urxvt(7)

📦
version 9.31 · 8 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, opensuse-leap 16.0

💖 urxvt(7) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the RXVT-UNICODE reference page, aka urxvt(7) — this is the big one, the FAQ + the whole escape-sequence bible + assorted lore. grab a snack, we're doing this 💅

✨ NAME ✨

RXVT REFERENCE — FAQ, command sequences and other background information

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

like, here's the vibe of what you can do:

# set a new font set
printf '\33]50;%s\007' 9x15,xft:Kochi" Mincho"

# change the locale and tell rxvt-unicode about it
export LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.EUC-JP; printf "\33]701;$LC_CTYPE\007"

# set window title
printf '\33]2;%s\007' "new window title"

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

This document is the whole package: it's got the FAQ, it's got the RXVT TECHNICAL REFERENCE documenting literally every escape sequence, and it's got other background info too. ✨

The newest version of this doc also lives on the World Wide Web at http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.7.pod.

And the main manual page for urxvt itself is over here: http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.1.pod.

👑 RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 👑

💜 Meta, Features & Commandline Issues 💜

My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?

Before you send me mail, bestie, you could hit up IRC: "irc.libera.chat", channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts who might genuinely be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).

I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...

okay so there are two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched header files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg); secondly, it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.

For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo. Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems. 💀

Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?

Beginning with version 7.3, there's a perl extension that implements a simple tabbed terminal. It's installed by default, so literally any of these should give you tabs:

urxvt -pe tabbed
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed

It will also work fine with the tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application. slay 🎀

How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?

The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.

Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?

Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings that you don't need — for example, Xft support is a resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your characters.

Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell. 😭

How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?

Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the listening socket and then fork. iconic.

How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?

If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:

#!/bin/sh
urxvtc "$@"
if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
   urxvtd -q -o -f
   urxvtc "$@"
fi

This tries to create a new terminal, and if it fails with exit status 2, meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the existing daemon. 🫶

Another option is to use systemd socket-based activation (see systemd.socket(5)). Here is an example of a service unit file and of a socket unit file for the default socket path:

urxvtd.service

[Unit]
Description=urxvt terminal daemon
Requires=urxvtd.socket

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/urxvtd -o

urxvtd.socket

[Unit]
Description=urxvt terminal daemon socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=%h/.urxvt/urxvtd-%H

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target

How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.

The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs — JED, slrn, Midnight Commander — automatically check this variable to decide whether or not to use colour.

How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?

If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled insecure mode, then it is possible to use the following shell script snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.

Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script snippets:

# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
   stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
   printf "\eZ"
   read term_id
   stty icanon echo
   if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
      printf '\e[7n'        # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
      read DISPLAY          # set it in our local shell
   fi
fi

How do I compile the manual pages on my own?

You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml). Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".

Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?

I often get asked about this, and I think — no, they didn't cause extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.

text    data     bss     drs     rss filename
98398    1664      24   15695    1824 rxvt --disable-everything
188985    9048   66616   18222    1788 urxvt --disable-everything

When you "--enable-everything" (which is unfair, as this involves xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.

text    data     bss     drs     rss filename
163431    2152      24   20123    2060 rxvt --enable-everything
1035683   49680   66648   29096    3680 urxvt --enable-everything

The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.

Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use more memory.

Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well g. 🔥

Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?

Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.

My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.

Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:

libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)

And here is rxvt-unicode:

libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)

No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically), except maybe libX11 :) 💅

🌈 Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues 🌈

I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?

First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode, so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working, consider it a rite of passage: ... and you failed. 😭

Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!

  1. Use pseudo-transparency:
Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40

That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.

  1. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever your picture with gimp or any other tool:
convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"

That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you are unable to read.

  1. Use an ARGB visual:
urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc

This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that doesn't work for you, find a working composite manager or window manager, both are required to support ARGB visuals for client windows.

  1. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
      -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000

Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000 by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.

🦋 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings? 🦋

Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent characters.

All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes, however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is wrong in these cases).

It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try using the -lsp option to give the font more height. If that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.

All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their bounding box data is correct.

💅 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much? 💅

First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings (TERM=rxvt-unicode), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:

URxvt.colorBD:  white
URxvt.colorIT:  green

🌈 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that? 🌈

For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very good reasons.

In the meantime, you can either edit your rxvt-unicode terminfo definition to only claim 8 colour support or use TERM=rxvt, which will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.

🎀 Can I switch the fonts at runtime? 🎀

Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the same effect as using the -fn switch, and takes effect immediately:

printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"

This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where japanese fonts would only be in your way.

You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.

🌸 Why do italic characters look as if clipped? 🌸

Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:

URxvt.italicFont:        xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
URxvt.boldItalicFont:    xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true

💜 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? 💜

Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable antialiasing (by appending :antialias=false), which saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.

🫶 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? 🫶

Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they look best that way.

If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.

If no bold colour is set via colorBD:, bold will invert text using the standard foreground colour.

For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text blink when compiled with --enable-text-blink. Without --enable-text-blink, the blink attribute will be ignored.

On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity foreground/background colours.

color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.

color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.

🍓 I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them? 🍓

You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults resources (or as long-options).

Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:

URxvt.color0:   #000000
URxvt.color1:   #A80000
URxvt.color2:   #00A800
URxvt.color3:   #A8A800
URxvt.color4:   #0000A8
URxvt.color5:   #A800A8
URxvt.color6:   #00A8A8
URxvt.color7:   #A8A8A8

URxvt.color8:   #000054
URxvt.color9:   #FF0054
URxvt.color10:  #00FF54
URxvt.color11:  #FFFF54
URxvt.color12:  #0000FF
URxvt.color13:  #FF00FF
URxvt.color14:  #00FFFF
URxvt.color15:  #FFFFFF

And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.

URxvt.cursorColor:  #dc74d1
URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
URxvt.background:   #0e0e0e
URxvt.foreground:   #4ad5e1
URxvt.color0:       #000000
URxvt.color8:       #8b8f93
URxvt.color1:       #dc74d1
URxvt.color9:       #dc74d1
URxvt.color2:       #0eb8c7
URxvt.color10:      #0eb8c7
URxvt.color3:       #dfe37e
URxvt.color11:      #dfe37e
URxvt.color5:       #9e88f0
URxvt.color13:      #9e88f0
URxvt.color6:       #73f7ff
URxvt.color14:      #73f7ff
URxvt.color7:       #e1dddd
URxvt.color15:      #e1dddd

They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".

🧚 Why do some characters look so much different than others? 🧚

See next entry.

⭐ How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? ⭐

Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine. Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to display.

rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font. Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.

In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list, e.g.:

urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...

When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.

The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.

💀 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others? 💀

This is because there is a difference between script and language -- rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.

The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.

In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this has been designed yet).

Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).

🔥 How can I make mplayer display video correctly? 🔥

We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something like:

urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'

😭 Why is the cursor now blinking in emacs/vi/...? 😭

This is likely caused by your editor/program's use of the cvvis terminfo capability. Emacs uses it by default, as well as some versions of vi and possibly other programs.

In emacs, you can switch that off by adding this to your .emacs file:

(setq visible-cursor nil)

For other programs, if they do not have an option, your have to remove the cvvis capability from the terminfo description.

When urxvt first added the blinking cursor option, it didn't add a "cvvis" capability, because honestly that thing had no purpose before. Then version 9.21 rolled in with "cvvis" (plus the ability to control blinking totally independent of cursor shape) so it'd play nice with other terminals — which, by tradition, use a blinking cursor for "cvvis". This also matches the ~intent~ of programs like emacs, who just expect "cvvis" to turn on a blinking cursor. Slay, honestly. ✨

🎀 Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction 🎀

Q: The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words? 💅

If you wanna select, like, alphanumeric words, you can use this setting:

URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)

And if you click more than twice, the selection just keeps extending more and more. Iconic behaviour, fr.

