Spyder Terminal

Spyder-terminal is a plugin that allows you to have integrated system terminals inside Spyder.

Spyder Terminal in Spyder

Spyder-terminal allows you to use any system shell installed in your system (e.g. Bash, Zsh or Powershell) rather than just the IPython console. You can use it to issue commands, interact with version control or to run programs.

Installing the Terminal

If you installed Spyder using conda, the best way to install Spyder-terminal is to run the following command in your Terminal or Anaconda prompt on Windows:

conda install spyder-terminal -c conda-forge

Important

At the moment it is not possible to use this plugin with the Spyder Standalone installers for Windows and macOS. We’re working to make that possible in the future.

Restart Spyder in order to be able to use the plugin.

Using the Terminal

When the Terminal is installed, it will be available under the menu item View ‣ Panes ‣ Terminal.

Spyder showing view panes Terminal

You will see it then as a tab at the bottom of the console area. When switching to it, a new terminal tab will be created. You can also create more terminals by clicking in the + button at the upper right corner of the terminal area.

Spyder showing the new terminal button

Clicking the Options button next to the + button will allow you to rename terminals, undock the terminal, and open a terminal in the directory of the current Editor file.

Spyder showing the terminal Options menu

If you right click the terminal area, it’s possible to issue commands such as Clear Terminal, Zoom In/Out and Copy/Paste Text.

Spyder showing the terminal context menu

Terminal Preferences

It’s also possible to customize the Terminal by going to python ‣ Preferences… and then clicking on the Terminal tab on the menu to the left. You can select the shell interpreter, set the buffer limit and the type of cursor.

Preferences of the Terminal plugin