Session recording

Record what a terminal shows so you can replay it later: find the command that failed, show a colleague exactly what happened, or keep a record of work on a production server. Recordings stay on this computer, encrypted, and are never synced.

What is recorded

Everything the terminal prints, with its timing, and every resize.
Each command you submit, with its exit code, so the replay has a command list. This needs bash or zsh; see Command blocks.
Not your keystrokes. Passwords you type at a prompt aren't captured. But anything a command prints is, including a secret it echoes.

A recording you start by hand begins with a snapshot of the screen as it was, so the replay opens on the prompt you started from.

Start and stop

For the focused terminal pane, any of these:

⌘⇧R (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows, Linux);
the Record button in the terminal header, which turns red and reads Recording while active;
right-click the terminal, or its tab → Start recording / Stop recording.

A recording tab shows a slowly pulsing red dot.

Record automatically

Per host — edit the host and turn on Session recording → Record sessions. Every terminal opened to that host is recorded.
Local shells — Settings → Terminal → Session recording → Record local shells. Every new local terminal is recorded. Shells that are already open aren't affected.

Reconnects, crashes and quitting

A recording continues across a reconnect, so a dropped and restored session stays one recording.
If the app stops mid-recording, for example after a crash or a forced quit, the recording is kept and marked Interrupted. Everything saved up to that point plays back.

Where recordings are kept

Each recording is encrypted with its own key, protected by your operating system's secure storage, and compressed on disk. Old recordings are cleaned up by age and total size. See Recording settings & retention.

Find your recordings

Click Session Recordings in the top bar, or choose Open recordings on a terminal's right-click menu. See Replay a recording.