Wanna get a selection that's very similar to the old code? Try this pattern:

URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)

Also bestie, heads up: the LeftClick Shift-LeftClick combo also selects words just like the old code did. 🫶

Q: I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it? 🙈

You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the perl-ext-common resource to the empty string — which also keeps rxvt-unicode from initialising perl at all, saving you memory. Little win. 💖

If you only wanna disable specific features, you first gotta figure out which perl extension is the culprit. For that, go read the section PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to disable selection-popup and option-popup, you'd specify this perl-ext-common resource:

URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup

This keeps the default extensions but disables those two popup ones. No cap. And some extensions can also be configured — like, scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other combination by adding a keysym resource that binds your desired combo to the "start" action of "searchable-scrollback", plus another one that binds M-s to the "builtin:" action:

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

Q: The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off? 😭

See the next entry, bestie. 👇

Q: During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this? 💀

These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal circumstances it'll move your cursor around when you click into the line that contains it. It tries so hard not to do this at the wrong moment, but when you're running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements — or in some cases during rlogin sessions — it just fails to detect that properly. Not its fault, it's trying its best.

You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline" extension:

URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline

Q: My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output? 🦋

Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no specific details were reported so far. It's possible this is caused by the wrong "TERM" setting — although the details of whether and how this can happen are unknown, since "TERM=rxvt" should offer a compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and pretty please report back if that helped. 🥺

Q: My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working. 🌸

The most common causes for this are either that your locale isn't set correctly, or you specified a preeditType that your input method doesn't support. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input method (like, the default input method handling Compose keys) doesn't support this — for instance because it's not visual — then rxvt-unicode will just continue without an input method. 😔

In this case, either don't specify a preeditType at all, or specify more than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.

If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method just doesn't support compose sequences — to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you don't specify an input method via -im or XMODIFIERS.

Q: I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755 🧚

Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it's often mapped to ASCII NUL even on international keyboards), or just use ISO 14755 support to your advantage and type <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get an ASCII NUL. This works for other codes too, bestie — such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet escape character, and so on. Obsessed with the flexibility tbh. 💅

Q: Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. 🙈

Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off, since killing some editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it's otherwise specified. Quick check: see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed. 🫶

Q: What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? 💀

Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question), there are two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".

Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the debian policy of using "^?" when unsure — because it's the one and only correct choice :). Periodt.

It's possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private mode:

# use Backspace = ^H
$ stty erase ^H
$ printf "\e[?67h"

# use Backspace = ^?
$ stty erase ^?
$ printf "\e[?67l"

This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure the termcap/terminfo value properly reflects that. No skipping that part. ✨

The Delete key is another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.

Some other Backspace problems:

  • some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.

Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner. 😭 (manifesting it)

Q: I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them? 🎀

There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless you've run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option, you can use the keysym resource to alter the keystrings associated with keysyms.

Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt":

URxvt.keysym.Prior:         \033[5~
URxvt.keysym.Next:          \033[6~
URxvt.keysym.Home:          \033[7~
URxvt.keysym.End:           \033[8~
URxvt.keysym.Up:            \033[A
URxvt.keysym.Down:          \033[B
URxvt.keysym.Right:         \033[C
URxvt.keysym.Left:          \033[D

See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource. 🌈

Q: I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the following map 💅

KP_Insert == Insert
F22 == Print
F27 == Home
F29 == Prior
F33 == End
F35 == Next

Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various possible keyboard mappings, it's way better to use xmodmap to remap the keys as required for your particular machine. Trust. 🫶

🌈 Terminal Configuration 🌈

Q: Can I see a typical configuration? 👑

The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which — ngl — the author doesn't like that much, but it's the least surprise for regular users.

As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you're practically supposed to invest time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here's the author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's certainly not typical, but... what even is typical, bestie. 💅

URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/some/path

These are just for testing stuff.

URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None

This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit type — which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me with correct-looking fonts. The payoff is real. ✨

URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/

This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library directory and also tell urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I write. Main character energy, honestly. 👑

The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware, and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the relevant file and go to the error line number. So clever. 🧠✨

URxvt.scrollstyle:      plain
URxvt.secondaryScroll:  true

As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's scrollback buffer. Chefs kiss. 🎀

URxvt.background:       #000000
URxvt.foreground:       gray90
URxvt.color7:           gray90
URxvt.colorBD:          #ffffff
URxvt.cursorColor:      #e0e080
URxvt.throughColor:     #8080f0
URxvt.highlightColor:   #f0f0f0

Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults, but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the colour 7 matches the default foreground colour. Aesthetic ✨

URxvt.underlineColor:   yellow

Another colour — makes underline lines look different. Sometimes it hurts, but it's mostly a nice effect. We love a little drama. 💛

URxvt.geometry:         154x36
URxvt.loginShell:       false
URxvt.meta:             ignore
URxvt.utmpInhibit:      true

Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults manually, I can quickly switch them for testing. Big brain. 🧠

URxvt.saveLines:        8192

A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really. No cap, essential. 🔥

URxvt.mapAlert:         true

The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep iconified till people msg me (which beeps). Cute, right? 🥺

URxvt.visualBell:       true

The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd. 😭

URxvt.insecure:         true

Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops... 💀

URxvt.pastableTabs:     false

I once thought this is a great idea. 🙈

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, \
                        xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
                        xft:Code2000:antialias=false
urxvt.boldFont:         -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
urxvt.italicFont:       xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
urxvt.boldItalicFont:   xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true

okay so — I wrote rxvt-unicode specifically so you can nail your fonts down to the exact pixel, so please don't spiral when you see that wall of text above. 💖 It's a lot, but it's a lot on purpose.

One lil thing worth knowing: the 9x15bold up there is actually the one from XFree-3.3, because XFree-4 swapped it out for a totally different font (different glyphs for ; and honestly like a bunch of other completely harmless characters 😭), while that second font is the 9x15bold from XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has fewer chars than the medium one, which is exactly why I use it for rare characters too. And when I'm editing sources with vim, I use italic for comments and other stuff — and ngl it looks genuinely gorgeous with Bitstream Vera anti-aliased. ✨

Terminus is, and I'm gonna be honest here, a pretty bad font (so many very wrong glyphs 💀), but for most of my purposes it works fine, and it gives a different look — because my normal (non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to actually see a difference between bold and normal. 👑

Please note that I used the urxvt instance name and not the URxvt class name. Why? Because I use different configs for different purposes. For example, my IRC window is started with -name IRC, and it uses these defaults:

IRC*title:              IRC
IRC*geometry:           87x12+535+542
IRC*saveLines:          0
IRC*mapAlert:           true
IRC*font:               suxuseuro
IRC*boldFont:           suxuseuro
IRC*colorBD:            white
IRC*keysym.M-C-1:       command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
IRC*keysym.M-C-2:       command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007

Alt-Ctrl-1 and Alt-Ctrl-2 switch between two different font sizes. suxuseuro lets me keep an eye on stuff (and actually read it) while keeping a very tiny window. And if somebody pastes something complicated (e.g. japanese), I just temporarily switch to a larger font. 🌸

All of the above lives in my .Xdefaults (I don't use .Xresources and I don't use xrdb, bestie, that's just me though). I also keep some resources in a separate .Xdefaults-hostname file for different hosts. For example, on my main desktop, I use:

URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test

That first batch of keysym definitions lets me quickly bring some windows into the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing at this — but they'll stop immediately when I tell them I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the same effect that Ion provides, and that I only very rarely use those key combos anyway :-> 😌

💅 Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?

