Wednesday 1 June 2011

**UPDATED** Change the default terminal window size

I always heated the default size of the terminal window. The square size is to small to do any real work and it doesn't look right either with a wide screen, but looks a part it is not a great size for advanced users to do anything on it and always have to resize the window to suite my needs.



No more, here is a quick tip to always start the terminal window to the size of your liking. I can't remember the menu options from the all menu from gnome 2 but I'm sure any user can follow this steps. I'm using Unity.

1.- Press the super key to open the search lens and look for:
main menu
2.- Once the "Main Menu" application is running select "Accessories" on the left menu and then select "Terminal" on the second menu.

3.- Once you have the "Terminal" options is selected press the "Properties" button on the right. A new window will open with the terminal Launcher properties.

4.- Go to the "Command" entry and add this to the end of the entry:
--geometry=132x24
The finished entry should be:
gnome-terminal --geometry=132x24

5.- That's it. Close the windows and next time you launch the terminal the window will be resized. You may have to logout and log back in to work properly.


Play around with different sizes if you don't like the one I used. This should also work with other applications other than the terminal.

*********************UPDATE******************************

Since Ubuntu 11.10 the solution above doesn't work any more as Canonical have removed "Main menu" application. It doesn't seem to work either even if you install it from the Software Centre. Probably the way Unity works.

Here is a solution to change it. First go to:

~/.local/share/applications/

Use nautilus for this. Once you are in that folder locate the file for the terminal. Right click it and select "Properties" in the command entry add this as before:

gnome-terminal --geometry=132x24
That's it.

Just in case in your PC's don't have that file create a new one using Gedit an enter the following:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Terminal
Comment=Use the command line
TryExec=gnome-terminal
Exec=gnome-terminal --geometry=132x24
Icon=utilities-terminal
Type=Application
X-GNOME-DocPath=gnome-terminal/index.html
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=gnome-terminal
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=BugBuddyBugs
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=2.32.1
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Utility;TerminalEmulator;
StartupNotify=true
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-terminal
Terminal=false
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