embelish

Making Windows Terminal Look Good™

embelish is a lightweight, tmux-style terminal session multiplexer for Windows Terminal, written in Go. It manages multiple persistent shell sessions with keyboard-driven navigation.

• Ctrl+B prefix keybindings — tmux-style command mode
• Multiple sessions — create, switch, kill, and rename sessions on the fly
• Session persistence — sessions survive even if the shell exits (auto-creates a new one)
• Session list overlay — browse and select sessions with j/k navigation
• Status bar — clean status bar showing active sessions
• Scroll region protection — status bar stays visible while terminal content scrolls
• Automatic resize — all sessions adapt to terminal size changes
• Cross-platform — ConPTY on Windows, PTY on Linux/macOS

git clone https://github.com/cexes/Making-Windows-Terminal-Look-Good.git
cd Making-Windows-Terminal-Look-Good
make build-windows   # Windows
make build           # Linux/macOS

The binary is a single executable with no dependencies.

go install github.com/cexes/Making-Windows-Terminal-Look-Good@latest

embelish              Launch interactive session manager
embelish help         Show help
embelish version      Show version

Once inside the TUI:

embelish uses Ctrl+B as the prefix key, just like tmux. Press Ctrl+B, release, then press a command key.

Inside the session list (Ctrl+B s):

• j / k or arrow keys — navigate
• Enter — select session
• c — create new session
• d — delete session
• q or Esc — close list

embelish runs as a single process that:

1. Puts the terminal in raw mode
2. Creates a pseudo-terminal (ConPTY on Windows, PTY on Unix) for each session
3. Forwards I/O between the real terminal and the active session
4. Intercepts Ctrl+B to enter command mode
5. Draws a status bar on the last line using scroll region protection

make              # build for both platforms
make build        # build for current platform
make build-windows # cross-compile for Windows
make clean        # remove binaries
make run          # go run .

MIT