Well, why, indeed? 🙈 It does read them, in a way that's very similar to other X applications. But here's the thing that matters most: if you or your OS loads resources into the X display (which is the right way to do it), then rxvt-unicode will ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read $HOME/.Xdefaults when there are no resources attached to the display. 💀

If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are your resources are loaded into your X-server. In that case you have to re-login after every single change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).

Also, think about the form resources have to use:

URxvt.resource: value

If you wanna use another form (and there are lots of different ways to specify resources, no cap), make sure you actually understand whether and why it works. If you're unsure? Just use the form above. ✨

🦋 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?

The terminal description that rxvt-unicode uses is not as widely available as the one for xterm, or even rxvt (which has the same problem come up all the time, lowkey).

The correct solution is to install the terminfo. You can do that by just installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system too (assuming you have a nice package manager ready, slay), or you can install the terminfo database manually like this — using ncurses infocmp, and it works as both user and root:

REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"

On some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of $HOME/.terminfo for this to work.

If you can't do this, or just don't wanna, then you can simply set TERM=rxvt or even TERM=xterm, and live with the small number of problems that arise — which includes wrong keymapping, less and different colours, and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though. 😌

If you always wanna do this (and you're fine with the consequences), you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value, or use a resource to set it:

URxvt.termName: rxvt

And if you don't plan on using rxvt at all (which is quite common, honestly...), you could also just replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use TERM=rxvt. 💅

🍓 nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"

This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with your terminal — go read the previous answer for a solution. 🙈

🌈 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.

Most likely it's the empty definition for enacs=. Just replace it with enacs=\E[0@ and try again. ✨

🎀 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.

See next entry. 👀

🧚 I need a termcap file entry.

One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora's bash is one example 😭) and rely on a termcap entry for rxvt-unicode.

You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp program like this:

infocmp -C rxvt-unicode

Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap, which is generated by the command above. 💖

💜 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?

The ls in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to decide whether a terminal has colour — it uses its own configuration file instead. And needless to say, rxvt-unicode is not in its default file (along with most other terminals that support colour, smh). Either add:

TERM rxvt-unicode

to /etc/DIR_COLORS, or just add:

alias ls='ls --color=auto'

to your .profile or .bashrc. 🫶

⭐ Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?

See next entry. 👀

🔥 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?

See next entry. 👀

Make sure you are using TERM=rxvt-unicode. Some pre-packaged distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting TERM to rxvt, which simply doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these furthermore fail to even install the rxvt-unicode terminfo file, so you'll need to install it on your own — see the question When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? above for how to do this. 💅

🌸 Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues 🌸

🦋 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?

See next entry. 👀

💖 Unicode does not seem to work?

If you run into strange problems — like typing an accented character but getting two unrelated other characters or something similar — or if program output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings. 🔍

Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same LC_CTYPE setting as the programs running inside it. Often rxvt-unicode gets started in the C locale, while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the locale to something else, e.g. en_GB.UTF-8. Needless to say, that's just not going to work, and it's the most common cause for problems. 😭

The best thing is to fix your startup environment, since you'll likely run into other problems otherwise. But if nothing works, you can try this in your .profile:

printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"   # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too

If that doesn't work, then maybe you're using a LC_CTYPE specification that isn't supported on your system. Some systems have a locale command which displays this (also, perl -e0 can be used to check locale settings, since it'll complain loudly if it can't set the locale). If it displays something like:

locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...

Then the locale you specified is simply not supported on your system.

And if nothing works and you're sure everything is set correctly, then you need to remember a little-known fact: some programs just don't support locales :( 💀

✨ How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?

See next entry. 👀

🎀 Is there an option to switch encodings?

Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no specific utf-8 mode like xterm has. In fact, it doesn't even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O. 🤷♀️

The reason is that there already exists a perfectly fine mechanism for selecting the encoding, doing I/O, and (most importantly) communicating this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties such as width and code number. That mechanism is the locale.

Applications that don't use that info are gonna have problems. (For example, xterm gets the width of characters wrong because it uses its own, locale-independent table under all locales. 🙈)

Rxvt-unicode uses the LC_CTYPE locale category to select encoding. All programs doing the same (which is, like, most of them) will automatically agree on the interpretation of characters. slay. ✨

Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor is there a standard for how locale specifiers will look.

On most systems, the content of the LC_CTYPE environment variable contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed locale. Common names for locales are en_US.UTF-8, de_DE.ISO-8859-15, ja_JP.EUC-JP — i.e. language_country.encoding — but other forms (i.e. de or german) are also common.

Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the encoding, it ignores country- or language-specific settings — i.e. de_DE.UTF-8 and ja_JP.UTF-8 are normally the same to rxvt-unicode. 💅

If you wanna use a specific encoding, you have to make sure you start rxvt-unicode with the correct LC_CTYPE category. 👑

🧚 Can I switch locales at runtime?

Okay so yes bestie, you literally just use an escape sequence 💅 try something like this, which sets rxvt-unicode's whole idea of what LC_CTYPE is:

printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS

See also the previous answer, iykyk 🫶

Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one locale (like de_DE.UTF-8) but some programs just <em>don't</em> support it (e.g. UTF-8, tragic). For example, I use this script to start xjdic, which first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:

printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
xjdic -js
printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8

You can also use xterm's luit program, which usually works fine, except for some locales where character width differs between program- and rxvt-unicode-locales. Not the vibe, but okay ✨

I have problems getting my input method working. 😭

Try a search engine, bestie, because this is slightly different for every input method server. Fr fr.

Here is a checklist:

  • Make sure your locale and the imLocale are supported on your OS. Try locale -a or check the documentation for your OS.
  • Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your XIM. For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use ja_JP.EUC-JP or equivalent.
  • Make sure your XIM server is actually running. 👀
  • Make sure the XMODIFIERS environment variable is set correctly when starting rxvt-unicode. When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to @im=kinput2. For scim, use @im=SCIM. You can see what input method servers are running with this command:
xprop -root XIM_SERVERS

My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? 🙈

You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of the terminal, using the resource imlocale:

URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP

Now you can start your terminal with LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 and still use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside EUC-JP in a normal way then, as your input method limits you. Periodt. 😔

Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. 💀

Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate. It's giving chaos by design, ngl.

So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. Just... don't do it. 🫶

Operating Systems / Package Maintaining 🎀

I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?

You should build <strong>one binary with the default options</strong>. configure now enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely more in the future) depends on it. 👑

You should not overwrite the perl-ext-common and perl-ext resources system-wide (except maybe with defaults). This will result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty perl-ext-common resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.

If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one with --disable-everything (very useful) and a maximal one with --enable-everything (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used). ✨

I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?

It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.

When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers 😳).

This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should result in very little risk. Slay, honestly. 💅

I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.

Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol __STDC_ISO_10646__ to be defined in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it, whether it defines the symbol or not. __STDC_ISO_10646__ requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.

As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards. (Respect where respect is due 🫡)

However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in POSIX, ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).

__STDC_ISO_10646__ is the only sane way to support multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current locale encoding. 💀

Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).

The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry complete replacements for them :) iconic take, no cap

How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?

rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single font). I recommend starting the X-server in -multiwindow or -rootless mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the old libW11 emulation. 🌸

At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any multi-byte encodings (you might try LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8), so you are likely limited to 8-bit encodings.

Character widths are not correct.

urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1. 😭

The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c

🦋 RXVT-UNICODE TECHNICAL REFERENCE 🦋

The rest of this document describes various technical aspects of rxvt-unicode. First the description of supported command sequences, followed by pixmap support and last by a description of all features selectable at configure time.

