mouse pointer background colour; resource pointerColor2.
  • -bd colour — the colour of the border around the text area and between the scrollbar and the text; resource borderColor.
  • -fn fontlist — select the fonts to be used. this is a comma separated list of font names that are checked in order when trying to find glyphs for characters. the first font defines the cell size for characters; other fonts might be smaller, but not (in general) larger. a (hopefully) reasonable default font list is always appended to it. see resource font for more details.

in short, to specify an X11 core font, just specify its name or prefix it with x:. to specify an XFT-font, you need to prefix it with xft:, e.g.:

urxvt -fn "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=15"
urxvt -fn "9x15bold,xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono"

see also the question "How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?" in the FAQ section of urxvt(7). 🦋

  • -fb fontlist — Compile font-styles: the bold font list to use when bold characters are to be printed. see resource boldFont for details.
  • -fi fontlist — Compile font-styles: the italic font list to use when italic characters are to be printed. see resource italicFont for details.
  • -fbi fontlist — Compile font-styles: the bold italic font list to use when bold italic characters are to be printed. see resource boldItalicFont for details.
  • -is|+is — Compile font-styles: bold/blink font styles imply high intensity foreground/background (default). see resource intensityStyles for details.
  • -name name — specify the application name under which resources are to be obtained, rather than the default executable file name. name should not contain . or * characters. also sets the icon and title name.
  • -ls|+ls — start as a login-shell/sub-shell; resource loginShell.
  • -mc milliseconds — specify the maximum time between multi-click selections.
  • -ut|+ut — Compile utmp: inhibit/enable writing a utmp entry; resource utmpInhibit.
  • -vb|+vb — turn on/off visual bell on receipt of a bell character; resource visualBell.
  • -sb|+sb — turn on/off scrollbar; resource scrollBar.
  • -sr|+sr — put scrollbar on right/left; resource scrollBar_right.
  • -st|+st — display rxvt (non XTerm/NeXT) scrollbar without/with a trough; resource scrollBar_floating.
  • -si|+si — turn on/off scroll-to-bottom on TTY output inhibit; resource scrollTtyOutput has the opposite effect. 🙈
  • -sk|+sk — turn on/off scroll-to-bottom on keypress; resource scrollTtyKeypress.
  • -sw|+sw — turn on/off scrolling with the scrollback buffer as new lines appear. this only takes effect if -si is also given; resource scrollWithBuffer.
  • -ptab|+ptab — if enabled (default), "Horizontal Tab" characters are being stored as actual wide characters in the screen buffer, which makes it possible to select and paste them. since a horizontal tab is a cursor movement and not an actual glyph, this can sometimes be visually annoying as the cursor on a tab character is displayed as a wide cursor; resource pastableTabs.
  • -bc|+bc — blink the cursor; resource cursorBlink.
  • -uc|+uc — make the cursor underlined; resource cursorUnderline.
  • -iconic — start iconified, if the window manager supports that option. alternative form is -ic.
  • -sl number — save number lines in the scrollback buffer. see resource entry for limits; resource saveLines.
  • -b number — Compile frills: internal border of number pixels. see resource entry for limits; resource internalBorder.
  • -w number — Compile frills: external border of number pixels. also, -bw and -borderwidth. see resource entry for limits; resource externalBorder.
  • -bl — Compile frills: set MWM hints to request a borderless window, i.e. if honoured by the WM, the rxvt-unicode window will not have window decorations; resource borderLess. if the window manager does not support MWM hints (e.g. kwin), enables override-redirect mode.
  • -override-redirect — Compile frills: sets override-redirect on the window; resource override-redirect.

to be continued, bestie — there's so much more where that came from 🧚

  • -dockapp — sets the window's initial state to WithdrawnState, which makes window managers that support this extension treat urxvt as a dockapp. very "I live in your panel now" of it ✨
  • -sbg — Compile frills: turns OFF the built-in block graphics/line drawing characters and just vibes with whatever glyphs the fonts you picked provide. use this if you have a genuinely good font and want its block graphic glyphs; resource skipBuiltinGlyphs.
  • -lsp number — Compile frills: how many lines (in pixel height, bestie, pixels) to insert between each row of the display. useful for working around font rendering problems; resource lineSpace.
  • -letsp number — Compile frills: how much to adjust the computed character width by, to control overall letter spacing. negative values tighten it up, positive values space letters out more. great for when your font metrics are acting weird; resource letterSpace.
  • -tn termname — specifies the name of the terminal type that goes in the TERM environment variable. this terminal type has to exist in the termcap(5) database and should have li# and co# entries; resource termName.
  • -e command [arguments] — runs the command plus its command-line arguments inside the urxvt window. it also sets the window title and icon name to the basename of the program being executed, unless -title (-T) or -n were given on the command line. if you use this option it MUST be the last thing on the command line, no cap. if there's no -e, the default is to run the program named by the SHELL environment variable or, failing that, sh(1).

heads up though: you have to give it a program with arguments. if you want to run shell commands you have to name the shell explicitly, like this:

urxvt -e sh -c "shell commands"
  • -title text — window title (-T is still respected); the default title is the basename of the program given after -e, if any, otherwise the application name; resource title.
  • -n text — icon name; the default is the basename of the program given after -e, if any, otherwise the application name; resource iconName.
  • -C — capture system console messages. yes that's the whole description, she's lowkey mysterious 💅
  • -pt style — Compile XIM: the input style for the input method; OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot, Root; resource preeditType.

and if the perl extension xim-onthespot is in use (which it is by default, slay), then OnTheSpot preedit type is also available.

