Settings Terminal and Automation

This page lists the options in three sections of Settings: Terminal, GitHub and Automation. Open Settings with Cmd+, and pick the section on the left. Every change applies right away.

Terminal

The Terminal section: the shell, the font with a live preview, the cursor and the behavior options.

The section has five groups. A preview under the font box shows a prompt, a commit line and tricky characters (0O 1lI) with your choices. Open terminals pick up the changes at once. How the terminal itself works is in Terminal.

Shell

Setting	What it does	Default
Default shell	The shell new terminals start: Login shell (your account's own shell, the one Terminal.app uses) or any shell found on your computer, shown with its path. On Windows the first choice is Default: PowerShell 7, else Windows PowerShell.	Login shell, shown with its name, such as Login shell (zsh)

A saved shell that is gone says (not found, the login shell is used). The arrow next to + in the terminal panel starts any other shell once.

Font

Setting	What it does	Default
Font family	A comma-separated list of fonts. Leave it empty to use the editor font. Use the Editor Font clears it. Click a font name below the box to use it.	Empty (the editor font)
Font size	9 to 24 px in half steps.	13 px (a size you saved earlier stays)
Line height	A multiple of the font's own line height, 1.0 to 2.0.	1.2
Letter spacing	Extra pixels between characters, 0 to 5.	0 px
Font weight	Normal, Medium or Bold. Medium needs a font that has it, such as SF Mono or JetBrains Mono.	Normal
Bold text weight	The weight of text that programs print in bold.	Bold
Font ligatures	Draws => and != as single symbols with fonts such as Fira Code. A ligature splits where colors change or under the cursor. Ligatures draw without GPU acceleration.	Off
Icons from patched fonts	Patched fonts (Nerd Fonts, Powerline fonts) are fonts with extra icon symbols added. This adds them as fallbacks, for prompts like Powerlevel10k, Starship and oh-my-posh. Install a Nerd Font such as MesloLGS NF, or Symbols Nerd Font Mono to keep your own font.	On

Cursor

Setting	What it does	Default
Cursor style	Block, Bar or Underline.	Block
Cursor blink	Blinks while the terminal has focus.	On

Behavior

Setting	What it does	Default
Scrollback	Lines kept for scrolling back, 1,000 to 100,000. A full terminal uses about 2 KB per line in a wide window: about 10 MB at 5,000 lines and 200 MB at 100,000. Type a number and press Enter.	5,000
Copy on selection	Selecting text copies it to the clipboard.	Off
Find in terminal	Cmd+F searches the output. Off, the search code is never loaded.	On
Clickable file paths	Cmd+click a path such as src/app.ts:12:5 to open it at that line. Only files inside an open folder become links.	On
Drop files to type their paths	Dropping files on a terminal types their paths, quoted for the shell.	On
Visual bell	A short flash when the shell rings the bell, or a dot on a terminal that is out of sight.	On
Smooth scrolling	Animates scrolling with the mouse wheel.	Off
Option as Meta key	Option+B, Option+F and other emacs keys work in the shell. Off, Option types characters such as å.	Off

The Keyboard row is a reminder: Ctrl+ shows or hides the terminal, Ctrl+Shift+ opens a new one, and in a terminal Cmd+C copies, Cmd+V pastes, Cmd+K clears, Cmd+F finds and Cmd+\ splits.

Rendering

Setting	What it does	Default
GPU acceleration	Draws with WebGL (the graphics card), which keeps busy output smooth, and falls back to normal drawing when WebGL is missing or fails. It uses about 70 MB for the first terminal and 10 MB for each other one; off saves that.	On
Unicode 11 widths	Emoji and wide characters take the right number of columns. Applies to output printed after the change.	On

Every switch applies to open terminals at once. What each part does is on Terminal Features.

GitHub

The GitHub account is used by Git > GitHub: Share Project on GitHub, Sync Fork and Create Gist. Pushing and pulling keep using git's own credentials. You can sign in in two ways:

• Sign in with a token: paste a classic personal access token with the repo and gist scopes and click Sign In. It is checked with GitHub, then kept only in the system keychain, never in settings.json.
• Use GitHub CLI: if the gh tool is installed and signed in, Nibtree asks it for its login each time and stores nothing.

Once signed in, the section shows your account and a Sign Out button. See GitHub.

Automation

Automation lets other programs use Nibtree. Everything here is off by default.

MCP server

MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets AI tools such as Claude Code or Cursor read what Nibtree shows and use its features.

Setting	What it does	Default
MCP server	Starts a server that only listens on this Mac. Every request needs the secret token.	Off
Status	Off, Starting..., Running at and the address, or an error. Available MCP Tools... opens the list of tools, where each one can be switched on or off.
Port	The port on 127.0.0.1 (the address that means this Mac), shared with the command line tool, 1024 to 65535. A change restarts the server.	48731

While the server runs you also see the Secret token (Show, Copy, New Token), a command to Connect Claude Code, and a config to copy for Other MCP clients.

Command line tool

Setting	What it does	Default
Command line tool	Lets scripts and AI agents in a terminal use the same tools, for example nibtree cli tools. Nibtree must be running.	Off
Install	Install in ~/.local/bin (Install on Windows) adds the nibtree command; Remove takes it away. If that folder is not on your PATH, a line to add to ~/.zshrc is shown (on Windows, the folder to add to your PATH).

The tool switches in Help > Available MCP Tools... apply here too. See MCP and CLI.

Memory log

A debugging aid: it writes a line whenever the app's memory changes, next to what was on screen and when scrolling started and stopped.

Setting	What it does	Default
Log memory changes	Turns the log on. AI tools can read it with read_memory_log.	Off
Read memory every	250 ms, 500 ms, 1 s or 2 s.	500 ms
Write a line when it changes by	0 MB (every reading), 1 MB, 5 MB or 20 MB.	5 MB
Log file	Where the log is, ~/.nibtree/logs/memory.log, with Reveal in Finder (Reveal in File Explorer on Windows).

The log starts over when it passes 5 MB, and the previous one is kept as memory.log.1. See Debugging.

Related

• Settings
• Settings Files
• Terminal
• MCP and CLI