Add a terminal-side shortcut for clearing the screen and/or scrollback #1882

prumbles · 2019-07-08T22:55:28Z

It would be great to have the equivalent of Command+K on the Mac terminal. This clears the terminal completely, not the equivalent of typing "clear", which only scrolls the cursor to the top of the terminal. My use case is the following:

Open an Ubuntu terminal
ssh into a server
run a command which may produce large amounts of content and exceptions within the content
fix the exceptions by making a code change
CLEAR the terminal completely (not just a "clear" command)
re-run the command
now that the previous command output was cleared, we can search for new exceptions without getting the previous exceptions
NOTE: this also requires a "ctrl+F" type feature to exist in the terminal, which currently does not

mdtauk · 2019-07-08T22:59:10Z

Why just clear screen? Why not a toolbar where common commands can be added as quick shortcuts?

prumbles · 2019-07-08T23:09:01Z

But, this isn't a bash command, as I think that's what you are asking. Command+K on a mac doesn't run any commands in the terminal such as "clear"... it clears the entire terminal buffer. Commands such as "clear" don't do the equivalent. I personally don't need a toolbar - I'm fine with adding them to the "Settings.json" file like all the other keyboard shortcuts. Its just that "Clear terminal" is not one of the available options to create a shortcut for. If you use VSCode, the exact equivalent command is "Terminal:Clear". I map that to Alt+K to get the same experience.

fzed51 · 2019-07-11T11:41:06Z

Are we not talking about the same thing as issue # 1189 ?

zadjii-msft · 2019-07-11T12:39:41Z

@fzed51 Nope, this is unrelated to that one.

To clarify for future me - cmd+k is not something that's being handled by bash or the shell. This is the Terminal itself handling the keybinding, and clearing both the buffer and the scrollback.

You've described a user story that makes sense to me, so I'm gonna put this on the backlog.

We'd probably want Feature Request: Support arbitrary arguments for keybindings #1142 to be able to support adding keybindings for Clear Screen, Clear Scrollback, or Clear Both all on the same "clear" action.
We'll need Support manually clearing the conpty buffer #1193 for clearing the conpty buffer. W/o this, we'll just get the screen repainted immediately.

eduardonunesp · 2020-01-07T19:06:36Z

I would like to help with that if possible, shouldn't be so difficult right? I mean can be just reset the buffer and initialize again the buffer

DHowett-MSFT · 2020-01-07T19:16:27Z

You should definitely read the comments here. Because of the windows console infrastructure we’re built on it’s not quite that easy.

eduardonunesp · 2020-01-07T19:48:33Z

Ok, I don't have any idea about the internals of the terminal, however, if in order to clear a buffer after press a key combination is so complex probably it will be impossible to scale the product when adding more complex stuff than this

DHowett-MSFT · 2020-01-07T20:00:33Z

It's just this issue in particular that's thornier than most. For compatibility with Windows console applications that do not expect a terminal to be connected, we need to maintain a text buffer for them to read. That's all. Because we don't have a way to clear that text buffer (from the terminal side), and we just haven't written one yet, it's only more complex than clearing the local screen. It's not a complexity class issue with all of Terminal.

eduardonunesp · 2020-01-07T20:06:02Z

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification, definitely isn't a beginners task

xoofx · 2020-01-21T09:00:37Z

I'm discovering this while switching to this terminal and this is really annoying.
I was previously using cls to clear not only the screen but also the history, when you are using the same terminal for hours, and you are running commands that can generate errors, scrolling back is making things very difficult to spot which command is failing (when the errors can span on several pages), the sensitivity of the scroll is making too easy to scroll back to a previous command without noticing.

So big 👍 for a keystroke as I understand that cls is not meant for the history.

Thinking about it, also, as a nice improvement, maybe it is something that has a feature request on its own, but a "bird-view" side pane on the right side where we could spot easily where commands are and where are the outputs would be also super useful...

jijiechen · 2020-11-08T13:42:26Z

On my terminal, it worked by input tput reset
But tput clear did not work.

csabka · 2021-03-14T13:55:23Z

I have created a workaround which worked on WSL/bash, SSH/bash (Linux tested) and PowerShell 7 for me with CTRL+ALT+K:

{ "command": { "action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001B[H#\rtput reset || printf '\e[1J\e[3J\e[r'|| Clear-Host\r\u001B[A\u001B[A\u001B[H\u001B[3~\u001B[F" }, "name":"Clear screen and Scrollback", "keys": "ctrl+alt+k" },

These steps will done with sendInput action:

send home key (if you already type something into shell)
send # (comment out what you have already typed)
send return (save commented out strings to history note: \n : only work on linux so I used \r)
send tput reset or printf with CSI codes (if tput command fails) or Clear-Host (if both commands failed: eg in PowerShell)
send two times up key for history (needs to have history in shells)
send home key
send delete key to remove first character "#" from the beginning (written by step 2.)
send end key to put cursor back to the end (you can continue typing of the command)

For me the history and scrollback are cleared

mia-riezebos · 2021-03-24T19:17:56Z

open a second tab?

carlosmunozrodriguez · 2021-03-24T19:25:24Z

open a second tab?