When some functionality is marked as (insecure mode), then it requires insecure mode to be enabled to work fully, e.g. by using the insecure resource or command line switch. As that name implies, a terminal running in insecure mode <strong>might not be secure against attackers that can output arbitrary sequences to the terminal.</strong> Bestie, read that twice. ⚠️

Definitions 📖

  • c — The literal character c (potentially a multi-byte character).
  • C — A single (required) character.
  • Ps — A single (usually optional) numeric parameter, composed of one or more digits.
  • Pm — A multiple numeric parameter composed of any number of single numeric parameters, separated by ; character(s).
  • Pt — A text parameter composed of printable characters.

Values 💜

  • ENQ — Enquiry (Ctrl-E) = Send Device Attributes (DA) request attributes from terminal. See ESC [ Ps c.
  • BEL — Bell (Ctrl-G)
  • BS — Backspace (Ctrl-H)
  • TAB — Horizontal Tab (HT) (Ctrl-I)
  • LF — Line Feed or New Line (NL) (Ctrl-J)
  • VT — Vertical Tab (Ctrl-K) same as LF
  • FF — Form Feed or New Page (NP) (Ctrl-L) same as LF
  • CR — Carriage Return (Ctrl-M)
  • SO — Shift Out (Ctrl-N), invokes the G1 character set. Switch to Alternate Character Set
  • SI — Shift In (Ctrl-O), invokes the G0 character set (the default). Switch to Standard Character Set
  • SP — Space Character

Escape Sequences ⭐

  • ESC # 8 — DEC Screen Alignment Test (DECALN)
  • ESC 7 — Save Cursor (SC)
  • ESC 8 — Restore Cursor
  • ESC = — Application Keypad (SMKX). See also next sequence.
  • ESC > — Normal Keypad (RMKX)
Note: numbers or control functions are generated by the numeric keypad in normal or application mode, respectively (see Key Codes).
  • ESC D — Index (IND)
  • ESC E — Next Line (NEL)
  • ESC H — Tab Set (HTS)
  • ESC M — Reverse Index (RI)
  • ESC N — Single Shift Select of G2 Character Set (SS2): affects next character only <em>unimplemented</em> 😭
  • ESC O — Single Shift Select of G3 Character Set (SS3): affects next character only <em>unimplemented</em> 😭
  • ESC Z — Obsolete form of returns: ESC [ ? 1 ; 2 C rxvt-unicode compile-time option
  • ESC c — Full reset (RIS)
  • ESC n — Invoke the G2 Character Set (LS2)
  • ESC o — Invoke the G3 Character Set (LS3)
  • ESC ( C — Designate G0 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of C.
  • ESC ) C — Designate G1 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of C.
  • ESC * C — Designate G2 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of C.
  • ESC + C — Designate G3 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of C.
  • ESC $ C — Designate Kanji Character Set

Where C is one of:

  • C = 0 — DEC Special Character and Line Drawing Set
  • C = A — United Kingdom (UK)
  • C = B — United States (USASCII)
  • C = < — Multinational character set unimplemented
  • C = 5 — Finnish character set unimplemented
  • C = C — Finnish character set unimplemented
  • C = K — German character set unimplemented

✨ CSI (Command Sequence Introducer) Sequences ✨

okay bestie this is the big one — all the ESC [ baddies. every single one, in order, no skipping 💅

  • ESC [ Ps @ — Insert Ps (Blank) Character(s) [default: 1] (ICH)
  • ESC [ Ps A — Cursor Up Ps Times [default: 1] (CUU)
  • ESC [ Ps B — Cursor Down Ps Times [default: 1] (CUD)
  • ESC [ Ps C — Cursor Forward Ps Times [default: 1] (CUF)
  • ESC [ Ps D — Cursor Backward Ps Times [default: 1] (CUB)
  • ESC [ Ps E — Cursor Down Ps Times [default: 1] and to first column
  • ESC [ Ps F — Cursor Up Ps Times [default: 1] and to first column
  • ESC [ Ps G — Cursor to Column Ps (HPA)
  • ESC [ Ps;Ps H — Cursor Position [row;column] [default: 1;1] (CUP)
  • ESC [ Ps I — Move forward Ps tab stops [default: 1]
  • ESC [ Ps J — Erase in Display (ED)
    • Ps = 0 — Clear Right and Below (default)
    • Ps = 1 — Clear Left and Above
    • Ps = 2 — Clear All
  • ESC [ Ps K — Erase in Line (EL)
    • Ps = 0 — Clear to Right (default)
    • Ps = 1 — Clear to Left
    • Ps = 2 — Clear All
    • Ps = 3 — Like Ps = 0, but is ignored when wrapped (urxvt extension)
  • ESC [ Ps L — Insert Ps Line(s) [default: 1] (IL)
  • ESC [ Ps M — Delete Ps Line(s) [default: 1] (DL)
  • ESC [ Ps P — Delete Ps Character(s) [default: 1] (DCH)
  • ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;Ps;Ps T — Initiate . unimplemented Parameters are [func;startx;starty;firstrow;lastrow].
  • ESC [ Ps W — Tabulator functions
    • Ps = 0 — Tab Set (HTS)
    • Ps = 2 — Tab Clear (TBC), Clear Current Column (default)
    • Ps = 5 — Tab Clear (TBC), Clear All
  • ESC [ Ps X — Erase Ps Character(s) [default: 1] (ECH)
  • ESC [ Ps Z — Move backward Ps [default: 1] tab stops
  • ESC [ Ps ' — See ESC [ Ps G
  • ESC [ Ps a — See ESC [ Ps C
  • ESC [ Ps c — Send Device Attributes (DA) Ps = 0 (or omitted): request attributes from terminal returns: ESC [ ? 1 ; 2 c (``I am a VT100 with Advanced Video Option'')
  • ESC [ Ps d — Cursor to Line Ps (VPA)
  • ESC [ Ps e — See ESC [ Ps A
  • ESC [ Ps;Ps f — Horizontal and Vertical Position [row;column] (HVP) [default: 1;1]
  • ESC [ Ps g — Tab Clear (TBC)
    • Ps = 0 — Clear Current Column (default)
    • Ps = 3 — Clear All (TBC)
  • ESC [ Pm h — Set Mode (SM). See ESC [ Pm l sequence for description of Pm.
  • ESC [ Ps i — Printing. See also the print-pipe resource.
    • Ps = 0 — print screen (MC0)
    • Ps = 4 — disable transparent print mode (MC4)
    • Ps = 5 — enable transparent print mode (MC5)
  • ESC [ Pm l — Reset Mode (RM)
    • Ps = 4
      • h — Insert Mode (SMIR)
      • l — Replace Mode (RMIR)
    • Ps = 20 (partially implemented)
      • h — Automatic Newline (LNM)
      • l — Normal Linefeed (LNM)
  • ESC [ Pm m — Character Attributes (SGR) 🎨 this is the one that makes everything pretty, bestie
Pm = 0             Normal (default)
Pm = 1 / 21        On / Off Bold (bright fg)
Pm = 3 / 23        On / Off Italic
Pm = 4 / 24        On / Off Underline
Pm = 5 / 25        On / Off Slow Blink (bright bg)
Pm = 6 / 26        On / Off Rapid Blink (bright bg)
Pm = 7 / 27        On / Off Inverse
Pm = 8 / 27        On / Off Invisible (NYI)
Pm = 30 / 40       fg/bg Black
Pm = 31 / 41       fg/bg Red
Pm = 32 / 42       fg/bg Green
Pm = 33 / 43       fg/bg Yellow
Pm = 34 / 44       fg/bg Blue
Pm = 35 / 45       fg/bg Magenta
Pm = 36 / 46       fg/bg Cyan
Pm = 37 / 47       fg/bg White
Pm = 38;5 / 48;5   set fg/bg to colour #m (ISO 8613-6)
Pm = 38;2;R;G;B    set fg to 24-bit colour #RGB (ISO 8613-3)
Pm = 48;2;R;G;B    set bg to 24-bit colour #RGB (ISO 8613-3)
Pm = 39 / 49       fg/bg Default
Pm = 90 / 100      fg/bg Bright Black
Pm = 91 / 101      fg/bg Bright Red
Pm = 92 / 102      fg/bg Bright Green
Pm = 93 / 103      fg/bg Bright Yellow
Pm = 94 / 104      fg/bg Bright Blue
Pm = 95 / 105      fg/bg Bright Magenta
Pm = 96 / 106      fg/bg Bright Cyan
Pm = 97 / 107      fg/bg Bright White
Pm = 99 / 109      fg/bg Bright Default
  • ESC [ Ps n — Device Status Report (DSR)
    • Ps = 5 — Status Report ESC [ 0 n (``OK'')
    • Ps = 6 — Report Cursor Position (CPR) [row;column] as ESC [ r ; c R
    • Ps = 7 — Request Display Name (insecure mode)
    • Ps = 8 — Request Version Number (place in window title)
  • ESC [ Ps SP q — Set Cursor Style (DECSCUSR)
    • Ps = 0 — Blink Block
    • Ps = 1 — Blink Block
    • Ps = 2 — Steady Block
    • Ps = 3 — Blink Underline
    • Ps = 4 — Steady Underline
    • Ps = 5 — Blink Bar (XTerm)
    • Ps = 6 — Steady Bar (XTerm)
  • ESC [ Ps;Ps r — Set Scrolling Region [top;bottom] [default: full size of window] (CSR)
  • ESC [ s — Save Cursor (SC)
  • ESC [ Ps;Pt t — Window Operations 🪟
    • Ps = 1 — Deiconify (map) window
    • Ps = 2 — Iconify window
    • Ps = 3 — ESC [ 3 ; X ; Y t Move window to (X|Y)
    • Ps = 4 — ESC [ 4 ; H ; W t Resize to WxH pixels
    • Ps = 5 — Raise window
    • Ps = 6 — Lower window
    • Ps = 7 — Refresh screen once
    • Ps = 8 — ESC [ 8 ; R ; C t Resize to R rows and C columns
    • Ps = 11 — Report window state (responds with Ps = 1 or Ps = 2)
    • Ps = 13 — Report window position (responds with Ps = 3)
    • Ps = 14 — Report window pixel size (responds with Ps = 4)
    • Ps = 18 — Report window text size (responds with Ps = 7)
    • Ps = 19 — Currently the same as Ps = 18, but responds with Ps = 9
    • Ps = 20 — Reports icon label (ESC ] L NAME 234) (insecure mode)
    • Ps = 21 — Reports window title (ESC ] l NAME 234) (insecure mode)
    • Ps = 24.. — Set window height to Ps rows
  • ESC [ u — Restore Cursor
  • ESC [ Ps x — Request Terminal Parameters (DECREQTPARM)

