Reset Terminal

Reset-Alacritty.md

Introduction

To reset your terminal, you can call reset from your shell, which is generally included with the target operating systems.

If you want to reset when you are not at a shell prompt (i.e., inside some other application), we can send an escape sequence in another way.

As an example, we can send a special escape sequence to the Nth tty:

echo -e "\ec" > /dev/pts/$N

Since Alacritty supports keybindings to execute arbitrary scripts, it is possible to map this reset action to some key combination.

This can be 1️⃣ wrapped into a script, which 2️⃣ Alacritty can be configured to execute.

1️⃣ Create script

You can use the script below to send the desired escape code.

ℹ️ First, the script extracts the PID of Alacritty from a known environment variable, ALACRITTY_LOG.

ℹ️ ALACRITTY_LOG has the form /tmp/Alacritty-1234.log, where 1234 corresponds to the process ID of Alacritty.

Copy the script to some well known location, for example bin in your home directory.

#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "${ALACRITTY_LOG}" ]; then exit 1; fi

TERM_PID="${ALACRITTY_LOG//[^0-9]/}"
tty=$(ps o tty= --ppid $TERM_PID)

echo -e "\ec" > /dev/$tty

2️⃣ Configure alacritty

In your alacritty.yml config, add a keybind to the script. For example, to bind CTRL+K to the reset action, add the following to the key_bindings section:

- { key: K,  mods: Ctrl,  command: path/to/reset-alacritty }

🎉 And you're all set. The rest of this doc just contains some info for the curious.

The config can be just the name of the script if your PATH is set load your expected binaries correctly.

- { key: K,  mods: Ctrl,  command: reset-alacritty }

A general solution

If you are on Linux and using X11, this alternative script using xdotool should be compatible with any given terminal emulator.

#!/bin/sh

focus_pid=$(xdotool getactivewindow getwindowpid)

tty=$(ps o tty= --ppid $focus_pid)

echo -e "\ec" > /dev/$tty

References

1. alacritty/alacritty#4152 (comment)
2. alacritty/alacritty#4199 (comment)

Discussions

1. alacritty/alacritty#4494
2. alacritty/alacritty#3997

Version History

• 0.1: Initial document made for the Alacritty wiki
  • Destroyed (i.e., rejected) from there

the script does not work on mac. is there any mac version or alternative?

This also does not work on my Mac. I have exactly followed the steps and created an executable script. But nothing happens if I enter the key binding.

I execute alacritty ! (alacritty msg create-window) && alacritty, meaning ps o tty= --ppid gives multiple outputs. Meaning the workaround does not work in this case :/

My workaround, put somewhere in your PS1 (prompt):

printf '\033]0;%s\007' "$USER@$HOSTNAME - $(ps -p $$ -o tty=)"

This will add your tty to the title of the window. Then read the title of the focused window, extract the tty, and send clear:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "${ALACRITTY_LOG}" ]; then exit 1; fi
tty=$(swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -r '.. | select(.type?) | select(.focused==true).name' | awk -F "-" '{print $NF}' |  tr -d ' ')
echo -e "\ec" > "/dev/${tty}"

Absolutely blows my mind that a standard feature I've used in terminal emulators for OVER TWENTY YEARS is a "closed, wontfix" by the dev.