How do I get Terminator to start up with my custom layout?

Question

Terminator is very powerful at organizing several computers or servers due to the split window and group all function. But here's the deal: I created my own Layout and would appreciate it to load at startup of terminator. Is that possible?

Answer 1

1. After setting up your layout, right-click on any terminal background and choose Preferences → Layouts tab and click on Add button.

2. Give it a name and hit Close.

3. This should create the mentioned ~/.config/terminator/config file.

4. Now you can start terminator using the saved layout using: terminator -l yourLayout (replace yourLayout with whatever you chose on step 2).

5. (optional) Edit the ~/.config/terminator/config file so that where it says [layouts] and nested below it [[yourLayout]], rename yourLayout to default and remove/rename the previous default layout. Now, when Terminator starts without any parameters, it will load your custom [[default]] layout!

6. (optional) Edit the [[[terminalx]]]/ command = a custom command;bash eg: command = ssh user@IP;bash (ending with bash) for each terminal, so that it will run your custom command during startup!!

Answer 2

There is a very easy way to accomplish this:

• Open Terminator
• Right click -> Preferences
• In the Layouts tab (to the right of the Profiles tab), edit the default one, you will see that it says Window | window0 and Terminal | child1.
• For the Terminal | child1, you can set: a Profile (to choose from the installed ones), a Default command, and a Working directory.
• Set it/them to whatever you like, close, reopen again...
• ... and voilá!

Hope this helped!

Answer 3

After saving your layout (as per mhnagaoka's answer), you can make your changes used by default by editing the config file.

Edit the ~/.config/terminator/config file and look for where it says [layouts]. It should look something like this:

[layouts]
  [[default]]
    # ..default layout
  [[yourLayout]]
    # ..your custom layout

Rename [[yourLayout]] to [[default]] and remove/rename the previous default layout. Now, when Terminator starts without any parameters, it will load your custom default layout!

Answer 4

I use the method mhnagaoka suggested, but I made it usable from the launcher in Unity. I also had an issue with plain terminator -l my_default command, so specify these additional flags

• -b for borderless and
• -m for maximized.

The final Command is terminator -m -b -l my_default.

Now you need to modify terminator.desktop entry for Unity.

Go to your application folder, in my case it was /usr/share/applications. You need to have root permissions to edit with your text editor terminator.desktop.

In my case it was, sudo vim terminator.desktop.

Replace the Exec argument with your Command.

Now you can add the entry to your Unity Launcher, and it should always open your custom layout on the start.

Answer 5

After setting up your layout, right-click on any terminal background and choose Preferences → Layouts tab and click on Add button. When prompted for the name type "default" and hit Enter.

Note: This may be a glitch but it's a useful glitch for me!

Answer 6

To open a previously saved layout, open the Terminator Layout Launcher by pressing ALT-L. There, click on the layout you need, and press launch.

Answer 7

It's very simple. No need to edit the configuration file.

Just create your custom layout and Right Click->Preference->Layout->default and Press the save button. Now our configuration is saved as the default configuration. From next launch of the terminator, we will get the custom layout at the startup itself.

Answer 8

Just as an anecdote, even after configuring custom layout 're-use profile for newer terminals' has to be checked otherwise the new terminal again opens in default profile.