con

Settings

con should feel good before you change anything. Use Settings when you want to make the terminal fit your hands: choose a theme, connect an AI provider, tune suggestions, add skills, or change shortcuts.

Open Settings from the app menu on macOS, the gear button on Windows and Linux, or the Command Palette. Appearance changes apply as you tune them, so you can leave Settings open while checking opacity, blur, fonts, and background images.

If Con Cannot Start

If Con cannot read your settings, it opens a recovery window instead of silently starting with defaults or changing your file. The window shows the file path and the error. Choose Open Settings File to correct it, then Try Again.

This can happen after opening an older Con version with settings written by a newer one. In that case, use Check for Updates (or Get Latest Con) rather than deleting settings you still need. Copy Details gives you the exact error if you need help. Your terminal session is not started until settings validate successfully.

General

General contains app-level behavior:

Default Shell overrides the command Con starts in new panes. Leave it blank to follow the platform default: your Windows Terminal profile on Windows, or $SHELL on macOS and Linux. Arguments and quoted paths are supported. Saving the setting and restarting Con affects new panes; existing shells are left alone.

If you prefer con not to save terminal text between launches, turn off Restore Terminal Text in General. Layout profiles never include terminal text. To wipe terminal text already saved on disk, run Clear Restored Terminal History from Command Palette.

Command Palette

Press ⌘ ⇧ P on macOS, or ⌃ ⇧ P on Windows and Linux.

The Command Palette is the fastest way to find actions you do not use every minute. Search for Settings, workspace profiles, pane actions, surface actions, updates, privacy actions, and other commands. When an action has a shortcut, con shows it beside the action.

Appearance

Appearance controls the parts of con you look at all day:

Con Appearance settings with theme and transparency controls

App Icon previews your choice in the Dock and Cmd-Tab on macOS. Save Appearance to keep the selection and update the installed .app icon used by Finder and system search. Search tools may cache their icons. Choose Classic and save to restore the bundled icon.

The installed app must be writable; running from a read-only disk image or with cargo run only changes the running icon. Con reapplies the saved file icon at startup after an app update. Custom icons use macOS file metadata, not changes to the signed icon resource. This metadata can make codesign --strict reject a customized installation even though ordinary signature verification passes; release artifacts are still verified strictly before distribution.

Start with readability. Pick a theme with clear contrast, then adjust opacity or blur only if the terminal remains easy to scan.

UI and terminal font sizes also scale the icons beside their text. Icon growth is intentionally bounded, so larger type remains balanced in narrow panes and compact window chrome.

Use Add Fallback when the primary terminal font does not cover CJK, emoji, or symbols. Fallbacks are searched in the displayed order; use the arrow buttons to reorder them and the trash button to remove one. Con always keeps its bundled Nerd Font after your choices for prompt icons, followed by the operating system fallback cascade. Changes preview immediately in open terminal panes.

The same ordered list can be configured in con.conf (con-terminal.conf on Windows):

font-family = "JetBrains Mono"
font-family = "Sarasa Mono SC"
font-family = "Segoe UI Emoji"

Pane title bars appear only when a tab has multiple panes. Keep them on if you want direct close/fullscreen controls and drag-to-rearrange. Turn them off if you prefer a sparse terminal surface and use shortcuts or the terminal context menu for pane actions.

Additional font-family entries are optional. Con appends its bundled icon font before the system fallback cascade. See Configuration for migration, native includes, and platform limits.

con can import Ghostty themes. Copy a theme, choose Load from Clipboard, preview it, then save it when it feels right.

AI providers

The Providers section stores the connection details for the model hosts you use. The AI section chooses the active provider and model for the agent panel, Command Palette AI actions, and AI fallback suggestions.

con supports Anthropic, OpenAI, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI-compatible hosts, MiniMax, Moonshot, Z.AI, DeepSeek, Groq, Gemini, Ollama, OpenRouter, Mistral, Together, Cohere, Perplexity, and xAI.

Use the strongest model for agent work when the answer matters. Use a faster or cheaper model for suggestions if you want inline help without slowing down the terminal.

ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot can use OAuth, so you can leave the API key empty for those sign-in flows. ChatGPT fetches its subscription model catalog after sign-in; use Fetch Models to refresh it later. Con refreshes expired OAuth access tokens before discovery and retains the last successful catalog across restarts, scoped to the account and endpoint. OpenAI-compatible hosts can fetch models from /models when the host supports it. If the host has no models endpoint, type the model ID manually and save it.

ChatGPT Subscription defaults to GPT-5.6 Sol. Its fallback list includes Astra, Sol, Terra, and Luna; actual availability depends on the account. Reasoning effort offers the levels supported by both the model catalog and Con's current adapter (up to xhigh). Leave it on Provider default to omit the override. The configuration key is con.agent.providers.chatgpt.reasoning_effort = high. Saved retired subscription models remain visible with a replacement hint; Con does not silently rewrite the selection. These retirement checks do not apply to the separate OpenAI API provider.

The provider picker in the agent panel shows configured providers. If a provider is missing there, configure it first in Settings.

Tool approval

The agent should act in view. Leave tool approval on when you are in an unfamiliar repository, a production shell, or any session where mistakes are expensive.

Auto-Approve Tools lets the agent run tools without asking for each action. Use it only in workspaces where you trust the task, the model, and the recovery path.

Command suggestions

Suggestions are terminal help, not a second prompt.

con checks local command history first. If history has no strong match, AI Command Suggestions can ask the configured suggestion provider for a fallback. You can turn this off, or route suggestions to a different provider and model from the main agent.

Treat ghost text as a proposal. Accept it when it is what you meant, ignore it when it is not.

Skills

Skills are slash commands backed by a SKILL.md file. They are useful for work you repeat: release checks, project playbooks, debugging routines, writing rules, or team-specific workflows.

Type / in the input bar or agent panel to browse available skills.

Project skills live with the current workspace:

Global skills follow you across projects:

On Windows, the config skills folder is ~/.config/con-terminal/skills.

Keep project skills for shared project habits. Keep global skills for personal habits. If names collide, the project skill wins so a repository can define its own local meaning.

For the workflow loop, see Skills and workflows.

Shortcuts

The Keys section shows editable shortcuts for app, pane, and surface actions. It also includes the optional global Summon / Hide Con shortcut. That shortcut is off by default because global hotkeys can conflict with launchers and window managers.

On macOS, Keys also includes Quick Terminal. It is off by default. When enabled, it opens a dedicated floating Con window from anywhere, separate from the main window. The default shortcut is ⌘ Backslash, and you can record a different one if it conflicts with your setup.

For the full behavior, including hide/show state and how it differs from Summon / Hide Con, see Quick Terminal.

Change shortcuts when the default conflicts with muscle memory. Leave them alone when the built-in flow already works. A good setup should reduce decisions, not create a private language you have to remember.