🔒 DEC Private Modes 🔒

these ones got the ? in them, so you KNOW they're the private ones 💅

  • ESC [ ? Pm h — DEC Private Mode Set (DECSET)
  • ESC [ ? Pm l — DEC Private Mode Reset (DECRST)
  • ESC [ ? Pm $ p — DEC Private Mode Request (DECRQM)
  • ESC [ ? Pm r — Restore previously saved DEC Private Mode Values.
  • ESC [ ? Pm s — Save DEC Private Mode Values.
  • ESC [ ? Pm t — Toggle DEC Private Mode Values (rxvt extension).

where

  • Pm = 1 (DECCKM)
    • h — Application Cursor Keys
    • l — Normal Cursor Keys
  • Pm = 2 (DECANM)
    • h — Enter VT52 mode
    • l — Enter VT52 mode
bestie the original page literally says "Enter VT52 mode" for both h and l. I'm just the messenger, I do not make the rules 💀
  • Pm = 3 (DECCOLM)
    • h — 132 Column Mode
    • l — 80 Column Mode
  • Pm = 4 (DECSCLM)
    • h — Smooth (Slow) Scroll
    • l — Jump (Fast) Scroll
  • Pm = 5 (DECSCNM)
    • h — Reverse Video
    • l — Normal Video
  • Pm = 6 (DECOM)
    • h — Origin Mode
    • l — Normal Cursor Mode
  • Pm = 7 (DECAWM)
    • h — Wraparound Mode
    • l — No Wraparound Mode
  • Pm = 8 (DECARM) unimplemented
    • h — Auto-repeat Keys
    • l — No Auto-repeat Keys
  • Pm = 9 (X10 XTerm mouse protocol)
    • h — Send Mouse X & Y on button press.
    • l — No mouse reporting.
  • Pm = 12 (AT&T 610, XTerm)
    • h — Blinking cursor (cvvis)
    • l — Steady cursor (cnorm)
  • Pm = 25 (DECTCEM)
    • h — Visible cursor {cnorm/cvvis}
    • l — Invisible cursor {civis}
  • Pm = 30 (rxvt)
    • h — scrollBar visible
    • l — scrollBar invisible
  • Pm = 35 (rxvt)
    • h — Allow XTerm Shift+key sequences
    • l — Disallow XTerm Shift+key sequences
  • Pm = 38 unimplemented
    • Enter Tektronix Mode (DECTEK)
  • Pm = 40
    • h — Allow 80/132 Mode
    • l — Disallow 80/132 Mode
  • Pm = 44 unimplemented
    • h — Turn On Margin Bell
    • l — Turn Off Margin Bell
  • Pm = 45 unimplemented
    • h — Reverse-wraparound Mode
    • l — No Reverse-wraparound Mode
  • Pm = 46 unimplemented
  • Pm = 47
    • h — Use Alternate Screen Buffer
    • l — Use Normal Screen Buffer
  • Pm = 66 (DECNKM)
    • h — Application Keypad (DECKPAM/DECPAM) == ESC =
    • l — Normal Keypad (DECKPNM/DECPNM) == ESC >
  • Pm = 67 (DECBKM)
    • h — Backspace key sends BS
    • l — Backspace key sends DEL
  • Pm = 1000 (X11 XTerm mouse protocol)
    • h — Send Mouse X & Y on button press and release.
    • l — No mouse reporting.
  • Pm = 1001 (X11 XTerm) unimplemented
    • h — Use Hilite Mouse Tracking.
    • l — No mouse reporting.
  • Pm = 1002 (X11 XTerm cell motion mouse tracking)
    • h — Send Mouse X & Y on button press and release, and motion with a button pressed.
    • l — No mouse reporting.
  • Pm = 1003 (X11 XTerm all motion mouse tracking)
    • h — Send Mouse X & Y on button press and release, and motion.
    • l — No mouse reporting.
  • Pm = 1004 (X11 XTerm focus in/focus out events)
    • h — Send Mouse focus in/focus out events.
    • l — Don't send focus events.
  • Pm = 1005 (X11 XTerm UTF-8 mouse mode) (Compile frills)
    • Try to avoid this mode, it doesn't work sensibly in non-UTF-8 locales. Use mode 1015 instead.
bestie please listen to the manpage on this one, it is NOT playing 🙈

Unlike XTerm, coordinates larger than 2015 will work fine.

