Edit default Gnome-Terminal

Every time I open a shell terminal in my Ubuntu, I always think that the window size is too small. I always ended up resizing the shell window manually using the mouse. If you’re having this problem here is how to fix it permanently.

2026 update — what’s still relevant, and what’s changed. 🐧

–geometry is deprecated. Modern GNOME Terminal ignores the –geometry flag in most cases. The current way to set a default window size is in the GUI: Preferences → Profile → Text, then check “Initial terminal size” and set the columns and rows you want. The next terminal you open from your launcher will use that size.

Also worth knowing — newer distros are starting to ship different terminals by default. Fedora 39+ uses gnome-console (binary name kgx), and Ubuntu 24.10+ has been experimenting with ptyxis. They all do the same thing; just be aware that gnome-terminal may not be the default anymore.

Keyboard shortcuts most people don’t use enough:

• Ctrl+Shift+T — open a new tab (instead of a whole new window)
• Ctrl+PgUp / Ctrl+PgDn — switch between tabs
• Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V — copy and paste (regular Ctrl+C sends SIGINT, remember?)
• Ctrl++ / Ctrl+- — zoom in / out (great for screen sharing)
• Ctrl+Shift+F — search the scrollback buffer
• Ctrl+L — clear the screen (like running clear, but quicker)
• Shift-click on a URL — open it in your browser without selecting it first

Profiles trick — colour your prod sessions red. Under Preferences → Profiles you can create multiple profiles, each with its own colour scheme, font, and starting size. A really useful pattern is to make a separate profile (say, Server SSH) with a red or dark-red background as a visual reminder that you’re not on your laptop anymore. Then launch into it directly:

It sounds gimmicky until the first time you almost rm -rf the wrong machine. 🚨

You can also have a Dark + Big profile for late-night work, a Light profile for screen sharing, and so on — switch via Terminal → Change Profile at any time. 💡