Contour

Contour is a modern, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in C++23 that positions itself as "actually fast" and designed for power users with a modern feature mindset. What sets Contour apart is its modal interface with Vi-like input modes, comprehensive Unicode support including grapheme clusters and emoji with ZWJ sequences, and advanced features like vertical line markers for quick history navigation and synchronized rendering.

The terminal excels in visual capabilities with GPU acceleration, font ligature support, Sixel inline images, and sophisticated transparency effects including blurred backgrounds on Windows 10+ and Linux desktop environments. It offers extensive customization through runtime configuration reloads, profiles, color schemes, and key binding customization, while maintaining cross-platform compatibility across Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows.

Contour targets power users who want cutting-edge terminal features without sacrificing performance. Its focus on modern standards compliance, VT extensions, and developer-friendly features like buffer capture and progress bar support makes it particularly appealing to developers and system administrators who spend significant time in terminal environments. The requirement for OpenGL 3.3 and modern hardware reflects its commitment to leveraging GPU acceleration for superior rendering performance.

Installation

# via Fedora
dnf install contour-terminal

# via Arch Linux
pacman -S contour

# via Flatpak
flatpak install flathub org.contourterminal.Contour