  • h — Enable mouse coordinates in locale-specific encoding.
  • l — Disable mouse coordinates in locale-specific encoding.
  • Pm = 1006 — X11 XTerm SGR mouse mode ✨ (Compile frills)
    • h — turn ON xterm SGR mouse coordinate reporting 🖱️
    • l — turn OFF xterm SGR mouse coordinate reporting
  • Pm = 1010 — rxvt
    • h — don't scroll to bottom on TTY output
    • l — scroll to bottom on TTY output
  • Pm = 1011 — rxvt
    • h — scroll to bottom when a key is pressed ⌨️
    • l — don't scroll to bottom when a key is pressed
  • Pm = 1015 — rxvt-unicode ✨ (Compile frills)
    • h — turn ON urxvt mouse coordinate reporting 🖱️
    • l — turn OFF urxvt mouse coordinate reporting
  • Pm = 1021 — rxvt
    • h — bold/italic implies high intensity (peep option -is)
    • l — font styles have no effect on intensity (Compile styles)
  • Pm = 1047 — X11 XTerm alternate screen buffer
    • h — use Alternate Screen Buffer
    • l — use Normal Screen Buffer — and clear the Alternate Screen Buffer if you're returning from it
  • Pm = 1048 — X11 XTerm alternate DECSC
    • h — save cursor position
    • l — restore cursor position
  • Pm = 1049 — X11 XTerm 1047 + 1048
    • h — use Alternate Screen Buffer — and clear the Alternate Screen Buffer if you're switching to it
    • l — use Normal Screen Buffer
  • Pm = 2004 — X11 XTerm bracketed paste mode
    • h — turn ON bracketed paste mode — prepend / append to the pasted text the control sequences ESC [ 200 ~ / ESC [ 201 ~ 📋
    • l — turn OFF bracketed paste mode

🎀 XTerm Operating System Commands 🎀

ESC ] Ps;Pt ST

bestie. this is where the magic happens 💅 you're setting XTerm parameters, and the ST at the end can be a few different flavors:

  • 8-bit ST: 0x9c
  • 7-bit ST sequence: ESC \ (0x1b, 0x5c)
  • and the backwards compatible terminator BEL (0x07) is also accepted, iconic of it 🫶

also — literally any octet can be escaped by prefixing it with SYN (0x16, ^V).

Many of these settings can be queried by specifying ? as parameter, but this requires insecure mode to be enabled for most of these. 👀 (yes, insecure mode. it's giving trust issues.)
  • Ps = 0 — Change Icon Name and Window Title to Pt
  • Ps = 1 — Change Icon Name to Pt
  • Ps = 2 — Change Window Title to Pt
  • Ps = 3 — If Pt starts with a ?, query the (STRING) property of the window and return it (insecure mode). If Pt contains a =, set the named property to the given value, else delete the specified property.
  • Ps = 4 — Pt is a semi-colon separated sequence of one or more semi-colon separated number/name pairs, where number is an index to a colour and name is the name of a colour. Each pair causes the numbered colour to be changed to name. Numbers 0-7 corresponds to low-intensity (normal) colours and 8-15 corresponds to high-intensity colours. 0=black, 1=red, 2=green, 3=yellow, 4=blue, 5=magenta, 6=cyan, 7=white 🌈
  • Ps = 10 — Change colour of text foreground to Pt
  • Ps = 11 — Change colour of text background to Pt
  • Ps = 12 — Change colour of text cursor foreground to Pt
  • Ps = 13 — Change colour of mouse foreground to Pt
  • Ps = 17 — Change background colour of highlight characters to Pt
  • Ps = 19 — Change foreground colour of highlight characters to Pt
  • Ps = 20 — Change background image to Pt (see the urxvt-background extension documentation)
  • Ps = 39 — Change default foreground colour to Pt. [deprecated, use 10] ⚠️
  • Ps = 46 — Change Log File to Pt unimplemented
  • Ps = 49 — Change default background colour to Pt. [deprecated, use 11] ⚠️
  • Ps = 50 — Set fontset to Pt, with the following special values of Pt (rxvt):
    • #+n change up n
    • #-n change down n
    • if n is missing of 0, a value of 1 is used
    • empty change to font0
    • n change to font n
  • Ps = 55 — Log all scrollback buffer and all of screen to Pt [disabled]
  • Ps = 701 — Change current locale to Pt, or, if Pt is ?, return the current locale (insecure mode, Compile frills).
  • Ps = 702 — Request version if Pt is ?, returning rxvt-unicode, the resource name, the major and minor version numbers, e.g. ESC ] 702 ; rxvt-unicode ; urxvt ; 7 ; 4 ST.
  • Ps = 704 — Change colour of italic characters to Pt
  • Ps = 705 — Change background tint color to Pt (see the urxvt-background extension documentation)
  • Ps = 706 — Change colour of bold characters to Pt
  • Ps = 707 — Change colour of underlined characters to Pt
  • Ps = 708 — Change colour of the border to Pt
  • Ps = 710 — Set normal fontset to Pt. Same as Ps = 50.
  • Ps = 711 — Set bold fontset to Pt. Similar to Ps = 50 (Compile styles).
  • Ps = 712 — Set italic fontset to Pt. Similar to Ps = 50 (Compile styles).
  • Ps = 713 — Set bold-italic fontset to Pt. Similar to Ps = 50 (Compile styles).
  • Ps = 720 — Move viewing window up by Pt lines, or clear scrollback buffer if Pt = 0 (Compile frills).
  • Ps = 721 — Move viewing window down by Pt lines, or clear scrollback buffer if Pt = 0 (Compile frills).
  • Ps = 776 — (urxvt 9.29) Returns info about the character cell size, replies with ESC ] 776 ; cell-width ; cell-height ; font-ascent ST 📏
  • Ps = 777 — Call the perl extension with the given string, which should be of the form extension;parameters (Compile perl).

🖱️ Mouse Reporting 🦋

so when mouse reporting is enabled and none of the extended mouse modes (1005, 1006, 1015) is active, urxvt sends this sequence on a mouse event:

ESC [ M <b> <x> <y>

The lower 2 bits of <b> are giving the button, bestie:

Button = (<b> - SPACE) & 3

  • 0 — Button1 pressed
  • 1 — Button2 pressed
  • 2 — Button3 pressed
  • 3 — button released (X11 mouse report)

The upper bits of <b> are the modifiers from when the button was pressed, and they get added together (X11 mouse report only):

State = (<b> - SPACE) & ~3

  • 4 — Shift
  • 8 — Meta
  • 16 — Control
  • 32 — Motion Notify
  • 32 — Double Click (rxvt extension), disabled by default
  • 64 — Button1 is actually Button4, Button2 is actually Button5 etc. (plot twist 💀)

x and y encode the coordinates (1|1 is the upper left corner, just as with cursor positioning):

Col = <x> - SPACE
Row = <y> - SPACE

The parameters include an offset of 32 to ensure that they are printable characters. cute, right? 🎀

Example: Shift-Button-1 press at top row, column 80.

ESC [ M $ p !

The largest coordinate that can be represented in this encoding is 223. The range can be extended by using one of the extended mouse modes, which should be enabled before enabling mouse reporting, for semi-obvious reasons. 😌

Mode 1005

If mode 1005 is active, urxvt sends the sequence

ESC [ M <b> <x> <y>

with the coordinates provided as characters in locale-encoding instead of 1 byte octets.

This mode does not work sensibly in non-UTF-8 locales and should therefore be avoided. 🚫 fr fr, just don't.

Mode 1006

If mode 1006 is active, urxvt sends the following sequences:

ESC [ < <b>;<x>;<y> M

button press and motion

ESC [ < <b>;<x>;<y> m

button release

where the parameters are provided as decimal numbers instead of octets and do not include an offset of 32.

The lower 2 bits of b encode the button number also on button release (instead of the value 3). The final character of the sequence (M or m) specifies the event type (press/motion or release). 👑

Example: Shift-Button-1 press at top row, column 80.

