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The Textsmith manual

Installing

The Textsmith runs on Linux, under X11 and Wayland. It needs GTK 3 and VTE (2.91), which most desktops already have.

With one command

curl -fsSL https://thetextsmith.com/install.sh | sh

On Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint, this adds The Textsmith’s apt repository and installs the textsmith package; on Arch, the pacman repository. On other distributions it puts The Textsmith in ~/.local/bin. The repositories are signed with The Textsmith release key, fingerprint EACA 85A8 8536 7887 6820 15F8 9364 9288 FCB4 8B9E, and new versions then arrive with your usual system updates.

Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint, step by step

For Ubuntu 24.04, Linux Mint 22, Debian 13 and later:

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://thetextsmith.com/textsmith.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/thetextsmith.asc > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/thetextsmith.asc] https://thetextsmith.com/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/thetextsmith.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y textsmith

Arch Linux, step by step

curl -fsSL -o /tmp/textsmith.asc https://thetextsmith.com/textsmith.asc
sudo pacman-key --add /tmp/textsmith.asc
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key EACA85A885367887682015F893649288FCB48B9E
printf '\n[thetextsmith]\nServer = https://thetextsmith.com/arch/$arch\n' | sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf
sudo pacman -Syu textsmith

Any other distribution: from the source

The one-command installer works everywhere, with TEXTSMITH_METHOD=local to skip the repositories. To build The Textsmith yourself, install Rust (from your distribution or rustup.rs) and the VTE and GTK 3 development files (vte3 and gtk3 on Arch, libvte-2.91-dev and libgtk-3-dev on Debian and Ubuntu, vte291-devel and gtk3-devel on Fedora). Then, in the unpacked source from the download page:

sh scripts/install.sh

This builds The Textsmith, puts textsmith in ~/.local/bin and adds it to your application menu. The source download also holds a prebuilt bin/textsmith, which install.sh uses when Rust is not installed.

Making it your terminal

  • GNOME: Settings, Keyboard, Custom Shortcuts: add one that runs textsmith on Super+Enter, Ctrl+Alt+T or the key you like. Recent GNOME and KDE also read ~/.config/xdg-terminals.list: echo textsmith.desktop >> ~/.config/xdg-terminals.list
  • MATE: gsettings set org.mate.applications-terminal exec textsmith
  • Cinnamon: gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec textsmith
  • i3 or sway: bindsym $mod+Return exec textsmith
  • Many programs also honour export TERMINAL=textsmith in ~/.profile.

textsmith starts in the background, so it is safe to start from inside itself. It understands --working-directory DIR and -e command, which file managers use for “open a terminal here”.

Checking the installation

textsmith --version

says which copy is running. textsmith --keys lists your keys, and textsmith --config-dir says where your bookmarks and preferences live.