When it comes to terminal emulator apps, there are way more essential aspects than looks or GUI customization. Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a terminal emulator that both works well and looks good, right?
Black Box is a new GTK4 terminal emulator built with Vala, libadwaita, and VTE that’s highly geared towards the user experience.
What makes Black Box special?
While CLI tools such as terminal emulators are usually all about getting work done, Black Box has a few tricks that make it look and feel the part.
For example, you are allowed to set color schemes and integrate them with the rest of the window, customize the font and size, show or hide the window header bar, and paste files path by simply dragging and dropping them into the window.
In addition, Black Box can also open both links and files via simple CTRL+click actions (CTRL+click the file paths and URLs). Besides everything, Black Box also includes 12 built-in themes (such as Solarized, Dracula, Monokai, and various other dark/light iterations).
By now, it’s quite clear that Black Box’s looks are the start of the show. However, a bit of functionality has also been sprinkled over it. For instance, the app has a “remember window size” option that can be activated from the Preferences menu.
Conclusion
While there’s nothing wrong with a terminal emulator that’s all about the eye candy, it’s important to note that Black Box still has a long way to go until it’s “production-ready.”
Nevertheless, we’re sure that most of the bugs and crashes will eventually be ironed out, and Black Box will be a very good niche app for all those who want a highly customizable, native GTK4 terminal emulator.
