System Terminal

A real terminal in Obsidian's right sidebar, running your system shell (PowerShell, cmd, bash, zsh…).

No Python and no node-pty: a small Go program, termsidian-pty, opens a real system terminal (ConPTY on Windows, PTY on macOS and Linux), and the plugin renders it with xterm.js.

System Terminal is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Obsidian.

(Léeme en español: README.es.md)

Tested systems

What it does

• Opens a terminal in the right sidebar, starting in the vault folder.
• A real terminal: colors, Tab completion, Ctrl+C, history, and interactive programs.
• Resizes when you resize the panel.
• Uses your Obsidian theme's monospace font and colors, and follows theme changes.
• Leaves no orphan processes when you close the panel.

Usage

Open the terminal with the terminal icon in the left ribbon, or Ctrl+P → System Terminal: Open terminal.

The shell is PowerShell on Windows, and on macOS and Linux whatever $SHELL points to. If Obsidian is installed via Flatpak, there's one extra step: see Linux on Flatpak.

Closing the panel kills the shell and everything running inside it. Programs with their own window that you launched from the terminal (for example code .) stay open.

Installing in your vault

Requirements: Obsidian desktop 1.7.2 or later, with community plugins enabled (restricted mode off).

From Community Plugins

Go to Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for System Terminal, and click Install, then Enable.

The helper for your system (Windows, macOS or Linux, Intel or ARM) is written to disk the first time you open a terminal — it ships embedded inside main.js, since Obsidian only downloads main.js, manifest.json and styles.css for plugins installed this way.

Manual install

<your-vault> is the folder that contains .obsidian.

1. On the Releases page, download termsidian-<version>.zip.

2. Unzip it inside <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/. On Windows, right-click → Extract All. You should end up with a termsidian folder inside plugins.

   With Git Bash, macOS, or Linux (swap in the version you want):

   cd "<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins"
   curl -LO https://github.com/inusui/obsidian-termsidian/releases/download/0.1.0/termsidian-0.1.0.zip
   unzip -o termsidian-0.1.0.zip && rm termsidian-0.1.0.zip
   

3. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins, click the reload button next to "Installed plugins", and enable System Terminal.

The plugin folder looks like this once you've opened a terminal at least once (bin/ only has the one binary for the system you opened it on):

<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/termsidian/
 ├─ main.js
 ├─ manifest.json
 ├─ styles.css
 ├─ LICENSE
 ├─ THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
 └─ bin/
     └─ termsidian-pty-<your system>-<your architecture>

Prefer to build it yourself instead of downloading the release? See DEVELOPMENT.md.

Updating

Through Community Plugins, updates install like any other plugin, from Settings → Community plugins. Installed manually, replace the files with a new termsidian-<version>.zip (steps above) — disable the plugin or close Obsidian first, since Windows won't let you replace a .exe that's in use.

Synced vault (Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive…): bin/ syncs too, so once you've opened a terminal on each of your machines, the plugin works on all of them, whether Windows, macOS, or Linux.

Linux on Flatpak

If you installed Obsidian from Flathub, Discover, or GNOME Software, it runs inside a Flatpak sandbox with its own filesystem. Without this step, the terminal opens inside that sandbox: it shows a prompt like sh-5.3$ and can't find your programs.

System Terminal detects Flatpak and opens your real system shell with flatpak-spawn --host. For that, Obsidian needs a permission it doesn't have by default. Run this once in a regular terminal, outside Obsidian:

flatpak override --user --talk-name=org.freedesktop.Flatpak md.obsidian.Obsidian

Then fully quit Obsidian and reopen it. Until the permission is granted, the terminal runs inside the sandbox and shows a yellow warning with this same command.

What this permission means: it lets Obsidian and all its plugins run programs outside the sandbox, same as a non-Flatpak install. That's what a terminal needs to see your system. To remove it:

flatpak override --user --no-talk-name=org.freedesktop.Flatpak md.obsidian.Obsidian

The terminal starts in the vault folder. If that folder doesn't exist outside the sandbox (for example, a vault opened through the document portal), it starts in your home folder instead.

Troubleshooting

The terminal shows "No hay un helper para tu sistema (…)"

Your system or CPU architecture isn't one of the 6 supported ones (see Why a Go helper?), or main.js got corrupted. Reinstall from a release (Installing in your vault).

On macOS or Linux, the helper won't start due to a permissions error

Some sync services don't preserve the execute permission. Restore it:

chmod +x "<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/termsidian/bin/"termsidian-pty-*

On Linux, the prompt is sh-5.3$ and it can't find my programs

Obsidian is installed via Flatpak and is missing the permission. See Linux on Flatpak.

Checking error messages

Open Obsidian's console with Ctrl+Shift+I, Console tab. Messages from the helper start with [termsidian-pty].

Why a Go helper?

• node-pty needs to be recompiled for every Electron version, and breaks when Obsidian updates.
• A Python helper needs Python installed, and the pty module doesn't exist on Windows.
• Go produces a single, dependency-free binary for each system.

More detail on how the plugin and helper talk to each other in DEVELOPMENT.md.

Contributing

System Terminal is maintained by a single person. Suggestions and bug reports are welcome as an issue, but pull requests aren't accepted: any PR gets closed automatically with a comment linking here. If you want to propose a change, open an issue describing it.

Security

If you find a vulnerability, don't open a public issue: report it privately as explained in SECURITY.md.

License

MIT.