touch-terminal

touch-terminal is a Visual Studio Code extension designed to improve the terminal experience for users on touch-enabled devices, such as tablets or smartphones (e.g., running VS Code via GitHub Codespaces or code-server).

It provides a dedicated side panel with clickable buttons for common terminal operations, navigation, and special keys that are often difficult to access on virtual keyboards.

Features

This extension adds a "Touch Terminal" view to the Activity Bar with the following controls:

1. Actions

Quickly perform clipboard operations within the terminal:

• Copy: Copy selected text.
• Paste: Paste text into the terminal.
• All: Select all text in the terminal buffer.

2. Control Keys

Access essential control keys missing from many mobile keyboards:

• ESC: Escape key.
• TAB: Tab key (useful for auto-completion).
• Enter: Execute command.
• ^C: Ctrl+C (Interrupt).
• ^R: Ctrl+R (Reverse search history).
• Bksp: Backspace.

3. Navigation

Arrow keys for cursor movement and command history navigation:

• ▲ (Up) / ▼ (Down): Navigate command history.
• ◀ (Left) / ▶ (Right): Move cursor character by character.

4. Quick Input

One-tap buttons for frequently used commands:

• ls -la: List files with details.
• git st: Run git status.
• cd ..: Go up one directory.
• clear: Clear the terminal screen.
• |: Pipe character.
• grep: Type grep for searching.

Usage

1. Install the extension.
2. Click on the Touch Terminal icon (keyboard symbol) in the Activity Bar on the left.
3. Ensure you have an integrated terminal open (Ctrl+ `).
4. Tap the buttons in the panel to send commands or keys to the active terminal.

Requirements

• VS Code version 1.80.0 or higher.

Known Issues

• The extension requires an active terminal instance to function. If no terminal is open, an error message will be displayed.

Contributing

Suggestions and pull requests are welcome!