Customization
Themes, fonts, backgrounds, Focus Mode, and tool detection
Customization
MTerm is designed to look and feel exactly the way you want it. From color themes and fonts to background images and focus mode, every visual aspect of the terminal is configurable.
Theme Presets
MTerm ships with seven built-in themes, each carefully tuned for readability and aesthetics:
| Theme | Style |
|---|---|
| Cyberpunk Neon (default) | Electric blues and pinks on dark background. High contrast with a futuristic feel. |
| Tokyo Night | Soft, muted colors inspired by Tokyo’s nightscape. Easy on the eyes for long sessions. |
| Nord | Cool, arctic tones. Clean and professional. |
| Dracula | The classic dark theme with purple and green accents. |
| Solarized Dark | Ethan Schoonover’s precision color palette. Excellent contrast ratios. |
| Monochrome | Pure grayscale. No distractions, just text. |
| Matrix Green | Green on black. For those who want the classic terminal aesthetic. |
Custom Colors (Pro)
With the Pro plan, you get full ANSI color customization. This means you can change every color in the terminal’s 16-color ANSI palette individually:
- Standard 8 colors (black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white)
- Bright variants of all 8 colors
- Foreground and background colors
- Cursor color
- Selection highlight color
If you have a color scheme from another terminal emulator that you love, you can recreate it in MTerm.
Fonts
Choose from five terminal-optimized fonts:
| Font | Character |
|---|---|
| Menlo (default) | Apple’s monospace standard. Clean and well-hinted. |
| SF Mono | San Francisco Mono. Matches Apple’s system design language. |
| Courier New | The modernized Courier with improved hinting. |
| Courier | The classic typewriter-style monospace font. |
| Osaka-Mono | Optimized for Japanese text. Excellent CJK character rendering. |
| JetBrains Mono | Designed specifically for developers. Distinctive letter shapes. |
Font Size
Adjust font size with keyboard shortcuts for quick changes:
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Increase | Cmd + + |
| Decrease | Cmd + - |
| Reset to default | Cmd + 0 |
Bold Brightness Toggle
Control whether bold text is rendered brighter in addition to being bold. Some terminal color schemes are designed with this in mind; others look better with it turned off.
Background
Custom Background Images
Set any image as the terminal background. This can be a subtle texture, a wallpaper, or anything else you like.
Opacity Adjustment
Control the opacity of the terminal content layer over the background image. Lower opacity makes the background more visible; higher opacity prioritizes readability.
Blur Effects (Glassmorphism)
Apply a blur effect to the background for a frosted glass appearance. This gives the terminal a modern, layered look while keeping text readable. Combine with opacity adjustment to find the balance between aesthetics and readability that works for you.
Other Display Settings
Scrollbar Visibility
Control when the scrollbar appears:
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Always | Scrollbar is always visible |
| Hover | Scrollbar appears when you scroll and fades away after inactivity |
| Never | Scrollbar is hidden (scroll still works via touch/trackpad) |
Pane Divider Color
Customize the color of the borders between split panes to match your theme or make them more (or less) visible.
Cursor Visibility Settings
Configure cursor appearance and behavior, including cursor style and blink rate.
Focus Mode
Focus Mode strips away everything except the terminal content, giving you a distraction-free environment. Activate it with Cmd + Shift + F.
When Focus Mode is enabled:
- Tab bar is hidden — no visual tab indicators at the top
- Status bar is hidden — no connection info or toolbar
- Accessory bar is hidden — the soft key bar disappears (you can still use a hardware keyboard)
All of these are toggleable individually, so you can hide just the elements you find distracting while keeping the ones you need.
Auto-Enable
If you always want a clean screen when you open a terminal, you can set Focus Mode to activate automatically on every new terminal connection. Configure this in Settings.
Tool Detection
MTerm can auto-detect tools and environments from your terminal output and adapt its behavior accordingly.
How It Works
MTerm periodically scans the terminal output to detect what tools are running. When it detects a known tool (like tmux, Vim, or Claude Code), it can adjust its behavior — for example, forwarding mouse events to tmux or enabling Claude Code mode.
Configuration
- Scan interval — Configurable from 1.0 to 10.0 seconds. A shorter interval means faster detection but slightly more processing. The default strikes a good balance for most users.
- Built-in tool patterns — MTerm comes with detection patterns for common tools pre-configured.
- Custom tool patterns — Define your own patterns to detect custom tools or scripts. Specify a regex pattern and the behavior to activate when it matches.