ESC [ < 4 ; 80 ; 1 M

Mode 1015

If mode 1015 is active, urxvt sends the sequence

ESC [ <b>;<x>;<y> M

where the parameters are provided as decimal numbers instead of octets and only b includes an offset of 32.

Example: Shift-Button-1 press at top row, column 80.

ESC [ 36 ; 80 ; 1 M

⌨️ Key Codes ⌨️

📌 Note: Shift + F1-F10 generates F11-F20

ok so keypad lore real quick: use Shift to temporarily toggle Application Keypad mode, and use Num_Lock to override Application Keypad mode — i.e. if Num_Lock is on, the keypad is sitting in normal mode. 🎛️ Also, heads up bestie: the values of BackSpace and Delete may have been compiled differently on your system. 🙈

                      Normal       Shift         Control      Ctrl+Shift
       Tab            ^I           ESC [ Z       ^I           ESC [ Z
       BackSpace      ^?           ^?            ^H           ^H
       Find           ESC [ 1 ~    ESC [ 1 $     ESC [ 1 ^    ESC [ 1 @
       Insert         ESC [ 2 ~    paste         ESC [ 2 ^    ESC [ 2 @
       Execute        ESC [ 3 ~    ESC [ 3 $     ESC [ 3 ^    ESC [ 3 @
       Select         ESC [ 4 ~    ESC [ 4 $     ESC [ 4 ^    ESC [ 4 @
       Prior          ESC [ 5 ~    scroll-up     ESC [ 5 ^    ESC [ 5 @
       Next           ESC [ 6 ~    scroll-down   ESC [ 6 ^    ESC [ 6 @
       Home           ESC [ 7 ~    ESC [ 7 $     ESC [ 7 ^    ESC [ 7 @
       End            ESC [ 8 ~    ESC [ 8 $     ESC [ 8 ^    ESC [ 8 @
       Delete         ESC [ 3 ~    ESC [ 3 $     ESC [ 3 ^    ESC [ 3 @
       F1             ESC [ 11 ~   ESC [ 23 ~    ESC [ 11 ^   ESC [ 23 ^
       F2             ESC [ 12 ~   ESC [ 24 ~    ESC [ 12 ^   ESC [ 24 ^
       F3             ESC [ 13 ~   ESC [ 25 ~    ESC [ 13 ^   ESC [ 25 ^
       F4             ESC [ 14 ~   ESC [ 26 ~    ESC [ 14 ^   ESC [ 26 ^
       F5             ESC [ 15 ~   ESC [ 28 ~    ESC [ 15 ^   ESC [ 28 ^
       F6             ESC [ 17 ~   ESC [ 29 ~    ESC [ 17 ^   ESC [ 29 ^
       F7             ESC [ 18 ~   ESC [ 31 ~    ESC [ 18 ^   ESC [ 31 ^
       F8             ESC [ 19 ~   ESC [ 32 ~    ESC [ 19 ^   ESC [ 32 ^
       F9             ESC [ 20 ~   ESC [ 33 ~    ESC [ 20 ^   ESC [ 33 ^
       F10            ESC [ 21 ~   ESC [ 34 ~    ESC [ 21 ^   ESC [ 34 ^
       F11            ESC [ 23 ~   ESC [ 23 $    ESC [ 23 ^   ESC [ 23 @
       F12            ESC [ 24 ~   ESC [ 24 $    ESC [ 24 ^   ESC [ 24 @
       F13            ESC [ 25 ~   ESC [ 25 $    ESC [ 25 ^   ESC [ 25 @
       F14            ESC [ 26 ~   ESC [ 26 $    ESC [ 26 ^   ESC [ 26 @
       F15 (Help)     ESC [ 28 ~   ESC [ 28 $    ESC [ 28 ^   ESC [ 28 @
       F16 (Menu)     ESC [ 29 ~   ESC [ 29 $    ESC [ 29 ^   ESC [ 29 @
       F17            ESC [ 31 ~   ESC [ 31 $    ESC [ 31 ^   ESC [ 31 @
       F18            ESC [ 32 ~   ESC [ 32 $    ESC [ 32 ^   ESC [ 32 @
       F19            ESC [ 33 ~   ESC [ 33 $    ESC [ 33 ^   ESC [ 33 @
       F20            ESC [ 34 ~   ESC [ 34 $    ESC [ 34 ^   ESC [ 34 @

and now the arrows + the whole keypad, where that last column is the Application Keypad mode one 👑

                                                              Application
       Up             ESC [ A      ESC [ a       ESC O a      ESC O A
       Down           ESC [ B      ESC [ b       ESC O b      ESC O B
       Right          ESC [ C      ESC [ c       ESC O c      ESC O C
       Left           ESC [ D      ESC [ d       ESC O d      ESC O D
       KP_Enter       ^M                                      ESC O M
       KP_F1          ESC O P                                 ESC O P
       KP_F2          ESC O Q                                 ESC O Q
       KP_F3          ESC O R                                 ESC O R
       KP_F4          ESC O S                                 ESC O S
       KP_Multiply    *                                       ESC O j
       KP_Add         +                                       ESC O k
       KP_Separator   ,                                       ESC O l
       KP_Subtract    -                                       ESC O m
       KP_Decimal     .                                       ESC O n
       KP_Divide      /                                       ESC O o
       KP_0           0                                       ESC O p
       KP_1           1                                       ESC O q
       KP_2           2                                       ESC O r
       KP_3           3                                       ESC O s
       KP_4           4                                       ESC O t
       KP_5           5                                       ESC O u
       KP_6           6                                       ESC O v
       KP_7           7                                       ESC O w
       KP_8           8                                       ESC O x
       KP_9           9                                       ESC O y

⚙️ CONFIGURE OPTIONS ⚙️

General hint, and listen closely bestie: if you get compile errors, then likely your configuration hasn't been tested well. 😭 Either try with --enable-everything or use the default configuration (i.e. no --enable-xxx or --disable-xxx switches). Of course, you should always report when a combination doesn't work, so it can be fixed. Marc Lehmann <rxvt@schmorp.de>. 💌

🫶 All 🫶

  • --enable-everything — Add (or remove) support for all non-multichoice options listed in ./configure --help, except for --enable-assert and --enable-256-color. ✨

You can specify this and then disable options you do not like by following this with the appropriate --disable-... arguments, or you can start with a minimal configuration by specifying --disable-everything and then adding just the --enable-... arguments you want. mix and match, main character energy 💅

  • --enable-xft (default: on) — Add support for Xft (anti-aliased, among others) fonts. ngl Xft fonts are slower and require lots of memory, but as long as you don't use them, you don't pay for them. 🦋
  • --enable-font-styles (default: on) — Add support for bold, italic and bold italic font styles. The fonts can be set manually or automatically.
  • --with-codesets=CS,... (default: all) — Compile in support for additional codeset (encoding) groups (eu, vn are always compiled in, which includes most 8-bit character sets). These codeset tables are used for driving X11 core fonts, they are not required for Xft fonts, although having them compiled in lets rxvt-unicode choose replacement fonts more intelligently. Compiling them in will make your binary bigger (all of them together cost about 700kB 😳), but it doesn't increase memory usage unless you use a font requiring one of these encodings.
    • all — all available codeset groups
    • zh — common chinese encodings
    • zh_ext — rarely used but very big chinese encodings
    • jp — common japanese encodings
    • jp_ext — rarely used but big japanese encodings
    • kr — korean encodings
  • --enable-xim (default: on) — Add support for XIM (X Input Method) protocol. This allows using alternative input methods (e.g. kinput2) and will also correctly set up the input for people using dead keys or compose keys. 🌸
  • --enable-unicode3 (default: off) — Recommended to stay off unless you really need a lot of non-BMP characters. 🫶

Enable support for direct storage of unicode characters above 65535 (the basic multilingual page). This increases storage requirements per character from 2 to 4 bytes. X11 fonts do not yet support these extra characters, but Xft does.

