yakuake-save-session

Save and restore Yakuake tab names, visual order, and working directories across reboots and logouts.

What it does

• Saves Yakuake tab names, visual order, and working directories via D-Bus
• Restores those tabs on login, in order, each cd'd to its saved directory
• Nothing else. Tabs are plain shells.

What it deliberately does not do

It does not persist scrollback, and it does not manage terminal multiplexers.

Earlier versions ran a tmux session per tab and tried to keep Yakuake tab indices, Konsole terminal IDs, and tmux session names in agreement. None of those three ID spaces is authoritative and Yakuake assigns them during a racy startup, so the mapping broke in a new way roughly every time the timing shifted — content landing on the wrong tab, or not at all.

If you want scrollback that survives a reboot, let tmux own that directly:

set -g @resurrect-capture-pane-contents 'on'
set -g @continuum-restore 'on'
set -g @continuum-save-interval '5'

Then run tmux in whichever tabs you want it, and attach from any terminal. Sessions are yours to name. This project stays out of it.

How it works

Trigger	What happens
Login	KDE autostart runs the wrapper, which waits for a display, starts Yakuake, and restores tabs
Every 5 min	Systemd timer saves the tab layout
Logout/shutdown	Systemd service saves the layout before session teardown

The wrapper waits up to 5 minutes for a usable display before starting Yakuake, and gives up rather than starting without one. Launching Yakuake with no Wayland compositor is not a slow start — it is a hard Qt abort that repeats until something intervenes.

Dependencies

• Yakuake (KDE drop-down terminal)
• jq
• qdbus and busctl
• systemd (user session)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/stuckj/yakuake-save-session.git
cd yakuake-save-session
bash scripts/install.sh

The installer will:

1. Symlink scripts to ~/.local/bin/
2. Back up and replace the Yakuake autostart entry
3. Generate systemd user units for periodic and shutdown saves
4. Remove the tmux Konsole profile left by earlier versions, if present
5. Save your current Yakuake session

File layout

scripts/
├── install.sh              # One-time setup (idempotent, safe to re-run)
├── save-session.sh         # Captures tab state to JSON
├── restore-session.sh      # Recreates tabs, titles and directories
└── yakuake-wrapper.sh      # Autostart entrypoint: starts Yakuake + restores

Session state is saved to ~/.local/share/yakuake-session/session.json with rotating backups.

Uninstallation

systemctl --user disable --now yakuake-session-autosave.timer
systemctl --user disable --now yakuake-session-shutdown.service
rm -f ~/.local/bin/yakuake-session-{save,restore,wrapper}
rm -f ~/.config/autostart/yakuake-session.desktop
rm -f ~/.config/systemd/user/yakuake-session-{autosave.service,autosave.timer,shutdown.service}

Then restore the original Yakuake autostart: remove Hidden=true from ~/.config/autostart/org.kde.yakuake.desktop, or restore it from .bak.

Notes

• The save script keeps the last 10 backups in ~/.local/share/yakuake-session/backups/
• Working directories are read from /proc/<pid>/cwd, because Konsole does not expose currentWorkingDirectory on Yakuake's embedded sessions
• Restore applies a directory by sending cd via runCommandInTerminal, which D-Bus restricts to your own user session

License

MIT