viewpoint is a terminal multiplexer with a desktop-window-manager metaphor for Linux.

viewpoint presents floating windows in a WIMPy interface on your terminal. Each window runs its own shell (or any program) in a dedicated PTY, but with the amazing 1990s innovations in window chrome: draggable borders, a title bar with minimize/maximize/close buttons, and a taskbar. You move, resize, raise, snap, minimize and maximize windows with the mouse or keyboard, similarly as on a graphical desktop.

Early in development, things will change.

Build and dependencies

make

You need the development headers and libraries for notcurses, libvterm, libsixel and GPM, plus a C toolchain with forkpty (from libutil, part of glibc).

On Arch Linux: sudo pacman -S notcurses libvterm libsixel gpm base-devel

On Debian: sudo apt install libvterm-dev libsixel-dev libgpm-dev build-essential cmake ninja-build libavdevice-dev libunistring-dev (notcurses is not packaged in Debian 13, so install it from source and run sudo ldconfig, or wait for Debian 14)

notcurses, libvterm and libsixel are located via pkg-config. GPM is linked directly with -lgpm. For a mouse on the bare Linux console, you also need the gpm daemon running.

Run

./viewpoint

viewpoint expects to fully own the terminal. Running viewpoint inside another multiplexer will not work and is not supported. I don't see any reason why running another multiplexer inside viewpoint shouldn't work, but that isn't formally supported either.

Usage

Modes

viewpoint has one global toggle that flips between two modes:

• INTERPRET: window-manager chords (below) are handled by viewpoint; everything else is forwarded to the focused window's program.
• PASSTHROUGH: every keystroke (except the toggle key) is forwarded to the focused program

The toggle key works in both modes and is never forwarded to a program (except the settings menu). The current mode is shown on on the taskbar (INTERPRET / PASSTHROUGH).

We try to support all reasonably behaved terminals, but some deliver certain key combinations oddly (or never get them due to the DE capturing them, e.g. Alt+Tab).

Keymap

These are the default keybinds. They are fully editable through an in-app settings menu, or manually editing an XDG-style config file that it generates.

Key	Action
F12	Toggle INTERPRET ↔ PASSTHROUGH mode
Alt+Tab	Focus next window
Alt+Shift+Tab	Focus previous window
Alt+n	New window
Alt+F4	Close focused window
Alt+m	Minimize focused window
Alt+x	Toggle maximize of focused window
Alt+1 … Alt+9	Focus / restore window in taskbar slot N
Alt+←/→/↑/↓	Move focused window
Alt+Shift+←/→/↑/↓	Resize focused window
Shift+PgUp / Shift+PgDn	Scroll the focused window's scrollback back / forward
Alt+c	Copy the focused window's selection
Alt+v	Paste into the focused window
Alt+, / Alt+.	Scroll the taskbar left / right (when more windows are open than fit)

Mouse

Action	Effect
Click an unfocused window	Focus / raise it
Click [_] / [▢] / [x] title buttons	Minimize / maximize / close
Drag the title bar	Move the window
Drag a window border or corner	Resize the window
Drag across a window's text	Select it (Alt+c copies it)
Double-click / triple-click text	Select the word / the whole line
Shift+drag	Select even when the app grabbed the mouse
Middle-click a window	Paste into it
Scroll the wheel over a window	Scroll its scrollback (forwarded to the app instead if it grabbed the mouse)
Drag the title bar to a screen edge / corner	Snap to half / quarter (outline preview shown; applied on release)
Click a taskbar slot	Focus, restore if minimized, or minimize if already focused
Horizontal scroll / click the ◄ ► arrows	Scroll the taskbar when more windows are open than fit
Click the taskbar mode region	Toggle global mode
Click a desktop icon	Perform the corresponding action
Drag a desktop icon	Move it; its position is remembered in the config file

Configuration

viewpoint reads an config file from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/viewpoint/viewpoint.conf. It will be created automatically on first run. It can be manually edited, and the in-app settings menu also stores configuration in this file.

In-app settings panel

The ⚙ Settings icon at the top-left of the desktop opens a modal settings panel. It lands on a grid of tiles; pick a tile (click, or ↑/↓/←/→ then Enter) to open it. A click outside the panel (or Esc) closes the panel.

The Keybindings tile opens the keybinding editor. It lists every action with its current keybinding.