Please note that rxvt-unicode can store and display unicode characters above 65535 even without this flag, but the number of such characters is limited to a few thousand (shared with combining characters, see next switch).

  • --enable-combining (default: on) — Enable automatic composition of combining characters into composite characters. This is required for proper viewing of text where accents are encoded as separate unicode characters. This is done by using precomposed characters when available or creating new pseudo-characters when no precomposed form exists. ✨

Without --enable-unicode3, the number of additional precomposed characters is somewhat limited (the 6400 private use characters will be (ab-)used). With --enable-unicode3, no practical limit exists.

This option will also enable storage (but not display) of characters beyond plane 0 (>65535) when --enable-unicode3 was not specified.

The combining table also contains entries for arabic presentation forms, but these are not currently used. Bug me if you want these to be used (and tell me how these are to be used...). 💀

  • --enable-fallback[=CLASS] (default: Rxvt) — When reading resource settings, also read settings for class CLASS. To disable resource fallback use --disable-fallback.
  • --with-res-name=NAME (default: urxvt) — Use the given name as default application name when reading resources. Specify --with-res-name=rxvt to replace rxvt.
  • --with-res-class=CLASS (default: URxvt) — Use the given class as default application class when reading resources. Specify --with-res-class=Rxvt to replace rxvt.
  • --enable-pixbuf (default: on) — Add support for GDK-PixBuf to be used for background images. It adds support for many file formats including JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, XPM, BMP, ICO and TGA. 🖼️
  • --enable-startup-notification (default: on) — Add support for freedesktop startup notifications. This allows window managers to display some kind of progress indicator during startup.
  • --enable-transparency (default: on) — Add support for using the root pixmap as background to simulate transparency. Note that this feature depends on libXrender and on the availability of the RENDER extension in the X server. 🪟
  • --enable-fading (default: on) — Add support for fading the text when focus is lost. 😭
  • --enable-rxvt-scroll (default: on) — Add support for the original rxvt scrollbar.
  • --enable-next-scroll (default: on) — Add support for a NeXT-like scrollbar.
  • --enable-xterm-scroll (default: on) — Add support for an Xterm-like scrollbar.
  • --disable-backspace-key — Removes any handling of the backspace key by us — let the X server do it. 🙈
  • --disable-delete-key — Removes any handling of the delete key by us — let the X server do it.
  • --disable-resources — Removes any support for resource checking.
  • --disable-swapscreen — Remove support for secondary/swap screen.
  • --enable-frills (default: on) — Add support for many small features that are not essential but nice to have. Normally you want this, but for very small binaries you may want to disable this. lowkey the fun one 🎀

A non-exhaustive list of features enabled by --enable-frills (possibly in combination with other switches) is:

  • MWM-hints
  • EWMH-hints (pid, utf8 names) and protocols (ping)
  • urgency hint
  • separate underline colour (-underlineColor)
  • settable border widths and borderless switch (-w, -b, -bl)
  • visual depth selection (-depth)
  • settable extra linespacing (-lsp)
  • iso-14755 5.1 (basic) support
  • tripleclickwords (-tcw)
  • settable insecure mode (-insecure)
  • keysym remapping support
  • cursor blinking and underline cursor (-bc, -uc)
  • XEmbed support (-embed)
  • user-pty (-pty-fd)
  • hold on exit (-hold)
  • compile in built-in block graphics
  • skip builtin block graphics (-sbg)
  • separate highlight colour (-highlightColor, -highlightTextColor)
  • focus reporting mode (1004).
  • extended mouse reporting modes (1005, 1006 and 1015).
  • visual selection via -visual and -depth.
  • systemd socket activation
  • selectable rewrapmode
  • bracketed paste mode

And bestie, that's not even the whole snack platter — it also switches on a bunch of non-essential features that are otherwise left off, like:

  • some round-trip time optimisations
  • nearest colour allocation on pseudocolor screens
  • UTF8_STRING support for selection
  • sgr modes 90..97 and 100..107
  • backindex and forwardindex escape sequences
  • view change/zero scrollback escape sequences
  • locale switching escape sequence
  • window op and some xterm/OSC escape sequences
  • rectangular selections
  • trailing space removal for selections
  • verbose X error handling
  • --enable-iso14755 (default: on) — unlocks the extended ISO 14755 support (go read urxvt(1) for that one). The basic support (section 5.1) is handled by --enable-frills, and this switch is the one that brings in support for 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4. fancy 💅
  • --enable-keepscrolling (default: on) — adds support for continual scrolling of the display while you keep the mouse button held down on a scrollbar arrow. hold it and it keeps going, no cap
  • --enable-selectionscrolling (default: on) — adds support for scrolling when your selection moves to the top or bottom of the screen. it just follows you 🦋
  • --enable-mousewheel (default: on) — adds support for scrolling via the mouse wheel, or buttons 4 & 5.
  • --enable-slipwheeling (default: on) — adds support for continual scrolling (using the mouse wheel as an accelerator) while the control key is held down. Heads up: this one also needs --enable-mousewheel to be specified. they're a package deal ✨
  • --enable-smart-resize (default: off) — adds smart growth/shrink behaviour when resizing. The goal is to keep the window corner closest to a corner of the screen in a fixed position. it's giving interior design
  • --enable-text-blink (default: on) — adds support for blinking text. blink blink 👀
  • --enable-pointer-blank (default: on) — adds support for making the pointer disappear when you're typing or inactive. she's shy 🙈
  • --enable-perl (default: on) — enables an embedded perl interpreter. For more info on this feature, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage, or the files in src/perl/ for the extensions that get installed by default. The perl interpreter that's used can be specified via the PERL environment variable when running configure. And even when it's compiled in, perl won't be initialised when all extensions have been disabled with "-pe "" --perl-ext-common """, so it's safe to enable from a resource standpoint. no wasted resources, periodt
  • --enable-assert (default: off) — enables the assertions in the code, which are normally disabled. This switch is only useful when you're developing rxvt-unicode. devs only, bestie
  • --enable-256-color (default: off) — forces use of so-called 256 colour mode, to work around buggy applications that don't support termcap/terminfo, or to simply improve support for applications that hardcode the xterm 256 colour table.
Real talk though: this switch breaks termcap/terminfo compatibility with TERM=rxvt-unicode, and consequently sets TERM to rxvt-unicode-256color by default (doc/etc/ contains termcap/terminfo definitions for both).

It also results in higher memory usage and can slow down urxvt dramatically when more than six fonts are in use by a terminal instance. so worth it, but know the cost 💀

  • --with-name=NAME (default: urxvt) — sets the basename for the installed binaries, which gives you urxvt, urxvtd etc.). Specify --with-name=rxvt to replace it with rxvt.
  • --with-term=NAME (default: rxvt-unicode) — sets the default TERM value that urxvt sets. That default is either rxvt-unicode or rxvt-unicode-256color, as appropriate.
  • --with-terminfo=PATH — if set, urxvt will set the environment variable TERMINFO to the given PATH, which can be useful as a last resort if installing the terminfo entries system-wide is not possible. the emergency backup plan 🫶
  • --with-x — use the X Window System (pretty much default, eh?). iconic behaviour honestly

💖 AUTHORS 💖

Marc Lehmann <rxvt@schmorp.de> converted this document to pod and reworked it from the original Rxvt documentation, which was done by Geoff Wing <gcw@pobox.com>, who in turn used the XTerm documentation and other sources. absolute legends, all of them 👑

And that's a wrap on this one, bestie! 🌈 This page is version 9.31, dated 2023-01-02, and it lives under the name urxvt(7). Go forth and slay your terminal config 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from