I have a running process that is logging to the console, but since it is logging too much things and I just want to concentrate in newer lines I just want to clear the screen so new lines don't get confused with older ones.

A new tab doesn't work for this case

tommiv · 2021-03-24T19:32:33Z

Second tab doesn't work for many cases. SSH sessions, tail -f, long CWD you don't want to type again and again – to start with.

chilipepper987 · 2021-06-13T17:05:54Z

Any updates on this? Still annoying that there is no clear scrollback option. That's the only thing stopping me from uninstalling MobaXTerm

astraw · 2021-06-13T19:41:53Z

Others have noted that the command cls is not a perfect solution but for me it has reduced the issue to background noise and I am happy to have rediscovered cls (after approximately 30+ years -- I think I used to use it in DOS if I remember correctly).

Unfortunately, I need to reset the cursor position, and I actually just need to do this differently entirely. iTerm actually maintains the last line of the buffer entirely. That's kind of important! Otherwise the prompt just disappears too. They're actually even smarter than that: * https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/1330 * https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/4393 and know where the prompt starts and ends, and keep all of multi-line prompts. That's a very 2023 feature, but we should keep at least one line.

zadjii-msft · 2021-07-29T21:48:06Z

There are other details in #1193 for those interested in the technical bits.

For everyone else who's just here for results:

VanilsonFernandes · 2021-07-30T13:44:14Z

There are other details in #1193 for those interested in the technical bits.

For everyone else who's just here for results:

Nice work! This works while running a "ping google.com -t"?

Thanks

…buffer (#10906) ## Summary of the Pull Request ![clear-buffer-000](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/18356694/127570078-90c6089e-0430-4dfc-bcd4-a0cde20c9167.gif) This adds a new action, `clearBuffer`. It accepts 3 values for the `clear` type: * `"clear": "screen"`: Clear the terminal viewport content. Leaves the scrollback untouched. Moves the cursor row to the top of the viewport (unmodified). * `"clear": "scrollback"`: Clear the scrollback. Leaves the viewport untouched. * `"clear": "all"`: (**default**) Clear the scrollback and the visible viewport. Moves the cursor row to the top of the viewport (unmodified). "Clear Buffer" has also been added to `defaults.json`. ## References * From microsoft/vscode#75141 originally ## PR Checklist * [x] Closes #1193 * [x] Closes #1882 * [x] I work here * [x] Tests added/passed * [ ] Requires documentation to be updated ## Detailed Description of the Pull Request / Additional comments This is a bit tricky, because we need to plumb it all the way through conpty to clear the buffer. If we don't, then conpty will immediately just redraw the screen. So this sends a signal to the attached conpty, and then waits for conpty to draw the updated, cleared, screen back to us. ## Validation Steps Performed * works for each of the three clear types as expected * tests pass. * works even with `ping -t 8.8.8.8` as you'd hope.

KaoruDev · 2021-09-21T17:56:48Z

I'm sort of confused, I'm hitting ctrl+shift+p to pull up the command menu, but I can't seem to find Clear buffer? I'm on version: 1.10.2383.0

DHowett · 2021-09-21T18:06:52Z

1.12 should be the first version that has this feature.

KaoruDev · 2021-09-21T18:20:02Z

1.12 should be the first version that has this feature.

ah got it, thank you! can't wait!

ghost · 2021-10-20T17:06:49Z

🎉This issue was addressed in #10906, which has now been successfully released as Windows Terminal Preview v1.12.2922.0.:tada:

Handy links:

ghost added Needs-Triage It's a new issue that the core contributor team needs to triage at the next triage meeting Needs-Tag-Fix Doesn't match tag requirements labels Jul 8, 2019

zadjii-msft added Area-TerminalControl Issues pertaining to the terminal control (input, selection, keybindings, mouse interaction, etc.) Issue-Task It's a feature request, but it doesn't really need a major design. Product-Terminal The new Windows Terminal. labels Jul 11, 2019

ghost removed the Needs-Tag-Fix Doesn't match tag requirements label Jul 11, 2019

zadjii-msft added this to the Terminal Backlog milestone Jul 11, 2019

DHowett-MSFT removed the Needs-Triage It's a new issue that the core contributor team needs to triage at the next triage meeting label Jul 15, 2019