  • -im text — Compile XIM: input method name; resource inputMethod.
  • -imlocale string — the locale to use when opening the IM. you can use an LC_CTYPE of e.g. de_DE.UTF-8 for normal text processing but ja_JP.EUC-JP so the input extension can input japanese characters while you stay in a different locale. resource imLocale. iconic honestly 🎀
  • -imfont fontset — sets the font set used for the X Input Method, see resource imFont for more info.
  • -tcw — changes what triple-click selection with the left mouse button means. only effective when the original (non-perl) selection code is in use. instead of selecting a whole line, it extends the selection to the end of the logical line only; resource tripleclickwords.
  • -dpb | +dpb — Compile frills: disables (or enables) emitting bracketed paste mode sequences (default enabled). bracketed paste mode lets programs detect when something got pasted. since more and more programs are abusing this, the sequences can be turned off. the command sequences to enable and query paste mode still work, but the actual bracket sequences won't be emitted anymore. you can also toggle this from the ctrl-middle-mouse-button menu; resource disablePasteBrackets.
  • -insecure — enables insecure mode, which currently enables most of the escape sequences that echo strings. see the resource insecure for more info. > bestie this one is literally called insecure, tread carefully 🙈
  • -mod modifier — overrides detection of the Meta modifier with the specified key: alt, meta, hyper, super, mod1, mod2, mod3, mod4, mod5; resource modifier.
  • -ssc | +ssc — turn on/off secondary screen (default enabled); resource secondaryScreen.
  • -ssr | +ssr — turn on/off secondary screen scroll (default enabled); resource secondaryScroll.
  • -rm mode — Compile frills: sets long line rewrapping behaviour on window resizes to one of auto (the default), always or never. the latter two do the obvious thing. auto rewraps (acts like always) if scrollback is non-empty, and wings lines (acts like never) otherwise; resource rewrapMode.
  • -hold | +hold — turn on/off hold window after exit support. if enabled, urxvt will not immediately destroy its window when the program running inside it exits. instead it waits until it's killed or closed by the user; resource hold. the "wait, don't leave me" setting 😭
  • -cd path — sets the working directory for the shell (or the command given via -e). the path has to be absolute and it has to exist or urxvt won't start; resource chdir.
  • -xrm string — works like the X Toolkit option of the same name, adding the string as if it were specified in a resource file. resource values specified this way take precedence over ALL other resource specifications. periodt.

note that you need to use the same syntax as in the .Xdefaults file, e.g. "*.background: black". also note that all urxvt-specific options can be given as long-options on the commandline, so -xrm is mostly limited to cases where you want to specify other resources (e.g. for input methods) or for compatibility with other programs.

  • -keysym.sym string — remaps a key symbol. see resource keysym.
  • -embed windowid — tells urxvt to embed its windows into an already-existing window, which lets applications easily embed a terminal. 🫶

right now, urxvt will first unmap/map the specified window, so it shouldn't be a top-level window. urxvt will also reconfigure it quite a bit, so don't expect it to keep some specific state. best move is to create an extra subwindow for urxvt and leave it alone.

the window will NOT be destroyed when urxvt exits.

it might be useful to know that urxvt will not close file descriptors passed to it (except for stdin/out/err, obviously), so you can use file descriptors to communicate with the programs inside the terminal. this works whether or not the -embed option was used.

here's a short Gtk2-perl snippet showing how this option can be used (a longer example lives in doc/embed):

my $rxvt = new Gtk2::Socket;
$rxvt->signal_connect_after (realize => sub {
   my $xid = $_[0]->window->get_xid;
   system "urxvt -embed $xid &";
});
  • -pty-fd file descriptor — tells urxvt NOT to execute any commands or create a new pty/tty pair, but instead use the given file descriptor as the tty master. this is useful if you want to drive urxvt as a generic terminal emulator without having to run a program inside it.

if this switch is given, urxvt will not create any utmp/wtmp entries and will not tinker with pty/tty permissions — you have to do that yourself if you want it.

as an extremely special case, specifying -1 will completely suppress pty/tty operations, which is probably only useful in conjunction with some perl extension that manages the terminal.

here's an example in perl illustrating how this option can be used (a longer example is in doc/pty-fd):

use IO::Pty;
use Fcntl;

my $pty = new IO::Pty;
fcntl $pty, F_SETFD, 0; # clear close-on-exec
system "urxvt -pty-fd " . (fileno $pty) . "&";
close $pty;

# now communicate with rxvt
my $slave = $pty->slave;
while (<$slave>) { print $slave "got <$_>\n" }

note that, despite what the name might imply, the file descriptor does not need to be a pty — it can be a bi-directional pipe too (e.g. a unix domain or tcp socket). while tty operations can't be done in that case, urxvt can still be remote controlled with it:

use Socket;
use Fcntl;

socketpair my $URXVT, my $slave, Socket::AF_UNIX, Socket::SOCK_STREAM, Socket::PF_UNSPEC;
fcntl $slave, Fcntl::F_SETFD, 0;
system "exec urxvt -pty-fd " . (fileno $slave) . " &";
close $slave;

syswrite $URXVT, "Type a secret password: ";
my $secret = do { local $/ = "\r"; <$URXVT> };
print "Not so secret anymore: $secret\n";
  • -pe string — comma-separated list of perl extension scripts to use (or not to use) in this terminal instance. see resource perl-ext for details. ✨

🌈 RESOURCES 🌈

note: urxvt --help gives a list of all resources (long options) compiled into your version. all resources are also available as long-options. iykyk 💅

you can set and change the resources using X11 tools like xrdb. many distributions also load settings from the ~/.Xresources file when X starts. urxvt consults the following files/resources in order, with later settings overwriting earlier ones:

  1. app-defaults file in $XAPPLRESDIR
  2. $HOME/.Xdefaults
  3. RESOURCE_MANAGER property on root-window of screen 0
  4. SCREEN_RESOURCES property on root-window of the current screen
  5. $XENVIRONMENT file OR $HOME/.Xdefaults-<nodename>
  6. resources specified via -xrm on the commandline

note that when reading X resources, urxvt recognizes two class names: Rxvt and URxvt. the class name Rxvt lets resources common to both urxvt and the original rxvt be easily configured, while the class name URxvt lets resources unique to urxvt be shared between different urxvt configurations. if no resources are specified, suitable defaults get used. command-line arguments can override resource settings. the following resources are supported (you might want to check the urxvtperl(3) manpage for additional settings by perl extensions not documented here):

  • depth: bitdepth — Compile xft: attempt to find a visual with the given bit depth; option -depth.
  • buffered: boolean — Compile xft: turn on/off double-buffering for xft (default enabled). on some card/driver combos enabling it slightly decreases performance, on most it greatly helps it. the slowdown is small, so it should normally be enabled. 🦋
  • geometry: geom — create the window with the specified X window geometry [default 80x24]; option -geometry.
  • background: colour — bestie this sets the window's background colour. The default is White; option -bg. 🎀
  • foreground: colour — use this as the window's foreground colour. Default is Black; option -fg. ✨
  • colorn: colour — the way that you set the colour for colour value n, where 0-7 maps to low-intensity (normal) colours and 8-15 maps to high-intensity (bold = bright foreground, blink = bright background) colours. The canonical names are iconic: 0=black, 1=red, 2=green, 3=yellow, 4=blue, 5=magenta, 6=cyan, 7=white, but the actual colour names used are listed in the COLOURS AND GRAPHICS section. 💅
Colours higher than 15 cannot be set using resources (yet), but can be changed using an escape command (see urxvt(7)). no cap, periodt.