• ↑/↓ (or click a row) to select an action
• Enter (or click the row again) then press the chord you want. Changes take effect instantly.
• D to unbind the selected action
• S to save now, Esc (or click outside the panel) to return to the grid

The Appearance tile changes the look:

• ↑/↓ (or click a row) to select a row
• ←/→ to change the Theme, Background mode, Image fit, or the Keep tweaks on theme switch toggle (applied instantly as a live preview)
• Enter on Image path to type/paste a background image file; Enter on a color row to type a hex color (RRGGBB)
• D resets the selected color (or clears the image) back to the theme's default
• By default, switching the theme resets your per-color and background tweaks so the new preset applies fully; flip Keep tweaks on theme switch to yes to carry them across theme changes instead
• S to save now, Esc (or click outside the panel) to return to the grid

The Desktop Icons tile manages your own desktop icons:

• A (or Enter on the + Add an icon row) to add one: type its name, Enter, then type the command it runs. Leave the command empty for your default shell.
• Enter on a row to change what it runs, R to rename it, D to delete it
• The command runs under your $SHELL ($SHELL -c <command>), so pipes, redirections and shell functions work. The window closes when the command exits
• S to save now, Esc (or click outside the panel) to return to the grid

The Terminal tile adjusts per-window scrollback behavior:

• ↑/↓ (or click a row) to select a setting
• ←/→ (or the mouse wheel) to adjust it — Scrollback lines (history retained per window; 0 disables it) and Scroll step (lines moved per wheel notch). Changes apply to open windows immediately.
• Enter on Copy also runs (or click the row again) to type the shell command a copy pipes the selected text into, e.g. wl-copy
• S to save now, Esc (or click outside the panel) to return to the grid

The Animations tile switches animated chrome on and off.

If a setting you change is also governed by your manual config section, the status line warns you, but the manual section wins, so that change won't survive a restart.

Configuration file

The config file has two parts:

# viewpoint config

# in-app/automatically set configuration:
# ...the editor manages this section, don't edit it by hand...
# manual configuration:
# ...your hand-written settings live here and are preserved verbatim...

Editing the file by hand

It is a line-oriented key = value file; # starts a comment and blank lines are ignored.

# Add or change a keybinding:  bind = <chord> <action>
bind = alt+enter new
bind = alt+q     close

# Drop a default chord:
unbind = alt+f4

# Change the mode toggle key:
toggle = f12

# Terminal behavior:
scrollback  = 2000   # per-window scrollback lines (0 disables it)
scroll_step = 3      # lines scrolled per mouse-wheel notch

# A copy also pipes the selected text into this shell command (the internal
# register and OSC 52 are always used; this is for hosts that refuse OSC 52):
clipboard_command = wl-copy

# Animations (default true): fade the resize size indicator out, rather than
# dropping it the instant its hold expires.
size_indicator_fade = true

# Theme (presets: midnight, paper, forest, amber, mono):
theme = forest

# Desktop background (overrides the theme's): one of
background = solid               # flat fill in the theme's colors
background = pattern ✦           # tile a glyph across the desktop
background = image ~/wall.png    # an image (needs a pixel-capable terminal)
bg_fit     = stretch             # image fit: stretch | scale | center | tile

# Override an individual color on top of the chosen theme:  color = <element> <hex>
color = title_focus_bg 802040
color = desktop_bg     101216

# Keep color/background overrides when switching themes (default false, i.e. a
# theme switch resets them so the new preset applies in full):
keep_customizations = false

# Pin a desktop icon's top-left corner:  icon = <name> <x> <y>
# (names: settings, exit. Normally written automatically when you drag an icon.)
icon = settings 1 1
icon = exit 60 20

# Your own launcher icons:  launcher = <x> <y> <label> | <command>
# -1 -1 means "not placed yet": it is auto-stacked under the Settings tile until
# you drag it. An empty command opens a plain shell. The label ends at the first
# '|', so the command may contain pipes. Editing the list in-app takes it over:
# these lines are then rewritten in the in-app section and dropped from here.
launcher = -1 -1 Scratch shell |
launcher = 2 12 Logs | journalctl -f | less

A chord is an optional alt+/shift+/ctrl+ modifier prefix followed by a key: a single character (n, x), a function key (f1…f60), or a named key (tab, enter, esc, space, left/right/up/down, home, end, pgup, pgdn, delete, insert, backspace).

The available actions are: focus_next, focus_prev, new, close, minimize, maximize, move_left/move_right/move_up/move_down, resize_left/resize_right/resize_up/resize_down, scroll_up/scroll_down (scroll the focused window's scrollback history), copy/paste, slot1…slot9 (focus/restore the window in taskbar slot N), and taskbar_left/taskbar_right (scroll the taskbar's window slots).

Graphics

viewpoint renders inline sixel images (but it's still kinda busted, working on this. sixels MAY mess up your state right now). This needs a terminal that itself supports sixel or kitty graphics. For technical reasons, graphics are re-composited, so viewpoint may take an inner application outputting sixel and reencode it as kitty depending on your terminal settings. On a terminal without graphics support, the sixel is silently dropped.

Graphics limitations

Resizing a window clears its images.

Roadmap

• kitty graphics passthrough support
• viewpoint-native widget framework

Maybes

• fake framebuffers for raw-framebuffer-writing graphics support?

Acknowledgements

This project uses the following libraries:

• notcurses
• libvterm
• libsixel
• GPM

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This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only (GPL-3.0-only), and the borrowed Linux-kernel .clang-format is GPL-2.0-only.