# Yakuake

> Drop-down terminal for KDE Plasma that embeds Konsole's terminal component and adds tabs, splits, skins and a D-Bus interface.

Stars: 482 · Language: C++ · License: GPL-2.0 · Platforms: Linux, BSD · Config: ini

Features: built-in multiplexer, ligatures, inline images, configurable

- Repository: https://invent.kde.org/utilities/yakuake
- Page: https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/yakuake

## Overview

Yakuake is a drop-down terminal for the KDE Plasma desktop, written in C++ with Qt and KDE Frameworks. It does not have its own terminal engine: each terminal is an embedded instance of Konsole's KPart, so emulation, rendering and profiles are Konsole's. It slides down from the top of the screen on a global hotkey (F12 by default), and suits Plasma users who want Konsole one key away. Konsole must be installed for it to work.

Yakuake's own settings, such as width, height, screen, animation, skin, translucency and focus behaviour, are stored in `~/.config/yakuakerc` and edited through its configuration dialog. Terminal settings like fonts, color schemes, scrollback and key behaviour are Konsole profiles, kept under `~/.local/share/konsole/` and managed with Konsole's profile editor, which Yakuake opens through its "Manage Profiles" action. Key bindings use KDE's standard shortcut editor.

It has tabs, and each tab can be split left/right, top/bottom, or automatically along the longer side of the current terminal. Keyboard input can be disabled per terminal or per session, and the window can stay open when it loses focus. Skins change the tab bar and title bar and can be installed from the KDE Store. A D-Bus interface exposes sessions, tabs, splits and commands for scripting, for example to open a preset layout of tabs at login.

Because the terminal is Konsole, it inherits Konsole's support for Sixel and iTerm2-style inline images and its rendering of coding ligatures, which is a profile option enabled by default. Rendering uses Qt's software painter, not a GPU renderer. Yakuake runs only where KDE's Konsole part does in practice, which means Linux and the BSDs under X11 or Wayland, and some window placement behaviour depends on the window manager.

## Alternatives

- [Windows Terminal](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/windows-terminal.md): Microsoft's terminal for Windows that hosts PowerShell, cmd and WSL shells in tabs and panes, with GPU text rendering and JSON settings. (Windows, 105.3k stars)
- [Tabby](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/tabby.md): Cross-platform Electron terminal with a built-in SSH, Telnet and serial client, saved connection profiles and a plugin system. (Linux/macOS/Windows, 75.2k stars)
- [Alacritty](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/alacritty.md): Cross-platform OpenGL terminal emulator written in Rust, configured with a TOML file and leaving tabs and splits to a multiplexer like tmux. (Linux/macOS/Windows/BSD, 66.1k stars)
- [Warp](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/warp.md): Terminal written in Rust with an IDE-style command editor, command output grouped into blocks, and built-in AI agents. (macOS/Linux/Windows, 65.7k stars)
- [Termux](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/termux.md): Android terminal emulator and Linux environment that installs packages through its own apt repository, no root required. (Android, 63.6k stars)
- [Ghostty](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/ghostty.md): Terminal emulator written in Zig with GPU rendering and a native UI on each platform: Swift/AppKit on macOS, GTK on Linux. (Linux/macOS, 62.8k stars)
- [Hyper](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/hyper.md): Electron terminal built on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, themed and extended through npm plugins. (Linux/macOS/Windows, 44.8k stars)
- [Kitty](https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/kitty.md): GPU-rendered terminal written in C and Python, with its own graphics protocol, built-in tabs and splits, and scriptable 'kittens'. (Linux/macOS/BSD, 35.5k stars)

## Guides

- [Best Drop-Down (Quake-Style) Terminals](https://www.trmn.sh/best/drop-down-terminals): Guake, Yakuake, Tabby and Windows Terminal compared as hotkey-toggled drop-down terminals on Linux, KDE, macOS and Windows.

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Canonical: https://www.trmn.sh/terminals/yakuake