docs / working with resources
Terminal
Klustr has a built-in terminal drawer at the bottom of the window. Each tab is a
real shell on your machine — not in the cluster — with its KUBECONFIG
already pointed at the context you opened it for. Your installed CLIs (kubectl,
helm, stern, k9s, …) run against the right cluster with no extra setup.
The terminal is a local shell wrapper, not an in-cluster session. For a shell inside a container use Exec, and for a root shell on a node use Node shell — both in Workloads & debugging.
Opening and toggling
- Press `⌘`` (macOS) / `Ctrl+`` (Linux and Windows) to toggle the drawer.
- Opening it with a single active context auto-creates the first tab for that context.
- Drag the drawer's top edge to resize it; the height is remembered across restarts.
On Windows a tab runs SHELL when it points at a program Windows can find (Git
Bash, for example), otherwise PowerShell 7, then Windows PowerShell, then cmd.
Running wsl in a tab keeps its KUBECONFIG and context: Klustr lists them in
WSLENV, translating the kubeconfig path for Linux.
Tabs and contexts
- Each tab is bound to one context. The
+button adds a tab; in multi-context / aggregated mode it lets you pick which context the new tab targets. - The shell inherits your environment (so your normal
PATHand tools are there) but gets aKUBECONFIGthat is a minified, single-context copy of your kubeconfig — sokubectlin that tab always talks to that tab's cluster. - Hiding the drawer keeps tabs alive: their shells and scrollback are preserved. Closing the last tab closes the drawer.
- Disconnecting a context closes every terminal bound to it.
Copy and paste
The same bindings apply to every terminal surface — this drawer, Exec, Node shell and the Logs viewers (copy only there):
| macOS | Linux / Windows | |
|---|---|---|
| Copy selection | ⌘C |
Ctrl+Shift+C or Ctrl+Insert |
| Paste | ⌘V |
Ctrl+Shift+V or Shift+Insert |
On Linux and Windows a plain Ctrl+C copies while text is selected and is the
shell's interrupt otherwise — the same rule Windows Terminal and VS Code use.
Ctrl+V is never intercepted; it reaches the shell as ^V. Right-click any
terminal for a Copy / Paste / Select all menu.
Opening an external terminal app
Prefer your own terminal? A tab can launch an external app (Terminal, iTerm2,
Ghostty, Warp, Alacritty, kitty, WezTerm, Hyper on macOS; the same tools probed
on PATH on Linux) with the context already selected.
- Klustr remembers your preferred app and launches it directly next time.
- Alt/Option-click the external-launch button to force the picker and change the default.
On Windows there is no app list: Klustr opens PowerShell in a new console, which Windows shows in your default terminal app (Windows Terminal unless you picked another in Settings).
Each external window gets its own single-context copy of the kubeconfig, deleted when the window closes. On Windows, closing the window with its close button after Klustr has quit leaves the copy behind; the first Klustr start a day or more later removes it.