Colours 16-79 form a standard 4x4x4 colour cube (the same as xterm with 88 colour support). Colours 80-87 are evenly spaces grey steps. 🌈

  • colorBD: colour and colorIT: colour — use the specified colour to display bold or italic characters when the foreground colour is the default. If font styles are not available (Compile styles) and this option is unset, reverse video is used instead. 🦋
  • colorUL: colour — use the specified colour to display underlined characters when the foreground colour is the default. 💚
  • underlineColor: colour — If set, use the specified colour as the colour for the underline itself. If unset, use the foreground colour. 🫶
  • highlightColor: colour — If set, use the specified colour as the background for highlighted characters. If unset, use reverse video. ⭐
  • highlightTextColor: colour — If set and highlightColor is set, use the specified colour as the foreground for highlighted characters. 💖
  • cursorColor: colour — use the specified colour for the cursor. The default is to use the foreground colour; option -cr. 🎀
  • cursorColor2: colour — use the specified colour for the colour of the cursor text. For this to take effect, cursorColor must also be specified. The default is to use the background colour. ✨
  • reverseVideo: boolean — True: simulate reverse video by foreground and background colours; option -rv. False: regular screen colours [default]; option +rv. See note in COLOURS AND GRAPHICS section. 💅
  • jumpScroll: boolean — True: specify that jump scrolling should be used. When receiving lots of lines, urxvt will only scroll once a whole screen height of lines has been read, resulting in fewer updates while still displaying every received line; option -j. 🔥

False: specify that smooth scrolling should be used. urxvt will force a screen refresh on each new line it received; option +j. 🌊

  • skipScroll: boolean — True: (the default) specify that skip scrolling should be used. When receiving lots of lines, urxvt will only scroll once in a while (around 60 times per second), resulting in far fewer updates. This can result in urxvt not ever displaying some of the lines it receives; option -ss. 😭

False: specify that everything is to be displayed, even if the refresh is too fast for the human eye to read anything (or the monitor to display anything); option +ss. 💀

  • refreshRate: number — Compile frills: When positive, sets the maximum refreshes per second (the default is 60). When zero or negative, sets the minimum interval between refreshes, negated. That is, positive numbers limit the number of refreshes per second to that number, similar to a fps limiter in games. A negative number gets negated and directly sets the minimum interval between refreshes, that is, 10 and "-0.1" both specify the same refresh interval (likewise 50 and 0.02). Finally, zero makes urxvt refresh as fast as possible. Fractional values are supported; option -fps. 🎮
  • fading: number — fade the text by the given percentage when focus is lost; option -fade. 🍓
  • fadeColor: colour — fade to this colour, when fading is used (see fading:). The default colour is black; option -fadecolor. 🌸
  • iconFile: file — set the application icon pixmap; option -icon. ⭐
  • scrollColor: colour — use the specified colour for the scrollbar [default #B2B2B2]. 🎀
  • troughColor: colour — use the specified colour for the scrollbar's trough area [default #969696]. Only relevant for rxvt (non XTerm/NeXT) scrollbar. 💜
  • borderColor: colour — the colour of the border around the text area and between the scrollbar and the text. 🦋
  • font: fontlist — select the fonts to be used. This is a comma separated list of font names that are checked in order when trying to find glyphs for characters. The first font defines the cell size for characters; other fonts might be smaller, but not (in general) larger. A (hopefully) reasonable default font list is always appended to it; option -fn. ✨

Each font can either be a standard X11 core font (XLFD) name, with optional prefix "x:" or a Xft font (Compile xft), prefixed with "xft:". 💅

In addition, each font can be prefixed with additional hints and specifications enclosed in square brackets ("[]"). The only available hint currently is "codeset=codeset-name", and this is only used for Xft fonts. 🎀

For example, this font resource:

URxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
            -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
            -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
            [codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic:antialias=false, \
            xft:Code2000:antialias=false

specifies five fonts to be used. The first one is "9x15bold" (actually the iso8859-1 version of the second font), which is the base font (because it is named first) and thus defines the character cell grid to be 9 pixels wide and 15 pixels high. 🌈

The second font is just used to add additional unicode characters not in the base font, likewise the third, which is unfortunately non-bold, but the bold version of the font does contain fewer characters, so this is a useful supplement. 💖

The third font is an Xft font with aliasing turned off, and the characters are limited to the JIS 0208 codeset (i.e. japanese kanji). The font contains other characters, but we are not interested in them. 🎋

The last font is a useful catch-all font that supplies most of the remaining unicode characters. 👑

  • boldFont: fontlist, italicFont: fontlist, boldItalicFont: fontlist — the font list to use for displaying bold, italic or bold italic characters, respectively. 🫶

If specified and non-empty, then the syntax is the same as for the font resource, and the given font list will be used as is, which makes it possible to substitute completely different font styles for bold and italic. 💅

If unset (the default), a suitable font list will be synthesized by "morphing" the normal text font list into the desired shape. If that is not possible, replacement fonts of the desired shape will be tried. ✨

If set, but empty, then this specific style is disabled and the normal text font will being used for the given style. 😭

