Germinal

June 7, 2026 · View on GitHub

Germinal is a minimalist terminal emulator based on VTE and libadwaita.

Requirements

Germinal relies on tmux for tab and pane management. Add the following to ~/.tmux.conf so that attaching creates a new session when none exists:

new-session

Configuration

Germinal has a built-in preferences dialog, accessible from the header bar (gear icon) or the right-click context menu.

Settings are also available directly via GSettings under /org/gnome/Germinal/, using dconf-editor or the gsettings command-line tool.

If the file ~/.config/germinal/settings exists, Germinal uses it as a keyfile backend instead of dconf. The format is standard ini with a [Germinal] section:

[Germinal]
font=Monospace 12
backcolor=#1c1c1c
forecolor=#c8c8c8

A custom startup command can be passed directly on the command line — no quoting needed:

germinal /bin/bash -l

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl` `+`	Zoom in
`Ctrl` `-`	Zoom out
`Ctrl` `0`	Reset zoom
`Ctrl` `Shift` `C`	Copy
`Ctrl` `Shift` `V`	Paste
`Ctrl` `Shift` `Q`	Quit
`Ctrl` `Shift` `O`	Split pane vertically
`Ctrl` `Shift` `E`	Split pane horizontally
`Ctrl` `Tab`	Next tab
`Ctrl` `Shift` `Tab`	Previous tab
`Ctrl` `Shift` `T`	New tab
`Ctrl` `Shift` `N`	Next pane
`Ctrl` `Shift` `P`	Previous pane
`Ctrl` `Shift` `W`	Close current pane
`Ctrl` `Shift` `X`	Zoom current pane (tmux)
`Ctrl` `F`	Open/focus search bar
`Ctrl` `G` / `Enter`	Next search match
`Ctrl` `Shift` `G`	Previous search match
`Escape`	Close search bar

Mouse

Right-click — opens the context menu (copy, paste, zoom, URL actions)
Shift + left-click — opens the URL under the cursor
Ctrl + left-click — opens the URL under the cursor
Ctrl + scroll — zoom in/out

Building

Germinal uses Meson:

meson setup _build
ninja -C _build
sudo ninja -C _build install

Latest release

Germinal 31 — download tarball

More background on the project: Germinal 7 release post.

RPM packaging

To build an RPM using mock:

./mock-build.sh                   # defaults to fedora-rawhide-x86_64
./mock-build.sh fedora-41-x86_64  # specific chroot

The script builds the Meson dist tarball, creates an SRPM, and rebuilds it inside the mock chroot. Results land in _build/mock-result/.