FreeBSD Manual Pages
footclient(1) General Commands Manual footclient(1) NAME footclient - start new terminals in a foot server SYNOPSIS footclient [OPTIONS] footclient [OPTIONS] <command> [COMMAND OPTIONS] All trailing (non-option) arguments are treated as a command, and its argu- ments, to execute (instead of the default shell). DESCRIPTION footclient is used together with foot(1) in --server mode. Running it without arguments will open a new terminal window (hosted in the foot server), with your default shell. The exit code will be that of the terminal. I.e footclient does not exit until the terminal has terminated. OPTIONS -t,--term=TERM Value to set the environment variable TERM to (see TERMINFO and ENVI- RONMENT). Default: foot. -T,--title=TITLE Initial window title. Default: foot. -a,--app-id=ID Value to set the app-id property on the Wayland window to. Default: foot (normal mode), or footclient (server mode). -w,--window-size-pixels=WIDTHxHEIGHT Set initial window width and height, in pixels. Default: 700x500. -W,--window-size-chars=WIDTHxHEIGHT Set initial window width and height, in characters. Default: not set. -m,--maximized Start in maximized mode. If both --maximized and --fullscreen are spec- ified, the last one takes precedence. -F,--fullscreen Start in fullscreen mode. If both --maximized and --fullscreen are specified, the last one takes precedence. -L,--login-shell Start a login shell, by prepending a '-' to argv[0]. -D,--working-directory=DIR Initial working directory for the client application. Default: CWD of footclient. -s,--server-socket=PATH Connect to PATH instead of $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/foot-$WAYLAND_DISPLAY.sock. -H,--hold Remain open after child process exits. -N,--no-wait Detach the client process from the running terminal, exiting immedi- ately. -o,--override=[SECTION.]KEY=VALUE Override an option set in the configuration file. If SECTION is not given, defaults to main. -E,--client-environment The child process in the new terminal instance will use footclient's environment, instead of the server's. Environment variables listed in the Variables set in the child process section will be overwritten by the foot server. For example, the new terminal will use TERM from the configuration, not footclient's envi- ronment. -d,--log-level={info,warning,error,none} Log level, used both for log output on stderr as well as syslog. De- fault: warning. -l,--log-colorize=[{never,always,auto}] Enables or disables colorization of log output on stderr. -v,--version Show the version number and quit -e Ignored; for compatibility with xterm -e. See foot(1) for more details. EXIT STATUS Footclient will exit with code 220 if there is a failure in footclient it- self (for example, the server socket does not exist). If -N,--no-wait is used, footclient exits with code 0 as soon as the foot server has been instructed to open a new window. If not, footclient may also exit with code 230. This indicates a failure in the foot server. In all other cases the exit code is that of the client application (i.e. the shell). TERMINFO Client applications use the terminfo identifier specified by the environ- ment variable TERM (set by foot) to determine terminal capabilities. Foot has two terminfo definitions: foot and foot-direct, with foot being the default. The difference between the two is in the number of colors they describe; foot describes 256 colors and foot-direct 16.7 million colors (24-bit true- color). Note that using the foot terminfo does not limit the number of usable col- ors to 256; applications can still use 24-bit RGB colors. In fact, most ap- plications work best with foot (including 24-bit colors)). Using *-direct terminfo entries has been known to crash some ncurses applications even. There are however applications that need a *-direct terminfo entry for 24-bit support. Emacs is one such example. While using either foot or foot-direct is strongly recommended, it is pos- sible to use e.g. xterm-256color as well. This can be useful when remoting to a system where foot's terminfo entries cannot easily be installed. Note that terminfo entries can be installed in the user's home directory. I.e. if you do not have root access, or if there is no distro package for foot's terminfo entries, you can install foot's terminfo entries manually, by copying foot and foot-direct to ~/.terminfo/f/. ENVIRONMENT Variables used by footclient XDG_RUNTIME_DIR Used to construct the default PATH for the --server-socket option, when no explicit argument is given (see above). WAYLAND_DISPLAY Used to construct the default PATH for the --server-socket option, when no explicit argument is given (see above). If the socket at default PATH does not exist, footclient will fallback to the less specific path, with the following priority: $XDG_RUN- TIME_DIR/foot-$WAYLAND_DISPLAY.sock, $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/foot.sock, /tmp/foot.sock. Variables set in the child process TERM terminfo/termcap identifier. This is used by client applications to de- termine which capabilities a terminal supports. The value is set ac- cording to either the --term command-line option or the term config op- tion in foot.ini(5). COLORTERM This variable is set to truecolor, to indicate to client applications that 24-bit RGB colors are supported. PWD Current working directory (at the time of launching foot) SHELL Set to the launched shell, if the shell is valid (it is listed in /etc/shells). In addition to the variables listed above, custom environment variables may be defined in foot.ini(5). Variables *unset* in the child process TERM_PROGRAM TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION These environment variables are set by certain other terminal emula- tors. We unset them, to prevent applications from misdetecting foot. In addition to the variables listed above, custom environment variables to unset may be defined in foot.ini(5). Signals The following signals have special meaning in footclient: * SIGUSR1: switch to color theme 1 (i.e. use the [colors] section). * SIGUSR2: switch to color theme 2 (i.e. use the [colors2] section). When sending SIGUSR1/SIGUSR2 to a footclient instance, the theme is changed in that instance only. This is different from when you send SIGUSR1/SIGUSR2 to the server process, where all instances change the theme. Note: for obvious reasons, this is not supported when footclient is started with --no-wait. SEE ALSO foot(1) 2026-06-11 footclient(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | TERMINFO | ENVIRONMENT | Signals | SEE ALSO
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=footclient&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>