ShellBar ShellBar
ShellBar centralizes your most frequently used commands into a dedicated action bar within the shell, turning them into instant, one-click shortcuts. Built on libghostty-vt for Linux.
Description
ShellBar is a tool designed to streamline how developers interact with their projects, especially in complex environments such as monorepos.
In modern development workflows, terminal commands are often long, repetitive, and hard to remember. They are typically scattered across package.json files or internal documentation, forcing developers to spend valuable time searching for how to run common tasks.
ShellBar solves this by centralizing your most frequently used commands into a dedicated action bar within the shell, turning them into instant, one-click shortcuts.
This becomes especially powerful in monorepos or multi-environment projects (local, staging, production), as well as setups that vary by platform (web, desktop, mobile). Instead of repeatedly consulting documentation or navigating through scripts, developers can immediately trigger the right workflow.
The result is a more focused, efficient, and productive environment where operational friction is reduced, allowing developers to concentrate on what truly matters: building software.
Visually it's a Ghostty-like terminal for Linux (GTK4 + libadwaita, dark theme, inline tabs). The difference is the button bar that you configure to run any command on the active terminal.
Screenshots
Features
Configurable Toolbar
Launch any command with a single click. Define buttons in ~/.config/shellbar/config with name, command, and icon.
Ghostty VT Engine
Full VT100-520 emulation, 256 colors, true color, and Kitty graphics protocol — powered by libghostty-vt.
Multiple Tabs
Each tab runs its own shell with independent PTY. Dynamic titles via OSC 0/2. Ctrl+T to create new tabs.
Clipboard UX
Copy-on-select, double-click word, triple-click line. URL hover underline with Ctrl+Click. Middle-click paste. Smooth auto-scroll.
Hot Reload
Edit your config and send SIGHUP to reload buttons and keybinds instantly — no restart needed.
Utility Bar
Auto-detects installed TUI tools (btop, htop, lazygit, vim, tmux…) and launches them in the active terminal.
Terminal Search
Ctrl+F opens an inline search bar with real-time matching through scrollback. Navigate results with arrows, matches highlighted in green with fade-out on click.
Font Zoom
Ctrl+= and Ctrl+- to resize the terminal font on the fly. A zoom percentage chip appears at the bottom with a smooth fade animation.
Button Feedback
Toolbar buttons flash with a brief highlight on click, giving immediate visual confirmation before the command runs.
SVG Icon Toggle
Utility bar toggle uses an embedded tools icon that glows green when active — no dependency on system icon themes.
Command Palette
Ctrl+P opens a searchable command palette combining shell history and PATH executables. Results ranked by usage frequency.
Ghost Autocomplete
Inline ghost-text suggestions as you type — powered by your shell history first, then falling back to PATH executables. Accept with Right arrow.
Button Bar Position
Place the button bar on any side: top, bottom, left, or right. Hot-reloadable via SIGHUP and configurable in Preferences → Settings.
Resize Overlay
When the window is resized, terminal dimensions (cols × rows) appear in a smooth fade-in chip overlay — same design as the zoom indicator.
Tab Animations
New tabs slide in with a smooth 200ms animation. Tab pills are styled as true tabs with straight top corners and curved bottom.
ShellBar is NOT a fork of Ghostty
ShellBar uses libghostty-vt as a
library via CMake FetchContent —
no patches, no upstream modifications, no merge conflicts.
This keeps the project independent, lightweight, and easy to maintain
while benefiting from Ghostty's industry-leading VT engine.
Install
Homebrew — Linux
brew tap rendergraf/shellbar brew install shellbar
Flatpak — any Linux distro
flatpak install flathub io.github.rendergraf.shellbar
Snap Store — Ubuntu & derivatives
sudo snap install shellbar
Nix / NixOS
nix-shell -p shellbar
Copr — Fedora community repo
sudo dnf copr enable rendergraf/shellbar sudo dnf install shellbar
Fedora / RHEL — pre-built .rpm
curl -LO https://github.com/rendergraf/shellbar/releases/latest/download/shellbar-1.9.0-1.x86_64.rpm sudo rpm -i shellbar-1.9.0-1.x86_64.rpm
Debian / Ubuntu — pre-built .deb
curl -LO https://github.com/rendergraf/shellbar/releases/latest/download/shellbar_1.9.0_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i shellbar_1.9.0_amd64.deb sudo apt-get install -f
Arch Linux — AUR (recommended)
yay -S shellbar
Arch Linux — pre-built package
curl -LO https://github.com/rendergraf/shellbar/releases/latest/download/shellbar-1.9.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst sudo pacman -U shellbar-1.9.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
AppImage — portable, any distro
chmod +x ShellBar-1.9.0-x86_64.AppImage ./ShellBar-1.9.0-x86_64.AppImage
Download from GitHub Releases
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/rendergraf/shellbar cd shellbar cmake -B build -G Ninja cmake --build build ./build/shellbar
Configuration
ShellBar uses a key = value format
compatible with Ghostty. Create ~/.config/shellbar/config to
define your buttons and keybinds.
toolbar-button = name="Storybook", command="pnpm storybook", icon="media-playback-start"
toolbar-button = name="Build", command="pnpm build", icon="emblem-system"
toolbar-button = name="Test", command="pnpm test", icon="emblem-default"
# Button bar position (top / bottom / left / right)
toolbar-position = "bottom"
# Keybinds
keybind = action="copy", key="c", mods="ctrl+shift"
keybind = action="paste", key="v", mods="ctrl+shift"