Customizing your AWS CloudShell experience - AWS CloudShell

Customizing your AWS CloudShell experience

You can customize the following aspects of your AWS CloudShell experience:

  • Tabs layout: Split the command line interface into multiple columns and rows.

  • Font size: Adjust the size of the command line text.

  • Color theme: Toggle between light and dark theme.

  • Safe Paste: Switch a feature on or off that requires you to verify multiline text before it's pasted.

  • Tmux to session restore: Using tmux restores your session until the session becomes inactive.

  • Amazon Q inline suggestions: Shows command suggestions as you type, when using Z shell.

You can also extend your shell environment by installing your own software and modifying your shell with scripts.

Splitting the command line display into multiple tabs

Run multiple commands by splitting your command line interface into several panes.

Note

After opening multiple tabs, you can select one that you want to work in by clicking anywhere in the pane of your choosing. You can close a tab by choosing the x symbol, which is next to the Region name.

  • Choose Actions and one of the following options from Tabs layout:

    • New tab: Add a new tab that's next to the currently active one.

    • Split into rows: Add a new tab in a row that's below the currently active one.

    • Split into columns: Add a new tab in a column that's next to the currently active one.

    If there's not enough space to completely display each tab, scroll to see the entire tab. You can also select the split bars that separate panes and drag them by using the pointer to increase or reduce the pane size.

Changing font size

Increase or decrease the size of the text that's displayed in the command line interface.

  1. To change the AWS CloudShell terminal settings, go to Settings, Preferences.

  2. Choose a text size. Your options are Smallest, Small, Medium, Large, and Largest.

Changing the interface theme

Toggle between light and dark theme for the command line interface.

  1. To change the AWS CloudShell theme, go to Settings, Preferences.

  2. Choose Light or Dark.

Using Safe Paste for multiline text

Safe Paste is a security feature that prompts you to verify that the multiline text that you're about to paste into the shell doesn't contain malicious scripts. Text that's copied from third-party sites can contain hidden code that triggers unexpected behaviors in your shell environment.

The Safe Paste dialog displays the complete text that you copied to your clipboard. If you're satisfied that there's no security risk, choose Paste.

Safe page dialog displays text to be verified before pasting.

We recommend that you enable Safe Paste to catch potential security risks in scripts. You can switch this feature on or off by choosing Preferences, Enable Safe Paste and Disable Safe Paste.

Using tmux to session restore

AWS CloudShell uses tmux to restore the sessions across single or multiple browser tabs. If you refresh the browser tabs, it resumes your session until the session becomes inactive. For more information, see Session restore.

Using Amazon Q inline suggestions in CloudShell

Amazon Q inline suggestions in CloudShell shows you command suggestions as you type, when using Z shell. This feature is only supported in Z shell. To disable the inline suggestions feature, run q inline disable.

For more information about how to use Amazon Q inline suggestions in CloudShell, see Using Amazon Q inline suggestions in CloudShell.