feat(view): Enable mouse cursor movement in shell readline #4775

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-22T20:29:42Z

This pull request adds support for moving the cursor within a long command in the shell by clicking with a mouse or tapping on the touchscreen. This makes editing multi-line commands significantly easier and faster.

How it Works
The implementation works by:

Intercepting ACTION_DOWN events from both mice and touchscreens in TerminalView.

Calculating a 1D character index for both the click location and the current cursor position, correctly handling multi-line wrapping.

Sending the appropriate number of left or right arrow keypress events (KEYCODE_DPAD_LEFT/RIGHT) via the existing handleKeyCode() method to move the cursor to the target location.

This approach ensures that the cursor movement is handled by the underlying readline library, behaving exactly like physical keypresses.

Recording2.mp4

Closes #4748

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-22T20:31:38Z

@TomJo2000 kindly look into this PR.

TomJo2000

Hi thanks for the PR, I don't do reviews in this repo and I'm currently out sick, so I'm taking a bit of a break from triage as well.

I'm not that fluent in Java but this seems to pass a preliminary sniff test.

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-23T15:55:38Z

@obfusk @fornwall @agnostic-apollo @ayoubelmhamdi Kindly look into the PR.

ayoubelmhamdi · 2025-09-23T22:19:53Z

@ankitkrshah30

Recording2.mp4

from the video, i saw the experience will be more awful than i expected before, because we always make wrong presses while using touch screen, but the cursor will be moved to the first character in the first line, we should think about it, after people use this feature.

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-24T06:25:33Z

Hi,
Thank you for the excellent feedback on the user experience.
I've pushed an update that adds a boundary check to the logic. The cursor now only moves when clicking directly on the command's text, and accidental taps on empty areas are safely ignored.
Here is a new video demonstrating the final, improved behavior:

the improved version:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4527774b-80c2-449c-bddc-a8596d4ea860

the issue part:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/56c17cf3-9e32-4635-b856-ec62054e62c0

@ayoubelmhamdi

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-24T06:46:07Z

Hi, just a quick follow-up to note that I've updated the PR with the requested fixes.
I'm also participating in Hacktoberfest, so I'd appreciate it if this contribution could be considered when you have time. Thanks for maintaining this great project!

robertkirkman · 2025-09-24T18:26:02Z

Hi, I appreciate the value of this idea and I believe it would be useful for some people, however, I have two requests:

Even though I have many years of experience with terminal emulators, I have never personally seen any terminal emulator on desktop PC that implements this feature.

Because of that, I believe it should not be the default behavior, but should be configurable to be enabled by a setting in the Termux App "Settings" menu.

If it's not inconvenient for you to do this additional work, could you please try the following steps?

Try to adjust this so that it is disabled by default, but can be optionally enabled by a setting toggle in the "Settings" that come from holding down long press on the screen and selecting "more" and "settings" (and it should still be possible to return to the Settings the same way and disable it again after it has been enabled!)
Try to find and show me a terminal emulator for laptop and desktop PC that you like which has the same feature, so that I can compare your implementation with it, especially its behavior when used on Touchscreen Ubuntu Tablets, compared to your implementation for Touchscreen Android Phones.

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-25T19:09:52Z

Hi,

I've pushed the final updates. The feature is now controlled by an on/off switch in the settings, as requested. I've also added the boundary check to prevent the cursor from jumping on accidental taps in empty areas.

Here is a new video demonstrating the final behavior, including the settings toggle:

made_button_inSettings.mp4

I'm also participating in Hacktoberfest, so I'd be grateful if this contribution could be considered for the event.

