How to change the gnome-terminal default size (ubuntu & xubuntu)

12 Aug, 2008  Tips

On widescreen LCDs, gnome-terminal looks so tiny. Aren't you sick of resizing it everytime you do a ls -al ?

Important Note for Ubuntu users:

Since Ubuntu Lucid, using Gnome-terminal, you can easily change the default size by going to the menu: Profile > Preference > Default Size.

For Xubuntu users (xfce4-terminal):

  1. Edit ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc 
    leafpad ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc
  2. Change the value for MiscDefaultGeometry=. For example 
    MiscDefaultGeometry=120x40
  3. Save, close all terminals and open a new terminal.

For Ubuntu, the old way and system-wide:

Please note that this modification will affect the whole system and also other users on the system. There are possibilities that the file is overwritten during an xterm update which will reset the changes you made.

  1. Open Terminal.
  2. Type : 
    gksudo gedit /usr/share/vte/termcap/xterm
  3. Enter your password (root password) if necessary.
  4. Find something like that (yours must be different, just look around line 10): 
    :co#80:it#8:li#24:\
  5. Change the first and last number, for example to set the default size to 200 columns x 50 lines: 
    :co#200:it#8:li#50:\
  6. Save.
  7. Close every Terminal.
  8. Open a new Terminal, Enjoy!

25 Comments so far »

  1. Mihail said

    March 11 2009 @ 10:11 AM

    Very nice. Thanks ^^

  2. nick said

    April 24 2009 @ 2:24 AM

    Thanks! And wow, no wonder I never found that - xterm stuff is black magic..

  3. vincent said

    June 8 2009 @ 6:44 PM

    neat, I used to create a shortcut with geometry param. to set my favorite size, but this just seems the right approach to it !

  4. ntwrkguru said

    June 18 2009 @ 10:44 AM

    Very simple and effective tip! Thanks for posting it!

  5. Gary Flores said

    June 25 2009 @ 9:26 AM

    This is Excellent, I used the geometry option in the launcher, but Gnome do was obviously not working!!!

    Now IT DOES! Thanks.

  6. pol said

    August 16 2009 @ 1:00 PM

    Sweet. That saved me around 2minutes per day and much more annoyance.

  7. Ryan Edwards said

    November 4 2009 @ 11:22 PM

    Thanks for the tip. Worked like a charm.

  8. Chris said

    November 19 2009 @ 11:10 PM

    This is what I was looking for...I looked in gnomes site, and ubuntu. I even hosed my terminal in the process, had to log in as root to fix. This is the only thing that worked, thx.

  9. FG said

    November 20 2009 @ 4:18 AM

    Thanks 4 the tip ;)

  10. jason bourne said

    January 7 2010 @ 7:45 AM

    thanks man. worked perfectly :)

  11. sri said

    January 11 2010 @ 1:24 AM

    Thank you! Works perfectly in Ubuntu 9.10

  12. Darryl said

    March 28 2010 @ 9:42 PM

    Thanks. This works, but it's really annoying that gnome-terminal doesn't have a separate per-user per-profile setting for a default size.

    It should also be noted for users that do this, this change is system-wide and could possibly be reverted in future upgrades...

  13. Arnaud Soyez said

    March 29 2010 @ 10:37 AM

    Thanks Darryl, I will update the post to notify viewers of this.

  14. Mait said

    April 1 2010 @ 9:17 PM

    Thanks for great tip!

    One question : Could I change some file in my ~/ ?, instead of systemwide.

  15. drooop said

    April 2 2010 @ 5:31 AM

    Check out the profile preferences of the recently released gnome-terminal 2.30. You'll love it. ;)

  16. Arnaud Soyez said

    April 2 2010 @ 12:58 PM

    @Malt:

    I checked and couldn't really find anything relevant. You need to look for Termcap user-settings.

    @drooop
    Thanks for tip, I looked at the release notes but could not find anything, I'll probably have to look more in depth.

  17. Stan Sieler said

    March 10 2011 @ 6:04 PM

    thanks for the tip!

    And, if readers are curious, you really do have to close every open terminal
    window before the change takes effect! (On SUSE using gnome-terminal, anyway)
    (Oddly enough, it would seem that xterm isn't affected by this, again on my SUSE 2.6.34 system)

  18. Kalpesh said

    February 24 2012 @ 10:50 AM

    Thanks man this works like a charm and scratched my itch.

  19. manoj said

    March 9 2012 @ 8:23 AM

    Not sure why, but for me this did not work. I am using XUBUNTU.

    Some one can pls help me

  20. Arnaud Soyez said

    March 9 2012 @ 8:57 AM

    manoj,

    Edit ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc
    And change the value for MiscDefaultGeometry.

    For example:
    MiscDefaultGeometry=120x50

  21. Richard said

    June 21 2012 @ 9:32 AM

    Hi, would be grateful for some advice. I am a linux noob and can't seem to get this to work.
    I edited the /usr/share/vte/termcap/xterm file and closed the terminal (even used killall gnome-terminal to be sure), but all later terminals are opening at 80x24

    Any ideas?
    Thanks

  22. manoj said

    June 29 2012 @ 11:51 PM

    Thanks a lot Arnaud Soyez..I had posted this some where in march and had totally forgotten this. Today i felt like solving the issue and guess what, ur response was ready.

    Thanks again. This issue is solved for me

  23. manoj said

    June 29 2012 @ 11:53 PM

    Richard,

    Give it a try with Arnaud Soyez's solution. Hope it works..

    For ur quick reference:

    Edit ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc
    And change the value for MiscDefaultGeometry.

    For example:
    MiscDefaultGeometry=120x50

  24. Samuel said

    July 11 2012 @ 2:09 PM

    You can also simply edit the terminal shortcut and add the command "--geometry=XXxYY"

    gnome-terminal --geometry=80x36

  25. Miguel said

    March 30 2013 @ 5:34 PM

    Thank you very much!!! I don't understand why Ubuntu skipped the size-configuration in the terminal options...

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