rxvt-unicode-9.21

Configuring rxvt-unicode

The rxvt-unicode terminal emulator uses the resource class URxvt and the resource name urxvt. You can add X resource definitions to a user's ~/.Xresources file or to the system-wide /etc/X11/app-defaults/URxvt file. The following example will load the matcher Perl extension (assuming Perl support wasn't disabled), which enables a middle button click to open an underlined URL in the specified browser, sets a background and foreground color and loads an Xft font:

cat >> /etc/X11/app-defaults/URxvt << "EOF"
URxvt*perl-ext: matcher
URxvt*urlLauncher: firefox
URxvt.background: black
URxvt.foreground: yellow
URxvt*font: xft:Monospace:pixelsize=12
EOF

The rxvt-unicode application can also run in a daemon mode, which makes it possible to open multiple terminal windows within the same process. The urxvtc client then connects to the urxvtd daemon and requests a new terminal window. Use this option with caution. If the daemon crashes, all the running processes in the terminal windows are terminated.

You can start the urxvtd daemon in the system or personal startup X session script (e.g., ~/.xinitrc) by adding the following lines near the top of the script:

# Start the urxvtd daemon
urxvtd -q -f -o &

For more information, examine the urxvt, urxvtd, urxvtc, and urxvtperl man pages.

If you use a Desktop Environment, a menu entry can be included, issuing, as the root user:

cat > /usr/share/applications/urxvt.desktop << "EOF" &&
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Rxvt-Unicode Terminal
Comment=Use the command line
GenericName=Terminal
Exec=urxvt 
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=utilities-terminal
Categories=GTK;Utility;TerminalEmulator;
#StartupNotify=true
Keywords=console;command line;execute;
EOF

update-desktop-database -q

For that, you need desktop-file-utils-0.22 and at least one of gnome-icon-theme-3.12.0, oxygen-icons-14.12.2 and lxde-icon-theme-0.5.1. Uncomment the line with “StartupNotify=true” if startup-notification-0.12 is installed.