  • intensityStyles: boolean — When font styles are not enabled, or this option is enabled (True, option -is, the default), bold/blink font styles imply high intensity foreground/background colours. Disabling this option (False, option +is) disables this behaviour, the high intensity colours are not reachable. 🔥
  • title: string — set window title string, the default title is the command-line specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name; option -title. 🎀
  • iconName: string — set the name used to label the window's icon or displayed in an icon manager window, it also sets the window's title unless it is explicitly set; option -n. ⭐
  • mapAlert: boolean — True: de-iconify (map) on receipt of a bell character. False: no de-iconify (map) on receipt of a bell character [default]. 🔔
  • urgentOnBell: boolean — True: set the urgency hint for the wm on receipt of a bell character. False: do not set the urgency hint [default]. 🚨

urxvt resets the urgency hint on every focus change. 💅

  • visualBell: boolean — True: use visual bell on receipt of a bell character; option -vb. False: no visual bell [default]; option +vb. 🎀
  • loginShell: boolean — True: start as a login shell by prepending a - to argv[0] of the shell; option -ls. False: start as a normal sub-shell [default]; option +ls. 🐚
  • multiClickTime: number — specify the maximum time in milliseconds between multi-click select events. The default is 500 milliseconds; option -mc. 🖱️
  • utmpInhibit: boolean — True: inhibit writing record into the system log file utmp; option -ut. False: write record into the system log file utmp [default]; option +ut. 📝
  • print-pipe: string — specify a command pipe for vt100 printer [default lpr(1)]. Use Print to initiate a screen dump to the printer and Ctrl-Print or Shift-Print to include the scrollback as well. 🖨️

The string will be interpreted as if typed into the shell as-is. 💅

Example:

URxvt.print-pipe: cat > $(TMPDIR=$HOME mktemp urxvt.XXXXXX)

This creates a new file in your home directory with the screen contents every time you hit "Print". 🎀

  • scrollstyle: mode — set scrollbar style to rxvt, plain, next or xterm. plain is the author's favourite. 👑
  • thickness: number — set the scrollbar width in pixels. 📏
  • scrollBar: boolean — True: enable the scrollbar [default]; option -sb. False: disable the scrollbar; option +sb. 🎚️
  • scrollBar_right: boolean — True: place the scrollbar on the right of the window; option -sr. False: place the scrollbar on the left of the window; option +sr. ➡️
  • scrollBar_floating: boolean — True: display an rxvt scrollbar without a trough; option -st. False: display an rxvt scrollbar with a trough; option +st. 🛟
  • scrollBar_align: mode — align the top, bottom or centre [default] of the scrollbar thumb with the pointer on middle button press/drag. 🎯
  • scrollTtyOutput: boolean — True: scroll to bottom when tty receives output; option -si. False: do not scroll to bottom when tty receives output; option +si. 📜
  • scrollWithBuffer: boolean — True: scroll with scrollback buffer when tty receives new lines (i.e. try to show the same lines) and scrollTtyOutput is False; option -sw. False: do not scroll with scrollback buffer when tty receives new lines; option +sw. 🧚
  • scrollTtyKeypress: boolean — True: scroll all the way to the bottom when a non-special key gets pressed. "Special keys" = the ones rxvt-unicode snatches up for its own special handling and does not pass on to the shell; that's option -sk. False: don't scroll on a non-special keypress; option +sk.
  • saveLines: number — Save number lines in the scrollback buffer [default 1000]; option -sl.
  • internalBorder: number — Internal border of number pixels. This resource is capped at 100; option -b.
  • externalBorder: number — External border of number pixels. Also capped at 100; option -w, -bw, -borderwidth.
  • borderLess: boolean — Set MWM hints to ask for a borderless window, i.e. if the WM actually honours it, your rxvt-unicode window will have no window decorations; option -bl.
  • skipBuiltinGlyphs: boolean — Compile frills ✨ Disable the usage of the built-in block graphics/line drawing characters and just rely on whatever the fonts you specified provide. Use this if you've got a good font and you want its block graphic glyphs instead; option -sbg.
  • termName: termname — Specifies the terminal type name to be set in the TERM environment variable; option -tn.
  • lineSpace: number — Specifies number of lines (pixel height) to insert between each row of the display [default 0]; option -lsp.
  • meta8: boolean — True: handle Meta (Alt) + keypress as setting the 8th bit. False: handle Meta (Alt) + keypress as an escape prefix [default].
  • mouseWheelScrollPage: boolean — True: the mouse wheel scrolls a whole page at a time. False: the mouse wheel scrolls five lines [default].
  • pastableTabs: boolean — True: store tabs as wide characters. False: interpret tabs as cursor movement only; option "-ptab".
  • cursorBlink: boolean — True: blink the cursor. False: do not blink the cursor [default]; option -bc.
  • cursorUnderline: boolean — True: make the cursor underlined. False: make the cursor a box [default]; option -uc.
  • pointerBlank: boolean — True: blank the pointer when a key is pressed, or after a set number of seconds of inactivity. False: the pointer is always visible [default].
  • pointerColor: colour — Mouse pointer foreground colour 💅
  • pointerColor2: colour — Mouse pointer background colour.
  • pointerShape: string — Compile frills ✨ Specifies the name of the mouse pointer shape [default xterm]. Peep the macros in the X11/cursorfont.h include file for possible values (omit the "XC_" prefix).
  • pointerBlankDelay: number — Specifies number of seconds before blanking the pointer [default 2]. Use a large number (e.g. 987654321) to effectively disable the timeout.
  • backspacekey: string — The string to send when the backspace key is pressed. If set to DEC or left unset it'll send Delete (code 127) or, with control, Backspace (code 8) — which you can reverse with the appropriate DEC private mode escape sequence.
  • deletekey: string — The string to send when the delete key (not the keypad delete key, bestie) is pressed. If unset it'll send the sequence traditionally associated with the Execute key.
  • cutchars: string — The characters used as delimiters for double-click word selection (whitespace delimiting gets added automatically if the resource is given).

When the perl selection extension is in use (the default if compiled in, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage), a suitable regex using these characters will be created (if the resource exists — otherwise, no regex gets created at all). In this mode, characters outside ISO-8859-1 can be used.

When the selection extension is not used, only ISO-8859-1 characters can be used. If you don't specify anything, the built-in default is used:

BACKSLASH `"'&()*,;<=>?@[]^{|}
  • preeditType: style — OnTheSpot, OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot, Root; option -pt.
  • inputMethod: name — name of inputMethod to use; option -im.
  • imLocale: name — The locale to use for opening the IM. You can use an "LC_CTYPE" of e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8" for normal text processing but "ja_JP.EUC-JP" for the input extension, so you can input japanese characters while staying in another locale; option -imlocale.
  • imFont: fontset — Specify the font-set used for XIM styles "OverTheSpot" or "OffTheSpot". It has to be a standard X font set (XLFD patterns separated by commas), i.e. it is not in the same format as the other font lists used in urxvt. The default will be set up to choose any suitable font it can find, preferably one or two pixels differing in size from the base font. option -imfont.
  • tripleclickwords: boolean — Change the meaning of triple-click selection with the left mouse button. Instead of selecting a full line, it'll extend the selection to the end of the logical line only; option -tcw.
  • disablePasteBrackets: boolean — Prevent emission of paste bracket sequences; option -dpb.
  • insecure: boolean — Enable "insecure" mode. Careful with this one, bestie. Rxvt-unicode offers some escape sequences that echo arbitrary strings like the icon name or the locale. This could be abused if somebody gets 8-bit-clean access to your display — whether through a mail client displaying mail bodies unfiltered, or through write(1), or any other means. So these sequences are disabled by default. (Note that many other terminals, including xterm, have these sequences enabled by default, which doesn't make it safer, though).

