Local & serial — DR-Terminal

Beyond remote SSH, the app runs two kinds of local sessions in the very same terminal: a local shell (Desktop) and a serial/UART port (Desktop & Android). Both are tabs like any SSH session — rename them, detach them into their own window, theme them per usual.

Local terminal

A real local shell, backed by a native PTY (pty4j). Pick Local Terminal from the sidebar's Local group or the + launcher.

Full PTY: job control, colours, vim/htop, window-size (SIGWINCH) all behave like your system terminal.
Starts in your home directory with your login shell.
Great as scratch space next to a remote session — no SSH round-trip.

Serial / UART

Talk to a device over RS-232 / USB-serial (a router console, a microcontroller, a Pi header). Backed by jSerialComm on Desktop; on Android, plug an adapter in over USB-OTG (FTDI, CP210x, CH34x, PL2303 and CDC-ACM chips — no root needed) and grant the USB permission prompt when connecting.

Connect

Sidebar Local group (or +) → Serial port.
Pick the port from the dropdown. The refresh button beside it re-scans attached ports.
Set baud rate, data bits, parity, stop bits and flow control — or load a saved profile.
Connect. The session opens as a terminal tab.

Terminal width

A serial line carries no size negotiation (no NAWS like Telnet, no window-change like SSH), so the far end keeps whatever size it booted with — 80 columns on virtually every getty, bootloader and device CLI. The terminal still uses the full window width by default; if the device's cursor movements start landing in the wrong place — typed text appearing a row above the prompt is the classic symptom — the connection form has two remedies:

Terminal width → Legacy (80 columns) pins the grid to the 80 columns the far end assumes.
Send terminal size (stty) types stty rows <r> cols <c> at the far end after connecting and on every resize, so a full Unix shell can follow your window instead. Off by default — a bootloader or PLC on the other end would just receive junk.

Both settings are saved as part of a profile.

Profiles

Common device settings can be saved as named profiles (e.g. Cisco console 9600 8N1) and reused. Serial settings carry no secrets, so they live in the normal settings file — not the secure store.

Reconnect reopens the same port, so after you replug a cable or reboot the device, one click brings the console back without retyping baud/parity. Reads stream as they arrive (like minicom), not in fixed blocks.

Boot logs survive clears. Serial consoles protect the scrollback: clear, a getty wiping the screen before the login prompt, or a terminal reset archive the screen into history instead of erasing it — the whole U-Boot → kernel → login sequence stays scrollable. Bump Settings → Scrollback size for very long boots.

The local PTY is Desktop-only; serial runs on Desktop and Android (over USB-OTG). iOS has neither — entries a platform can't serve don't appear there.