Is it possible to detach the terminal window from VSCode?

Question

I really like using the VSCode terminal and I don't want to fire up a separate terminal app, but the integrated terminal occupies too much screen space. It would be great to move it to another monitor or reposition it. Is this possible?

score 35 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 06 '24 at 23:08

As several buried answers have pointed out, this is possible now. Here's how, with screenshots:

[ Screenshot showing VSCode context menu option "Move Terminal Into Editor Area". ]

Click on the terminal name in the side panel and select "Move Terminal Into Editor Area". This will move the terminal into a new editor tab.

[ Screenshot showing VSCode context menu option "Move Terminal Into Editor Area", with multiple terminals open. ]

If you have multiple terminals open, you'll need to right click on it in the list of open terminals instead.

[ Screenshot showing VsCode context menu option "Move Into New Window". ]

Right click on the newly-created terminal tab and select "Move Into New Window".

score 24 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 09 '24 at 12:18

I do not think it is possible to open the integrated terminal (or anything in the panel) in a new window directly. If you do not want to use an external terminal you could:

make the terminal its' smallest possible size and maximize it using the "^" button (Image of the ^ button) on demand. You can also set a shortcut for workbench.action.toggleMaximizedPanel to achieve this more efficiently.
create a new VSCode Window and only work with the panel / integrated terminal in the new window.

[Note: This answer is outdated. Now this is directly possible. See the following answers, including hitting Ctrl+k o ]

score 8 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 26 '19 at 14:09

8

I suggest to simply not to use the built in terminal, but open a standalone one out of VS Code.
You can use any terminal you want.

edited Nov 26 '19 at 14:09

zx485

2,337

answered Nov 26 '19 at 10:07

StrongBoy

121

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 20 '21 at 18:48

7

Detached windows using the same workspace is not supported yet in Visual Studio Code. The highly upvoted feature request is at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/10121.

answered Oct 20 '21 at 18:48

studgeek

2,455

score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 08 '23 at 09:06

6

Since VsCode is kind of a electron application, its UI is a webpage rendered inside embedded chromium browser. See for yourself: Open menu Help / Toggle Developer tools.

So you're basically asking if you can pop out DIV of a web page and "open" it in another browser instance. This is not possible.

edited Jan 08 '23 at 09:06

WoJ

3,875

answered Aug 31 '22 at 08:18

Mitja Gustin

181

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 11 '23 at 22:41

2

We can now do it with the latest version of vscode. It is currently a two step process:

Move the terminal into the editor area
Drag the tab out to its own window

Demo: https://twitter.com/i/status/1733176182982541662

answered Dec 11 '23 at 22:41

Pradeep Vairamani

121

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 19 '23 at 16:31

Since version 1.84 it's been possible to move the terminal into an editor area. And since in 1.85 you can also move editors into new windows, it's now possible to move the terminal into its own standalone window. See the update log:

We are happy to announce that with this release you can move editors out of the main window into their own lightweight windows. Changes to an editor in one window apply immediately to all other windows where the editor is open.
The easiest way to create a floating editor window is to drag an editor out of the current window and drop it on an empty space on your desktop.
...
And since both terminals and search results can be opened as editors, you can now have these features in separate windows as well!

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Jan 03 '21 at 16:51

1

I managed to accomplish this with: Ctrl+k o

I found this on the following list of keyboard shortcuts:

https://code.visualstudio.com/shortcuts/keyboard-shortcuts-windows.pdf

edited Jan 03 '21 at 16:51

Stephen Rauch

3,296

answered Jan 03 '21 at 16:24

Brian Hall

35
2

chihabeddineAourinmouche · Answer 9 · 2024-04-25T12:11:56.753

I'm clearly late to the party, but I hope I'm bringing some really good booze.

Method 1 (Shortcut keys):

What I do as soon as I get VSCode is set up shotcut keys. Ctrl+t for Toggle Terminal View. One keyboard-action and the terminal is either shown or hidden regardless of its size. This also keeps the same terminal session.

Method 2 (New VSCode window):

Open a new VSCode window.

If you want your terminals on this windows to open directly on a specific directory, then open that directory using open folder.
Toggle terminal view to shown.
Maximize the terminal view size using the button ^ on the top-right of the terminal view.
[OPTIONAL] if distracted by the other stuff on the terminal container view (such as problem view...), then hide them. Now you have a separate terminal VSCode window next to your editor window that functions exactly the same way (because it's the same this really).

DONE

Here is what my VSCode UI looks like now (code is from a demo Spring app)

Here is what my separate terminal window looks like:

I might add, for the sake of answering the more general question, if you're annoyed by how much space stuff take on VSCode's UI, explore keyboard shortcuts that allow hiding/showing UI elements. For instance, on my VSCode, I hide the activity-bar, the side-bar, the terminal-view, and I set keyboard shortcuts for toggling each as it is possible on VSCode. For other view such as Extension-view, I use the command prompt Ctrl+Shift+p to display it as I don't use it that frequently. Additionally, I set the terminal on full-screen modeor zen mode so that I have a maximum editor room.

score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Feb 10 '25 at 08:40

1

There is now a direct way to do this within the commands:

Ctrl+Shift+P

Move Terminal into New Window

Move terminal into new window

edited Feb 10 '25 at 08:40

Chester Gillon

1,573

answered Feb 09 '25 at 19:27

floppycoder

11

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 08 '23 at 21:04

The ideal case of what you're asking for is tracked by two issue tickets that are still open (not implemented):

Extract the integrated terminal #34442
Allow for floating windows #10121 (a more general request covering all Panels)

You can give those issue tickets a thumbs up reaction to show support for them getting implemented, and subscribe to them to get notified about discussions and updates. ^{_{But please don't make a "me too" comment. "me too" comments generally come off as annoying to repo maintainers because they clutter up discussion and don't contribute anything of significant value.}}

As for workarounds, you can create a new and empty VS Code window (with no workspace folder), and drag the terminal from your pre-existing window into that one. You can also detach the session from one VS Code window, and then reattach it into another one (using the Terminal: Detach Session and Terminal: Attach to Session commands in the command palette respectively). See also the user docs.

spechter · Answer 12 · 2023-03-13T01:53:40.053

A popout window would be nice.

But you CAN absolutely get the terminal window onto a "second monitor":

Resize vscode by corner-dragging so its windows extends across 2 screens - Generally extending to the right.
Set your terminal window to be on the right. (Right-click the terminal/output tabs section)
Then move the split point to be just at the join of your monitors.

TaDa! - Terminal window now 'by itself' on your monitor on the right.

I work like this daily...

Is it possible to detach the terminal window from VSCode?

12 Answers12

Method 1 (Shortcut keys):

Method 2 (New VSCode window):

DONE