You can enable them by setting this boolean resource or specifying -insecure as an option. At the moment, this enables display-answer, locale, findfont, icon label and window title requests.

  • modifier: modifier — Set the key to be interpreted as the Meta key to: alt, meta, hyper, super, mod1, mod2, mod3, mod4, mod5; option -mod.
  • answerbackString: string — Specify the reply rxvt-unicode sends to the shell when an ENQ (control-E) character is passed through. It may contain escape values as described in the entry on keysym following.
  • secondaryScreen: boolean — Turn on/off secondary screen (default enabled).
  • rewrapMode: mode — Sets long line rewrap behaviour on window resize to one of auto (default), always or never.
  • secondaryScroll: boolean — Turn on/off secondary screen scroll (default enabled). If this option is enabled, scrolls on the secondary screen will change the scrollback buffer and, when secondaryScreen is off, switching to/from the secondary screen will instead scroll the screen up.
  • hold: boolean — Turn on/off hold window after exit support. If enabled, urxvt will not immediately destroy its window when the program executed within it exits. Instead, it'll wait till it's being killed or closed by the user.
  • chdir: path — Sets the working directory for the shell (or the command specified via -e). The path must be an absolute path and it must exist for urxvt to start. If it isn't specified, then the current working directory will be used; option -cd.
  • keysym.sym: action — Compile frills ✨ Associate action with keysym sym. The intervening resource name keysym. cannot be omitted.

Using this resource, you can map key combinations such as "Ctrl-Shift-BackSpace" to various actions — like outputting a different string than would normally result from that combination, making the terminal scroll up or down the way you want it, or any other thing an extension might provide.

The key combination that triggers the action, sym, has the following format:

   (modifiers-)key

Where modifiers can be any combination of the following full or abbreviated modifier names:

ISOLevel3   I
AppKeypad   K
Control     C
NumLock     N
Shift       S
Meta        M or A
Lock        L
Mod1        1
Mod2        2
Mod3        3
Mod4        4
Mod5        5

The NumLock, Meta and ISOLevel3 modifiers are usually aliased to whatever modifier the NumLock key, Meta/Alt keys or ISO Level3 Shift/AltGr keys are being mapped to. AppKeypad is a synthetic modifier mapped to the current application keymap mode state.

Because of the huge number of modifier combinations, a key mapping will match if at least the specified identifiers are being set, and no other key mappings with those and more bits are being defined. That means that defining a mapping for "a" will automatically provide definitions for "Meta-a", "Shift-a" and so on, unless some of those are defined mappings themselves. See the "builtin:" action, below, for a way to work around this when this is a problem.

The spelling of key depends on your implementation of X. An easy way to find a key name is to use the xev(1) command. You can find a list by looking for the "XK_" macros in the X11/keysymdef.h include file (omit the "XK_" prefix). Alternatively you can specify key by its hex keysym value (0x0000 - 0xFFFF).

As with any resource value, the action string may contain backslash escape sequences ("\n": newline, "\\": backslash, "\000": octal number), see RESOURCES in "man 7 X" for further details.

An action starts with an action prefix that selects a certain type of action, followed by a colon. An action string without colons is interpreted as a literal string to pass to the tty (as if it was prefixed with "string:").

The following action prefixes are known - extensions can provide additional prefixes:

  • string:STRING — If the action starts with "string:" (or otherwise contains no colons), then the remaining "STRING" will be passed to the program running in the terminal. For example, you could replace whatever Shift-Tab outputs by the string "echo rm -rf /" followed by a newline:
URxvt.keysym.Shift-Tab: string:echo rm -rf /\n

This could in theory be used to completely redefine your keymap. 👑

In addition, for actions of this type, you can define a range of keysyms in one shot by loading the "keysym-list" perl extension and providing an action with pattern list/PREFIX/MIDDLE/SUFFIX, where the delimiter `/' should be a character not used by the strings.

Its usage can be demonstrated by an example:

URxvt.keysym.M-C-0x61:    list|\033<|abc|>

The above line is equivalent to the following three lines:

URxvt.keysym.Meta-Control-0x61:    string:\033<a>
URxvt.keysym.Meta-Control-0x62:    string:\033<b>
URxvt.keysym.Meta-Control-0x63:    string:\033<c>

command:STRING 🫡

Okay so if the action is shaped like command:STRING, then that STRING gets interpreted and executed as urxvt's own control sequence. It's basically the opposite of string: — instead of yeeting it off to the program running inside the terminal, urxvt treats it like the program itself printed it. Most useful for feeding command sequences into urxvt. 💅

Like, this one means "change the current locale to "zh_CN.GBK" when Control-Meta-c is being pressed":

URxvt.keysym.M-C-c: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007

And this next one maps Control-Meta-1 and Control-Meta-2 to the fonts suxuseuro and 9x15bold, so you get some limited font-switching at runtime:

URxvt.keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]50;suxuseuro\007
URxvt.keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]50;9x15bold\007

Other things are possible too, e.g. resizing (see urxvt(7) for more info):

URxvt.keysym.M-C-3: command:\033[8;25;80t
URxvt.keysym.M-C-4: command:\033[8;48;110t

builtin: 🧚

The builtin action is whatever urxvt would have done if no key binding existed for that combo. Obvious use: undo the effect of existing bindings. Not-so-obvious use: reinstate bindings when some other binding is out here eating too many modifiers. 😤

Say you overwrite the Insert key — boom, you just disabled urxvt's Shift-Insert mapping. To get it back, poke "holes" into your user-defined keymap with a builtin: replacement:

URxvt.keysym.Insert: <my insert key sequence>
URxvt.keysym.S-Insert: builtin:

