Xfce4-terminal has the functionality to have one drop-down window. This mode is inspired by consoles in computer games, such as Quake, in which a terminal slides down from the top of the screen when a key is pressed, and then slides back up when the key is pressed again. The drop-down functionality was added in Xfce4-terminal 0.6.1.
You can start the drop-down mode by running xfce4-terminal --drop-down
. Since the application has no keybinding code, it is advised to use Application Shortcuts for this.
The first time xfce4-terminal --drop-down
is passed to the application, it will create a drop-down window and show it on top of the active 1) monitor. Each other time the command is executed, the drop-down window will toggle its visibility.
When you start the drop-down window for the first time, the application opens a window on top of other windows at the top of the screen without window borders.
Drop-down window with 3 tabs |
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The drop-down preferences will be shown in the normal preferences dialog if opened from a drop-down window. You can do so by clicking the small Preferences icon in the buttom-right corner of the tab bar, right-click the notification area icon or right-click in the terminal window and choose Preferences....
Drop-down window Preferences |
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xfce4-terminal --drop-down
option is executed. If disabled, the window will stay on the monitor is was first started on.
When started the first time the --drop-down
option also accepts window and tab xfce4-terminal - Command-line Options parameters. You can use this to start a drop-down with multiple predefined commands. The example below will open three tabs in the drop-down window (with IRC client, music on console and process overview).
xfce4-terminal --drop-down --title "Irssi Client" -e irssi --tab -e mocp --tab --title "System Status" -e top
Another trick is to open a new tab in an existing drop-down window. You therefore need to start the with --tab
parameter, followed by --drop-down
. If no drop-down is running a new drop-down will be started.
xfce4-terminal --tab --drop-down --title "Disk Usage" -e df --hold
Note that some of the window options don't apply to the drop-down window, like --show-borders and --geometry since those are overridden by window specific preferences.