Thank you again for all your guidance!
@robertkirkman

twaik · 2025-09-25T19:24:50Z

app/src/main/java/com/termux/app/fragments/settings/termux/TerminalViewPreferencesFragment.java

+            // vvv YOUR NEW CODE vvv
+            case "mouse_cursor_movement_enabled":
+                mPreferences.setMouseCursorMovementEnabled(value);
+                break;
+            // ^^^ END OF NEW CODE ^^^


Was it chatgpt?

twaik · 2025-09-25T19:25:01Z

app/src/main/java/com/termux/app/fragments/settings/termux/TerminalViewPreferencesFragment.java

        switch (key) {
            case "terminal_margin_adjustment":
                return mPreferences.isTerminalMarginAdjustmentEnabled();
+            // vvv YOUR NEW CODE vvv


And here too?

Thanks for the feedback! I added those markers to visually separate the new code but see now they should be removed. I've pushed a commit to clean them up.
@twaik

twaik · 2025-09-25T19:31:56Z

terminal-view/src/main/java/com/termux/view/TerminalView.java

+                    if (diff > 0) { // Need to move right
+                        for (int i = 0; i < diff; i++) {
+                            handleKeyCode(android.view.KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_RIGHT, 0);
+                        }
+                    } else if (diff < 0) { // Need to move left
+                        for (int i = 0; i < -diff; i++) {
+                            handleKeyCode(android.view.KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_LEFT, 0);
+                        }
+                    }


Seems like a bad idea to me. It will not work fine in the case if text editing widget is not as wide as screen (i.e. widget has borders or other decorations).

I have tested this PR on my device Samsung Galaxy S7 SM-G930U.

This PR is working, however, as should be expected,

(and as also applies to the previous, similar PR):

add horisontal swipes #4108

this mode does work in regular shells like bash, fish,

but it does not work very well (but does a little bit) in curses or curses-like programs like nano.

that is why I asked for it to be disabled by default, and only enabled by a setting (which I can confirm, in the current version of this PR, the setting is not enabled by default)

twaik · 2025-09-25T19:32:42Z

terminal-view/src/main/java/com/termux/view/TerminalView.java

+    public void reloadPreferences() {
+        android.content.SharedPreferences prefs = androidx.preference.PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getContext());
+        mIsMouseCursorMovementEnabled = prefs.getBoolean("mouse_cursor_movement_enabled", false);
+    }
+


As I said before, it will be better to use termux.properties for this.

I agree, however, it might be relevant to mention that currently this preexisting setting:

and this preexisting setting:

both do very similar (but subtly different) things, and there appears to currently be no way to configure the first setting purely from termux.properties, or vice versa, the second setting purely from the GUI,

therefore, if either setting is modified from the default, software keyboard will not work, and both must be set to the default before software keyboard works again.

this might be a different topic from what this PR is about, but this summary explains why I didn't mention termux.properties in my suggestion - it is because the currently-existing settings are confusing, so there is not really, as far as I can see, a good example to follow.

The setting in PR should go in properties, but in my local changes, both props and prefs have been rewritten, so would be moot to work on it currently.

The first setting for soft keyboard enabled is in settings because if it was in properties file and soft keyboard gets disabled, you wouldn't be able to enable it again without an external keyboard to type into the terminal to open the properties file, hence its in a UI. The later hide property only hides soft keyboard at startup and tapping screen brings it up again.

Eventually all settings will be moved to properties or yaml file and shown in a UI, but that's in distant future.

The later hide property only hides soft keyboard at startup and tapping screen brings it up again.

In my testing, both settings caused the software keyboard to remain closed and simply tapping the screen did not make it appear on my device if either setting was changed from its default. The subtle difference between them I mentioned is something else that is very subtle and harder to explain. However, the problem of the "hide-soft-keyboard-on-startup" setting making the software keyboard difficult to access because of it no longer appearing when touching the Termux Activity might be a bug that isn't present in your rewritten version.

My rewritten solution doesn't make any changes for keyboard.

Hide on startup only hides keyboard and should show on tap, while disable setting, completely disables it until toggled with keyboard key or setting. You likely need to restart termux app after making changes for them to properly take effect. Soft keyboard enabled should be enabled, and hide set to true, and then restart.