First line defines a mapping for Insert and any combination of modifiers. Second line re-establishes the default mapping for Shift-Insert. Periodt. ✨

builtin-string: 🎀

This one's mainly for restoring string mappings for keys that have predefined actions in urxvt. The exact semantics are a bit difficult to explain ngl — basically, this action sends the string to the application that would be sent if urxvt didn't have a built-in action for that key. 😭

An example makes it clearer: urxvt normally pastes the selection when you press Shift-Insert. With these bindings, it would instead emit the (undocumented, but what applications running in the terminal might expect) sequence ESC [ 2 $:

URxvt.keysym.S-Insert: builtin-string:
URxvt.keysym.C-S-Insert: builtin:

First line disables the paste functionality for that key combo, second reinstates the default behaviour for Control-Shift-Insert, which would otherwise be overridden. 💖

Similarly, to let applications gain access to the C-M-c (copy to clipboard) and C-M-v (paste clipboard) key combos, you can do this:

URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: builtin-string:
URxvt.keysym.C-M-v: builtin-string:

EXTENSION:STRING 🌸

An action in this form invokes the action STRING — if there is one — provided by the urxvtperl(3) extension EXTENSION. The extension gets loaded automatically if necessary, no cap. 🔥

Not all extensions define actions, but the popular ones that do include the selection and matcher extensions (documented in their own manpages, urxvt-selection(1) and urxvt-matcher(1), respectively).

From the silly-examples department: this will rot13-"encrypt" urxvt's selection when Alt-Control-c is pressed on typical PC keyboards:

URxvt.keysym.M-C-c: selection:rot13

perl:STRING DEPRECATED 💀

This is a deprecated way of invoking commands provided by perl extensions. It is still supported, but should not be used anymore. Don't do it bestie, it's giving legacy.

perl-ext-common: string

perl-ext: string

Comma-separated list(s) of perl extension scripts (default: "default") to use in this terminal instance; option -pe.

Extension names can be prefixed with a - sign to remove them again, in case they had been specified earlier. Super handy for selectively disabling some extensions loaded by default, or specified via the perl-ext-common resource. For example, "default,-selection" uses all the default extensions except "selection". 🫶

To prohibit autoloading of extensions, you can prefix them with /, which makes urxvt refuse to automatically load them (this can be overridden, however, by specifying the extension name again without a prefix, though). Note: this does not prohibit extensions themselves loading other extensions. So "default,/background" keeps the "background" extension from being loaded when a background OSC sequence is received. 👑

The default set includes the "selection", "option-popup", "selection-popup", "readline", "searchable-scrollback" and "confirm-paste" extensions, plus any extensions which are mentioned in keysym resources.

Any extension such that a corresponding resource is given on the command line is automatically appended to perl-ext.

Each extension is looked up in the library directories, loaded if necessary, and bound to the current terminal instance. When the library search path contains multiple extension files of the same name, then the first one found will be used. First come, first served, fr fr.

If both of these resources are the empty string, then the perl interpreter will not be initialized. The rationale for having two options is that perl-ext-common gets used for extensions that should be available to all instances, while perl-ext is used for specific instances. ✨

perl-eval: string

Perl code to be evaluated when all extensions have been registered. See the urxvtperl(3) manpage.

perl-lib: path

Colon-separated list of additional directories that hold extension scripts. When looking for perl extensions, urxvt will first look in these directories, then in $URXVT_PERL_LIB, $HOME/.urxvt/ext and lastly in /usr/lib64/urxvt/perl/.

See the urxvtperl(3) manpage.

selection.pattern-idx: perl-regex

Additional selection patterns, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage for details.

selection-autotransform.idx: perl-transform

Selection auto-transform patterns, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage for details.

searchable-scrollback: keysym DEPRECATED 💀

This resource is deprecated and will be removed. Use a keysym resource instead, e.g.:

URxvt.keysym.M-s: searchable-scrollback:start

url-launcher: string

Specifies the program to be started with a URL argument. Used by the "selection-popup" and "matcher" perl extensions. 🦋

transient-for: windowid

Compile frills: Sets the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR property to the given window id.

override-redirect: boolean

Compile frills: Sets override-redirect for the terminal window, making it almost invisible to window managers; option -override-redirect.

iso14755: boolean

Turn on/off ISO 14755 (default enabled).

iso14755_52: boolean

Turn on/off ISO 14755 5.2 mode (default enabled).

THE SCROLLBAR 🌈

Lines of text that scroll off the top of the urxvt window (resource: saveLines) and can be scrolled back using the scrollbar or by keystrokes. The normal urxvt scrollbar has arrows and its behaviour is fairly intuitive. The xterm-scrollbar is without arrows and its behaviour mimics that of xterm. 👑

  • Scroll down with Button1 (xterm-scrollbar) or Shift-Next.
  • Scroll up with Button3 (xterm-scrollbar) or Shift-Prior.
  • Continuous scroll with Button2.

MOUSE REPORTING 🖱️

To temporarily override mouse reporting — for either the scrollbar or the normal text selection/insertion — hold either the Shift or the Meta (Alt) key while performing the desired mouse action. Little hack, big power. ✨

If mouse reporting mode is active, the normal scrollbar actions are disabled — on the assumption that we are using a fullscreen application. Instead, pressing Button1 and Button3 sends ESC [ 6 ~ (Next) and ESC [ 5 ~ (Prior), respectively. Similarly, clicking on the up and down arrows sends ESC [ A (Up) and ESC [ B (Down), respectively.

THE SELECTION: SELECTING AND PASTING TEXT 💅

The behaviour of text selection and insertion/pasting mechanism is similar to xterm(1).

Selecting: 🎀

Left click at the beginning of the region, drag to the end of the region and release; Right click to extend the marked region; Left double-click to select a word; Left triple-click to select the entire logical line (which can span multiple screen lines), unless modified by resource tripleclickwords.

Starting a selection while pressing the Meta key (or Meta+Ctrl keys) (Compile: frills) will create a rectangular selection instead of a normal one. In this mode, every selected row becomes its own line in the selection, and trailing whitespace is visually underlined and removed from the selection. 🦋

Pasting: 🍓

Pressing and releasing the Middle mouse button in an urxvt window causes the value of the PRIMARY selection (or CLIPBOARD with the Meta modifier) to be inserted as if it had been typed on the keyboard.