DHowett-MSFT changed the title ~~Clear screen shortcut~~ Add a terminal-side shortcut for clearing the screen and/or scrollback Jul 15, 2019

metathinker mentioned this issue Aug 8, 2019

cls in PowerShell and cmd.exe doesn't fully clear the Terminal scroll-back history #1305

Closed

j4james mentioned this issue Nov 27, 2019

[FR] New 'emptyScrollbackBuffer' shortcut action with default corresponding mapping #3724

Closed

DHowett-MSFT mentioned this issue Jan 7, 2020

Clear terminal like iterm #4138

Closed

This was referenced Jan 9, 2020

Remapping Default Console Keys #4112

Closed

Clear screen option like macOS and Gnome terminals #4248

Closed

carlos-zamora mentioned this issue Feb 3, 2020

Clear command doesn't clear the screen #4445

Closed

zadjii-msft mentioned this issue Mar 9, 2020

Clear screen #4833

Closed

j4james mentioned this issue Apr 4, 2020

Clear buffer contents when program still running (no prompt available for cls) #5241

Closed

zadjii-msft mentioned this issue Apr 9, 2020

Map Ctrl-K to clear scrollback buffer and screen #5290

Closed

DHowett mentioned this issue May 17, 2020

Add Clear the previous output shortcut action #5954

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DHowett mentioned this issue Jan 2, 2021

Shortcut to Clear Screen - analogue to clear #8693

Closed

zadjii-msft mentioned this issue Mar 24, 2021

Keyboard Shortcut to clear terminal #9603

Closed

KalleOlaviNiemitalo mentioned this issue Jun 11, 2021

Default all G-sets to ASCII unless ISO-2022 is requested (was: Terminal breaks on \x1b O) #10408

Closed

BasitAli mentioned this issue Jul 4, 2021

Print unsupported keypresses directly to console. react-native-community/cli#1441

Merged

zadjii-msft mentioned this issue Aug 9, 2021

Implement and action for manually clearing the Terminal (and conpty) buffer #10906

Merged

5 tasks

ghost added the In-PR This issue has a related PR label Aug 9, 2021

ghost closed this as completed in #10906 Sep 2, 2021

ghost added Resolution-Fix-Committed Fix is checked in, but it might be 3-4 weeks until a release. and removed In-PR This issue has a related PR labels Sep 2, 2021

DHowett mentioned this issue Oct 22, 2021

Clear terminal with keyboard shortcut rather than a command #11584

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DHowett mentioned this issue Dec 8, 2021

Add an option to clear the scroll-back buffer #11907

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zadjii-msft mentioned this issue Feb 18, 2022

Feature Request: Clear screen while running a process #12527

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Add a terminal-side shortcut for clearing the screen and/or scrollback #1882

Add a terminal-side shortcut for clearing the screen and/or scrollback #1882

prumbles commented Jul 8, 2019

mdtauk commented Jul 8, 2019

prumbles commented Jul 8, 2019

fzed51 commented Jul 11, 2019

zadjii-msft commented Jul 11, 2019

eduardonunesp commented Jan 7, 2020

DHowett-MSFT commented Jan 7, 2020

eduardonunesp commented Jan 7, 2020

DHowett-MSFT commented Jan 7, 2020

eduardonunesp commented Jan 7, 2020

xoofx commented Jan 21, 2020 •

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jijiechen commented Nov 8, 2020

csabka commented Mar 14, 2021

mia-riezebos commented Mar 24, 2021

carlosmunozrodriguez commented Mar 24, 2021

tommiv commented Mar 24, 2021

chilipepper987 commented Jun 13, 2021

astraw commented Jun 13, 2021

zadjii-msft commented Jul 29, 2021

VanilsonFernandes commented Jul 30, 2021

KaoruDev commented Sep 21, 2021 •

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KaoruDev commented Sep 21, 2021 •

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ghost commented Oct 20, 2021

Add a terminal-side shortcut for clearing the screen and/or scrollback #1882

Add a terminal-side shortcut for clearing the screen and/or scrollback #1882

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prumbles commented Jul 8, 2019

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prumbles commented Jul 8, 2019

fzed51 commented Jul 11, 2019

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KaoruDev commented Sep 21, 2021 • edited

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