Cool Retro Term

Cool Retro Term

Cool Retro Term is a terminal emulator program that mimics the look and feel of old cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals. It has a retro graphical user interface with support for modern features like Unicode glyphs.
Cool Retro Term image
retro terminal-emulator crt cathode-ray-tube unicode glyphs

Cool Retro Term: A Retro Terminal Emulator

A terminal emulator program mimicking old CRT terminals, featuring a retro GUI with Unicode glyphs and modern support

What is Cool Retro Term?

Cool Retro Term is a free, open source terminal emulator with a retro graphical user interface. It mimics the aesthetics of old cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals commonly associated with early personal computers of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Despite the old-school visual style, Cool Retro Term has support for modern terminal features like Unicode glyphs, custom themes, tabs, splits, automatic command history and more. Its customizability allows users to tweak the scanlines, curvature, color scheme and other attributes to their preferences.

Cool Retro Term works on Linux, macOS and Windows. It can be used as a drop-in replacement for the default terminal emulator to bring back nostalgia while still taking advantage of modern terminal capacities that old hardware couldn't deliver. The anachronistic contrast between retro graphics and new functionality is part of its novelty.

Overall, Cool Retro Term focuses more on form rather than just function. Its aesthetic style modeled after early computing terminals combined with present-day terminal features makes it appeal to retrophiles and command line users alike.

Cool Retro Term Features

Features

  1. Mimics the look and feel of old CRT terminals
  2. Customizable interface with multiple themes
  3. Unicode glyph support
  4. Tabbed interface to run multiple terminal sessions
  5. Scrolling buffer to view previous output
  6. Keyboard shortcuts
  7. Configurable fonts and colors

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Nostalgic retro aesthetics

Lightweight and fast

Highly customizable appearance

Tabbed interface is convenient

Scrolling buffer allows reviewing previous output

Cons

Limited feature set compared to full-featured terminals

Configuration requires editing text files

No mouse support

Only available on Linux and macOS


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