st - ArchWiki

# st

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st is a simple terminal implementation for Xorg by suckless. It is intended to serve as a lightweight replacement for xterm or urxvt. It currently supports 256 colors, true colors, most VT10X escape sequences, UTF-8, X11 copy/paste, anti-aliased fonts, fallback fonts, resizing, shortcuts, and line drawing.

## Installation

Install the stAUR package or st-gitAUR for the development version.

- On Wayland, st uses Xwayland; if you want a similar terminal avoiding the Xwayland memory footprint, consider using wterm-gitAUR.

## Configuration

st is configured through its `config.h` file which is copied over at compile time. Defaults are stored in `config.def.h` which is included with the source. Consider maintaining your own `config.h` and PKGBUILD.

### Shell

To change the default shell for st, edit this line:

    static char *shell = "/bin/sh";

Or start st with the desired shell as last argument:

    $ st options fish

### Term

To change the terminal type, edit this line:

    static char *termname = "st-256color";

st will set the `TERM` variable with the value of `termname`.

### Font

Edit the following line as you prefer:

    static char *font = "Liberation Mono:pixelsize=12:antialias=false:autohint=false";

You can also pass the value of the font in the command line:

    $ st -f "Liberation Mono:size=12"
    $ st -f 'Liberation Mono-12'

Font names can be found with `fc-list`.

### Cursor

By default the mouse pointer is `XC_xterm;` which often can be hard to find. To change it to your cursor theme's normal one, edit the following:

    static unsigned int mouseshape = XC_left_ptr;

### Colors

Edit the following lines to set foreground, background, and cursor colors:

    unsigned int defaultfg = 7;
    unsigned int defaultbg = 0;
    static unsigned int defaultcs = 256;

The values refer to the `*colorname[]` array in the config file. You can use the default colors or add yours in `#rrggbb`:

    static const char *colorname[] = {
       	/* 8 normal colors */
           "black",
           "red3",
           "green3",
           "yellow3",
           "blue2",
           "magenta3",
           "cyan3",
           "gray90",

           /* 8 bright colors */
           "gray50",
           "red",
           "green",
           "yellow",
           "#5c5cff",
           "magenta",
           "cyan",
           "white",

           [255] = 0,

           /* more colors can be added after 255 to use with DefaultXX */
           "#cccccc",
           "#eeeeee",
           "#111111",
     };

    /*
     * Default colors (colorname index)
     * foreground, background, cursor
     */
    unsigned int defaultfg = 257;
    unsigned int defaultbg = 258;
    static unsigned int defaultcs = 256;

Tools exist to facilitate the creation of color palettes. For example terminal sexy has a set of pre-made ones and exports directly to st's format (see [1]).

There is a patch for the Solarized color scheme. See [2] or st-solarizedAUR[broken link: package not found] to install it.

### Patches

There are many patches available from the suckless website. To apply a patch, download the diff and apply it with `patch -i patch.diff`. This alters the default config file `config.def.h`; if you are maintaining your own `config.h`, copy your configs from `config.h` into a copy of `config.def.h` and rename it `config.h`, then `make clean install`.

### Desktop entry

To simplify launching st with a decent font (e.g. adobe-source-code-pro-fonts) in a desktop environment, you can also create a desktop entry:

    ~/.local/share/applications/st.desktop

    [Desktop Entry]
    Name=Simple Terminal
    GenericName=Terminal
    Comment=Suckless terminal emulator for X
    Exec=st -t "Simple Terminal" -f "Source Code Pro:style=Semibold:size=12"
    Terminal=false
    Type=Application
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Icon=utilities-terminal
    Categories=System;TerminalEmulator;
    Keywords=shell;prompt;command;commandline;cmd;

The menu entry will appear as Simple Terminal in the System Tools application list.

## Troubleshooting

### Keyboard

Add the following to `~/.inputrc` or `/etc/inputrc` if `Delete` is not working properly in some applications:

    set enable-keypad on

If the above does not work with some applications such as IPython using bash, instead, turn off `enable-keypad` and add the following to your `~/.bashrc`, as mentioned in the st FAQ:

    printf '\033[?1h\033=' >/dev/tty

### Vim

#### The background colour of text in vim will not fill in anything that is not a character

Try setting the value of `termname` in your `config.h` to `st-256color` and recompiling. And do not set the `TERM` var in your shell, at least not to `st-256color` as this seems to cause the issue.

Another solution, perhaps a better one, is to have the following lines in your `.vimrc` file:

    if &term =~ '256color'
        " disable Background Color Erase (BCE) so that color schemes
        " render properly when inside 256-color tmux and GNU screen.
        " see also https://sunaku.github.io/vim-256color-bce.html
        set t_ut=
    endif

#### 256color and truecolor support not working in tmux or otherwise

First, make sure you are not setting and exporting the value of `TERM` in your `~/.bashrc` as mentioned in this thread

Note: Please do not explicitly set `TERM`. Do it right by setting the `default-terminal` setting in your `tmux.conf`

Second, make sure the version of `vim` you are using is `>=7.4.1799`, which is when `termguicolors` was added.

Finally, add the following to `~/.vimrc`:

    set t_8f=^[[38;2;%lu;%lu;%lum        " set foreground color
    set t_8b=^[[48;2;%lu;%lu;%lum        " set background color
    colorscheme Tomorrow-Night-Eighties
    set t_Co=256                         " Enable 256 colors
    set termguicolors                    " Enable GUI colors for the terminal to get truecolor

Note: `^[` is a literal escape (<Esc>) character that prefixes each of the values for `t_8f` and `t_8b`. It is a single character, which can be reproduced in `vim`. In INSERT mode, press `<C-v>-<Esc>` (Control+v then press Esc). You will still be in INSERT mode; press <Esc> again to return to NORMAL mode.
Tip: It is recommended to set the values for `t_8f` and `t_8b` prior to setting `colorscheme`, `t_Co` and `termguicolors`.

For more information, see the `:help` in `vim` for: `xterm-true-color`, `t_8f`, `t_8b`

### Crashes if page contains emoji characters

St may crash if you try to load a page with color emojis that have no associated glyph, seen specifically with fonts like ttf-joypixels, returning something similar to this if run from another terminal:

    X Error of failed request:  BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length error)
     Major opcode of failed request:  139 (RENDER)
     Minor opcode of failed request:  20 (RenderAddGlyphs)
     Serial number of failed request:  5118
     Current serial number in output stream:  5209

In order to fix it, simply install ttf-symbolaAUR for unicode coverage.

Another solution is to install the libxft-bgraAUR package. This provides a patched version of libXft which supports color emoji.

## See also

- Homepage
- Frequently asked questions
- Official git repository

Categories:

- Terminal emulators
- Suckless

Hidden category:

- Pages with broken package links