What does it take for keyboard to appear again with hide?

termux-app/app/src/main/java/com/termux/app/terminal/TermuxTerminalViewClient.java

Line 598 in 7bceab8

// If soft keyboard is to be hidden on startup

you are correct, when I test again I am unable to reproduce the problem I saw before on any of my devices, so I must have been wrong. I don't know what happened because I thought that I set everything to default and restarted Termux using the exit command in between tests. thank you for pointing out what the actual behavior is.

Welcome and thanks for the confirmation for saving me work, there was a chance there could have been a bug on some devices. Android does not provide any API to check if keyboard is open or not, so termux code for it is very hacky, which could have caused problems, but it was well tested before I merged it and I haven't received any other reports. I tend not to touch that code.

twaik · 2025-09-25T19:32:57Z

terminal-view/src/main/java/com/termux/view/TerminalView.java

+        android.content.SharedPreferences prefs = androidx.preference.PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getContext());
+        mIsMouseCursorMovementEnabled = prefs.getBoolean("mouse_cursor_movement_enabled", false);
+


Termux does not use androidx preferences. Probably it would be better to use existing termux.properties file and related code.

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-09-26T05:52:32Z

Hi @twaik and @robertkirkman,

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback!

You're right, @twaik, my calculation logic is too simple and will break. I'd love to fix it, but I'm not sure of the best way to map the screen coordinates to the shell's command buffer. If you have any suggestions on the right approach, I'd really appreciate it!

And thanks, @robertkirkman, for the testing and for the context on the settings. I'm happy to implement the setting however the team decides is best.

I'll hold off on pushing more code until I hear your thoughts on the calculation fix. Thanks again!

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-10-02T17:35:03Z

@TomJo2000 @twaik @robertkirkman any info

TomJo2000 · 2025-10-02T17:36:19Z

Neither of us 3 merge pull requests in this repository.

ankitkrshah30 · 2025-10-02T17:51:57Z

can you help me if to know if any changes required. or if someone who can take this serious..

robertkirkman · 2025-10-02T19:05:18Z

There are many PRs waiting in order before this PR. The people who can merge PRs in this repository will be busy with all of the other ones before they reach this one.

agnostic-apollo · 2025-10-04T22:30:06Z

Hi, sorry about late reply, I am busy with termux-app rewrite and won't be merging any pulls before that, and as robert said some more important PRs will take precedence even after I finish rewrite and push. And this cannot be merged anyways before rewrite as it needs changes to properties, which conflict with my local rewrite changes. Additionally, such changes for mouse tracking in terminal will need to be looked into carefully to not break things and whether it is viable to merge, and whether issues above for ncurses can be solved. That will take time, I am also not very familiar with mouse related implementation in terminal, so will need to research first too. So I cannot give you any immediate timeline for merging this, sorry.

agnostic-apollo · 2025-10-04T22:32:31Z

app/src/main/java/com/termux/app/fragments/settings/termux/TerminalViewPreferencesFragment.java

    @Override
    public boolean getBoolean(String key, boolean defValue) {
-        if (mPreferences == null) return false;
+        if (mPreferences == null) return defValue;


Thanks for this catch though.

TomJo2000 reviewed Sep 22, 2025

View reviewed changes

ankitkrshah30 force-pushed the add-mouse-cursor-support branch from e66dfda to 4e3c4e0 Compare September 24, 2025 06:14

ankitkrshah30 force-pushed the add-mouse-cursor-support branch from 4e3c4e0 to 3aeb1b6 Compare September 25, 2025 18:59

twaik suggested changes Sep 25, 2025

View reviewed changes

feat(view): Enable mouse cursor movement in shell

928d003

ankitkrshah30 force-pushed the add-mouse-cursor-support branch from 3aeb1b6 to 928d003 Compare September 26, 2025 05:38

agnostic-apollo reviewed Oct 4, 2025

View reviewed changes

		android.content.SharedPreferences prefs = androidx.preference.PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getContext());
		mIsMouseCursorMovementEnabled = prefs.getBoolean("mouse_cursor_movement_enabled", false);

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