helm-switch-shell

This library provides a simple function that uses helm to easily switch between many (e)shells.

Demo

Usage

Run M-x helm-switch-shell. It’s especially convienent to make a key binding for this, e.g.

(global-set-key (kbd "<f3>") #'helm-switch-shell)

It show a list of the shell-mode and eshell-mode shells you have open by their current directory, sorted by how close they are to the directory you’re currently in.

You can switch to one of those buffers, or type the name of a new directory to create a shell there (defaulting to your current directory).

By default, new shells are created with eshell. You can customize this by setting helm-switch-shell-new-shell-type to be shell or vterm, in which case new shells will be created with shell or vterm (assuming emacs-libvterm is installed), respectively.

It provides the following keybindings:

• C-s: open the indicated shell in horizontal split (split-window-below)
• C-v: open the indicated shell in a vertical split (split-window-right)

Other options for customization:

• helm-switch-shell-truncate-lines: set to non-nil to truncate candidates
• helm-switch-shell-show-shell-indicator: set to non-nil to show an indicator of what kind of shell the candidate is in the list (e.g. [V] for vterm, [E] for eshell, etc)

Faces:

• helm-switch-shell-buffer-name-face: Face for the candidate buffer name
• helm-switch-shell-indicator-face: Face for the candidate indicator type
• helm-switch-shell-path-face: Face for the candidate path name
• helm-switch-shell-new-shell-face: Face for the [+] new shell indicator