# Tabs & splits — Liu Terminal

> Liu Terminal tabs and split panes. Native title-bar tabs on macOS, drag to reorder, rename sessions, and split panes.

URL: https://liu.software/docs/tabs/  
Language: en  
Updated: 2026-10-17

Up to 32 tabs per window (hard cap in src/ui/ui.h, not configurable in config.json). A terminal tab can be split horizontally or vertically, with each pane running its own session.

## Tabs

Tabs live in the native title-bar on macOS and in a top strip elsewhere. Drag to reorder; double-click a title to rename for the session.

- ⌘ T - new tab in the current working directory.
- ⌘ W - close tab (asks for confirm if a remote session is live).
- ⌘ 1–⌘ 9 - jump straight to tab N.
- ⌃ Tab / ⌃ ⇧ Tab - cycle next/previous.
- ⌘ ⇧ T - reopen the last closed tab.
- ⌘ ⇧ E - rename the active tab.

## Splits

⌘ D opens a horizontal split and ⌘ ⇧ D opens a vertical split. The new pane inherits the cwd and (for local PTYs) the shell of its parent.

- ⌘ ⌥ ←/→ - resize a horizontal split.
- ⌘ ⌥ ↑/↓ - resize a vertical split.

Drag the dividers to resize. Liu remembers the proportions per tab.

## Group Tabs

Cluster related terminals into named, colour-coded groups right in the tab bar. Create a group from the Command Palette, by drag-and-drop, or with the tab context menu. There is no default ⌘ ⇧ G binding; that shortcut is reserved for Changes/SCM. Collapse a group to hide its tabs and put them to sleep, freeing their PTY/SSH connections.

- 8-colour palette - recolour groups directly from the tab context menu.
- Persistence - named, coloured groups survive application restarts (up to 8 groups active).

## Tab Sleep

Tabs idle for N minutes auto-suspend all of their split panes to reduce CPU and RAM usage to near zero. Local PTYs and SSH resources are released; click to restore the panes, cwd and full scrollback history.

- Configurable idle threshold in config.json via tab\_sleep\_idle\_minutes (presets: Off, 5m, 10m, 20m, 30m, 60m).
- Manual control - trigger "Sleep This Tab Now" or "Toggle Tab Sleep" directly from the ⌘ K command palette.

## Quake-mode

Enable quake\_mode in config.json (default hotkey Ctrl+\` via quake\_hotkey). Then Liu's main window slides down from the top on demand — regardless of which app is focused. Press the hotkey again to hide. Useful for quick agent transcripts and one-shot commands.

The Quake-mode window respects the same tabs/splits as your regular window - it's the same window, just toggled-visible.

## Broadcast input

From the command palette pick Broadcast: send input to all splits in this tab. Anything you type goes to every leaf. Useful for running the same command across a fleet - pair with SSH sessions to multi-target.

A purple chevron in each split's title bar reminds you broadcast is on. It stays on until you toggle it from the palette again.

[Next Agent View →](https://liu.software/docs/agent-view.md)