Pressing Shift-Insert causes the value of the PRIMARY selection to be inserted too.

rxvt-unicode also provides the bindings Ctrl-Meta-c and <Ctrl-Meta-v> to interact with the CLIPBOARD selection. The first binding causes the value of the internal selection to be copied to the CLIPBOARD selection, while the second binding causes the value of the CLIPBOARD selection to be inserted. 💖

CHANGING FONTS 🔤

Changing fonts (or font sizes, respectively) via the keypad is not yet supported in rxvt-unicode. Bug me if you need this. 😭

You can, however, switch fonts at runtime using escape sequences, e.g.:

printf '\e]710;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"

You can use keyboard shortcuts, too:

URxvt.keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
URxvt.keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007

rxvt-unicode will automatically re-apply these fonts to the output so far. Iconic behaviour honestly. ✨

✨ ISO 14755 SUPPORT ✨

ISO 14755 is literally the standard for entering and viewing unicode characters and character codes with your keyboard, bestie. It's got 4 parts. Part one only shows up if rxvt-unicode got compiled with --enable-frills, and the rest is there when rxvt-unicode was compiled with --enable-iso14755. 💅

  • 5.1: Basic method — this one lets you type unicode characters using their hexcode, iconic behaviour honestly. Start by holding down both Control and Shift, then type hex-digits (between one and six of them). Let go of Control and Shift and it commits the character like you just typed it directly. And while you're still holding Control and Shift, you can enter multiple characters by pressing Space, which commits the current one and starts you fresh. 🎀 Example time: imagine a business card with a japanese e-mail address you literally cannot type, but luckily the card has the e-mail address printed as hexcodes, e.g. 671d 65e5. You can enter this easily by pressing Control and Shift, followed by 6-7-1-D-SPACE-6-5-E-5, followed by releasing the modifier keys. slay.
  • 5.2: Keyboard symbols entry method — this mode lets you input characters representing the keycap symbols of your keyboard, if they're representable in the current locale encoding. 🙈 Start by pressing Control and Shift together, then release them. The next special key (cursor keys, home etc.) you enter will not do its usual job — instead it inserts the corresponding keycap symbol. Important: the symbol is only entered when the key has been released, otherwise pressing e.g. Shift would enter the symbol for ISO Level 2 Switch, even though your actual intention might have been a reverse tab (Shift-Tab). the way that works is so specific 😭
  • 5.3: Screen-selection entry method — okay so this is implemented already (it's basically the selection mechanism), but it could be extended by displaying a unicode character map.
  • 5.4: Feedback method for identifying displayed characters for later input — this method lets you display the unicode character code associated with characters already on screen. 🔍 You enter this mode by holding down Control and Shift together, then pressing and holding the left mouse button and moving around. The unicode hex code(s) (it might be a combining character) of the character under the pointer is displayed until you release Control and Shift. On top of the hex codes it also shows the font used to draw that character — but due to implementation reasons, characters combined with combining characters, line drawing characters and unknown characters will always be drawn using the built-in support font. iykyk.

On the conformance front, rxvt-unicode is supposed to be compliant to both scenario A and B of ISO 14755, including part 5.2. periodt. 👑

🎀 LOGIN STAMP 🎀

urxvt tries to write an entry into the utmp(5) file so it can be seen via the who(1) command, and so it can accept messages. 💌 To allow this feature, urxvt may need to be installed setuid root on some systems, or setgid to root or to some other group on others.

🌈 COLOURS AND GRAPHICS 🌈

Besides the default foreground and background colours, urxvt can display up to 88/256 colours: 8 ANSI colours plus high-intensity (potentially bold/blink) versions of the same, and 72 (or 240 in 256 colour mode) colours arranged in an 4x4x4 (or 6x6x6) colour RGB cube plus a 8 (24) colour greyscale ramp. ✨

urxvt supports direct 24-bit fg/bg RGB colour escapes ESC [ 38 ; 2 ; R ; G ; Bm / ESC [ 48 ; 2; R ; G ; Bm. But heads up bestie, the number of 24-bit colours you can actually use is limited: an internal 7x7x5 (256 colour mode) or 6x6x4 (88 colour mode) colour cube is used to index into the 24-bit colour space. When indexing collisions happen, the nearest old colour in the cube will be adapted to the new 24-bit RGB colour. That means you cannot use many similar 24-bit colours. It's typically not a problem in common scenarios though. 🤷

Here is a list of the ANSI colours with their names.

color0       (black)            = Black
color1       (red)              = Red3
color2       (green)            = Green3
color3       (yellow)           = Yellow3
color4       (blue)             = Blue3
color5       (magenta)          = Magenta3
color6       (cyan)             = Cyan3
color7       (white)            = AntiqueWhite
color8       (bright black)     = Grey25
color9       (bright red)       = Red
color10      (bright green)     = Green
color11      (bright yellow)    = Yellow
color12      (bright blue)      = Blue
color13      (bright magenta)   = Magenta
color14      (bright cyan)      = Cyan
color15      (bright white)     = White
foreground                      = Black
background                      = White

It's also possible to specify the colour values of foreground, background, cursorColor, cursorColor2, colorBD, colorUL as a number 0-15, as a convenient shorthand to reference the colour name of color0-color15. 🫶

The following text gives values for the standard 88 colour mode (and values for the 256 colour mode in parentheses).

The RGB cube uses indices 16..79 (16..231) using the following formulas:

index_88  = (r * 4 + g) * 4 + b + 16   # r, g, b = 0..3
index_256 = (r * 6 + g) * 6 + b + 16   # r, g, b = 0..5

The grayscale ramp uses indices 80..87 (232..239), from 10% to 90% in 10% steps (1/26 to 25/26 in 1/26 steps) — black and white are already part of the RGB cube, no cap.

