Terminal pane
The plugin includes an integrated terminal that runs your remote login shell over the existing SSH session. Useful for quick git pull, dotfile tweaks, or tailing logs without leaving Obsidian.
Open it
Either:
- Command palette → “Remote SSH: Open terminal”
- Ribbon menu → “Terminal”
A terminal opens as a regular Obsidian pane; you can split it, drag it to a sidebar, etc.
What you get
- Your remote user’s
$SHELL(override in settings to pin a specific shell). - Full TTY: aliases, colours,
fzf,htop,vim,tmuxall work. - Resizes when you resize the pane.
- Persists across pane re-opens within a session — closing the pane retains scrollback until you disconnect.
Settings
Settings → Terminal:
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shell command | (use remote $SHELL) | Override with e.g. /usr/bin/zsh -l if you want a specific shell + login flag |
| Font size (px) | 12 | 6–32 |
| Scrollback (lines) | 1000 | 100–100,000; in-memory only, not persisted across re-opens |
Caveats
- Not an interactive
claude/vimsession in the strictest sense — it’s xterm.js, which handles 99% of TUI apps but trips on a few exotic ones (mc’s mouse, full-screenlesswith mouse wheel). For rare cases, fall back to a real terminal app. - Shell history is the remote shell’s history (
.bash_history,.zsh_history). Survives reconnects. - Environment: the terminal inherits the remote user’s login environment, NOT the plugin’s daemon environment. They are independent processes.
Why not just use a separate terminal app?
Two reasons:
- One auth chain: the terminal piggybacks on the SSH session the plugin already has open, so no extra auth prompt or jump-host re-traversal.
- Closer to your editor: dotfile tweaks,
git status, syncing scripts — the actions that pair with vault editing benefit from the colocation.
For long-running shells (tmux session, monitoring), a standalone terminal is still better. The plugin’s terminal is for quick interactions adjacent to your editing flow.