Visor retired

"

Visor has a new home and it is called TotalTerminal now.

Don't worry it is still open-source and I will continue to support TotalTerminal in the future.

Installation

Install SIMBL and make sure you have latest SIMBL 0.9.x Place Visor.bundle into ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins (create this directory if it does not already exist) Relaunch Terminal.app - You should now see the Visor Status Menu Item Configure your keyboard trigger by selecting the Visor Status Menu Item -> Visor Preferences ... and edit your keyboard hot-key

You can now trigger Visor with your hot-key from any application to get an instant terminal session.

To hide Visor, you can either:

re-trigger with your key-combo

optionally, you can click off the Visor window

Compatibility

Visor 2.2 is tested to work with SIMBL 0.9.x on Snow Leopard (both 32-bit and 64-bit) SIMBL 0.8.x on Leopard (32-bit)

Visor 2.1 is tested to work with SIMBL 0.9.x on Snow Leopard (both 32-bit and 64-bit) SIMBL 0.8.x on Leopard (32-bit)

Visor 2.0 is tested to work with SIMBL 0.8.x on Snow Leopard but Terminal.app has to be forced to run in 32-bit mode SIMBL 0.8.x on Leopard

Visor 1.9 is tested to work with SIMBL 0.8.x on Leopard



Where can I get older versions?

Source

Installation from source

Prerequisities:

SIMBL

ruby + rubygems

XCode 3.2+

zip/unzip

Custom installation steps:

git clone git://github.com/darwin/visor.git cd visor rake rake install

Feel free to fork and contribute.

Source code licensed under Apache License 2.0

FAQ

I like the idea, but I want to use Terminal.app features. Do you plan to support tabs/unicode/whatever?

Visor is just a light-weight plugin for Terminal.app (SIMBL). You should be able to use most of Terminal.app features with Visor. The only broken feature is "Windows Groups".

Does Visor work on OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard)?

64-bit Terminal.app in Snow Leopard is supported by Visor 2.1 and later.

Does Visor work on OSX 10.5 (Leopard)?

Leopard is supported by Visor 1.5 and later, the best version is Visor 2.1.

Does Visor work on OSX 10.4 (Tiger)?

Tiger was supported by early Visors (pre 1.5). It was in the days when I was a young Windows hacker. I will never look back, so your only chance is to upgrade to (Snow) Leopard.

How do I uninstall Visor?

Visor is a standard SIMBL plugin. Remove Visor.bundle from ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins :

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins/Visor.bundle

Or alternatively you can run rake uninstall task if you have a cloned git repo.

Where are Visor settings stored?

Visor settings are stored with Terminal.app settings. You can open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist and tweak the values (better to do this when Terminal.app is not running). If you have troubles with Visor settings or the generated Visor profile, delete this file and restart Terminal.app. The file will be recreated with default values.

My Visor menu-bar icon is dimmed out. My hot-key doesn't work and just beeps. What's wrong?

There can be only one visor-ed terminal window in the system. If you close this terminal window (for example Control+D or typing exit in shell), Visor gets into the disabled state you are describing. Just open a new terminal window and it gets visor-ed again. You can do this for example by clicking on Terminal.app icon in the Dock.

How can I open a new terminal window the old way, as a classic OSX window?

If there is a visor-ed terminal window (Visor menu-bar icon is active) every new terminal window will be opened as a classic OSX window. In other words, open at least two terminal windows. The second one will be classic terminal window for sure.

How can I change the height of Visor?

Go to Terminal.app's Preferences -> Window -> Rows

How can I stick Visor to left screen edge?

Look for the "Position" option in Visor Preferences and pick "Left-Stretch" window placement.

How can I change the width of Visor?

By default Visor window stretches to the full screen width. Set some non-stretching positioning for Visor window in Visor Preferences, then Go to Terminal.app's Preferences -> Window -> Columns.

Is it possible to show Visor only on a secondary monitor?

Go to Visor Preferences -> Screen

Is it possible to see Visor on every Space?

Visor 1.6 does not respect Spaces settings (Issue 52). Visor 1.7+ forces its window to be visible on every space. You may disable this in Visor Preferences. Note: Spaces configuration for Terminal.app doesn't apply to the visor-ed terminal window, it is effective only for other (classic) terminal windows.

I want to keep different preferences for Visor and other (classic) terminal windows. What is the best way manage this?

Well this was quite a pain point in older Visor releases. From Visor 2.0 there must be a profile in Terminal.app called "Visor". Visor-ed window always use the "Visor" profile for opening new tabs (regardless of "default profile" or "startup profile" settings in Terminal.app). To make your life easier Visor creates this profile for you if it does not exist and fills in Darwin's preferred Visor settings (black background with fine colors, 90% opacity).

How can I revert to Darwin's Visor profile?

You can always delete (or better rename) the "Visor" profile and relaunch Terminal.app. Visor will then create a new "Visor" profile from scratch with Darwin's preferred settings.

Do I need to install TerminalColours SIMBL with Visor?

No, TerminalColours is integrated into Visor 2.0 and later. My motivation was to allow people to get cool Visor colors out of the box (with generated Visor profile).

Do I need to install CopyOnSelect SIMBL with Visor?

No, CopyOnSelect is integrated into Visor 2.0 and later. It is a configurable option in Visor Preferences (disabled by default).

Changelog

The original Visor 1.5 brought to you by Alcor (Blacktree), kudos man!

History

Links

Source code

Original Visor 1.5

Articles