Together, all those colours implement the 88 (256) colour xterm colours. Only the first 16 can be changed using resources currently, the rest can only be changed via command sequences ("escape codes"). 💀

Applications are advised to use terminfo or command sequences to discover number and RGB values of all colours (yes, you can query this...). 👀

Note that -rv (reverseVideo: True) simulates reverse video by always swapping the foreground/background colours. This is in contrast to xterm(1) where the colours are only swapped if they have not otherwise been specified. For example,

urxvt -fg Black -bg White -rv

would yield White on Black, while on xterm(1) it would yield Black on White. 🌓

🦋 ALPHA CHANNEL SUPPORT 🦋

If Xft support has been compiled in and as long as Xft/Xrender/X don't get their act together, rxvt-unicode will do its own alpha channel management: 💅

You can prefix any colour with an opaqueness percentage enclosed in brackets, i.e. [percent], where percent is a decimal percentage (0-100) that specifies the opacity of the colour, where 0 is completely transparent and 100 is completely opaque. For example, [50]red is a half-transparent red, while [95]#00ff00 is an almost opaque green. This is the recommended format to specify transparency values, and it works with all ways to specify a colour. ✨

For complete control, rxvt-unicode also supports rgba:rrrr/gggg/bbbb/aaaa (exactly four hex digits/component) colour specifications, where the additional aaaa component specifies opacity (alpha) values. The minimum value of 0000 is completely transparent, while ffff is completely opaque). The two example colours from earlier could also be specified as rgba:ff00/0000/0000/8000 and rgba:0000/ff00/0000/f332.

You probably need to specify -depth 32, too, to force a visual with alpha channels, and have the luck that your X-server uses ARGB pixel layout, as X is far from just supporting ARGB visuals out of the box, and rxvt-unicode just fudges around. 😭

For example, the following selects an almost completely transparent black background, and an almost opaque pink foreground:

urxvt -depth 32 -bg rgba:0000/0000/0000/4444 -fg "[80]pink"

When not using a background image, then the interpretation of the alpha channel is up to your compositing manager (most interpret it as transparency of course). 🫧

When using a background pixmap or pseudo-transparency, then the background colour will always behave as if it were completely transparent (so the background image shows instead), regardless of how it was specified, while other colours will either be transparent as specified (the background image will show through) on servers supporting the RENDER extension, or fully opaque on servers not supporting the RENDER EXTENSION. 🌈

Please note that due to bugs in Xft, specifying alpha values might result in garbage being displayed when the X-server does not support the RENDER extension. 💀 not the garbage display bestie

🌍 ENVIRONMENT (the vibes urxvt lives in) 🌍

okay bestie so urxvt is that girl — she sets and/or uses these environment variables, and you gotta know them all:

  • TERM — normally set to "rxvt-unicode", unless somebody overwrote it at configure time, via resources, or right on the command line. she's flexible like that 💅
  • COLORTERM — either "rxvt" or "rxvt-xpm", depending on whether urxvt was compiled with background image support, and optionally with the added extension "-mono" tacked on to say that rxvt-unicode is running on a monochrome screen. little flavor label, basically.
  • COLORFGBG — set to a string shaped like "fg;bg" or "fg;xpm;bg", where:
    • "fg" is the colour code used as the default foreground/text colour (or the literal string "default" to say hey, use the default-colour escape sequence)
    • "bg" is the colour code used as the default background colour (or the string "default")
    • "xpm" is the string "default" if urxvt was compiled with background image support

libraries like "ncurses" and "slang" can (and literally do) use this info to optimize screen output. so it's not just decorative, it's doing work ✨

  • WINDOWID — set to the (decimal) X Window ID of the urxvt window. and by "the urxvt window" we mean the toplevel window, which usually has subwindows for the scrollbar, the terminal window, and so on. main character window, side-character subwindows, you get it.
  • TERMINFO — set to the terminfo directory iff urxvt was configured with --with-terminfo=PATH. conditional queen.
  • DISPLAY — used by urxvt to connect to the display, and set to the correct display in its child processes if -display isn't used to override. it defaults to ":0" if it doesn't exist. she's got a default, no worries 🫶
  • SHELL — the shell to be used for command execution. defaults to "/bin/sh".
  • RXVT_SOCKET [sic] — the unix domain socket path used by urxvtc(1) and urxvtd(1).

default is $HOME/.urxvt/urxvtd-<nodename>.

  • URXVT_PERL_LIB — additional :-separated library search path for perl extensions. will be searched after -perl-lib but before ~/.urxvt/ext and the system library directory. order matters, bestie, don't @ me.
  • URXVT_PERL_VERBOSITY — see urxvtperl(3).
  • HOME — used to locate the default directory for the unix domain socket for daemon communications, and to locate various resource files (such as ".Xdefaults").
  • XAPPLRESDIR — directory where application-specific X resource files are located.
  • XENVIRONMENT — if set and accessible, gives the name of a X resource file to be loaded by urxvt.

📁 FILES 📁

  • /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt — colour names. that's the whole vibe. that's the file. 🌈

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

the whole friend group, fr fr:

urxvt(7), urxvtc(1), urxvtd(1), urxvt-extensions(1), urxvtperl(3), xterm(1), sh(1), resize(1), X(1), pty(4), tty(4), utmp(5)

👑 CURRENT PROJECT COORDINATOR 👑

Project Coordinator

Marc A. Lehmann <rxvt-unicode@schmorp.de>.

<http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html>

💖 AUTHORS (the origin story, the lore) 💖

  • John Bovey — University of Kent, 1992, wrote the original Xvt. the blueprint, the blueprint-iest blueprint 🎀
  • Rob Nation <nation@rocket.sanders.lockheed.com> — very heavily modified Xvt and came up with Rxvt. iconic behavior.
  • Angelo Haritsis <ah@doc.ic.ac.uk> — wrote the Greek Keyboard Input (no longer in code). RIP to a real one, gone but remembered 🥲
  • mj olesen <olesen@me.QueensU.CA> — wrote the menu system.

Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.11 to 2.21)

  • Oezguer Kesim <kesim@math.fu-berlin.de> — Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.21a to 2.4.5)
  • Geoff Wing <gcw@pobox.com> — rewrote screen display and text selection routines.

Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.4.6 - rxvt-unicode)

  • Marc Alexander Lehmann <rxvt-unicode@schmorp.de> — forked rxvt-unicode, unicode support, rewrote almost all the code, perl extension, random hacks, numerous bugfixes and extensions.

Project Coordinator (Changes 1.0 -)

  • Emanuele Giaquinta <emanuele.giaquinta@gmail.com> — pty/utmp code rewrite, image code improvements, many random hacks and bugfixes.
and that's the whole page bestie!! you've officially read every single line of the urxvt(1) manual and honestly? ate. 💅✨

this absolute tome is version 9.31, dated 2023-01-02, and it's the urxvt(1) manpage — so go forth and be unicode, my love 🌸🦋

📦 where this page comes from