Support for Opening External Terminal Window like Warp or iTerm2

[rommyarb]

I've been exploring Zed and appreciate its seamless integration with the user's default shell. I wondered if we could add support for opening external terminal windows (not in the dock) like Warp or iTerm2, by customizing the default key binding or something else.

VSCode has this feature on its settings.json:

{
 "terminal.external.osxExec": "Warp.app",
}

This could offer more flexibility for users who prefer or require different terminal environments for their projects. What do you guys think about this?

[peterpeterparker]

That would be nice. With JetBrains editors on Mac, I like being able to drag and drop a project over the terminal icon to open the related folder.

[marlonmp]

There is a way to open the external terminal with a custom key binding, it is not the same as VSCode, but it works for me.

First, you have to add a task in your Zed tasks file, in my case I'm using gnome-terminal

[
  ...
  {
    "label": "external-terminal",
    "command": "gnome-terminal",
    "args": ["--working-directory=$ZED_WORKTREE_ROOT"],
    "reveal": "never",
    "hide": "always",
    "shell": "system"
  }
]

But If you are using Warp in linux

  {
    "label": "external-terminal",
    "command": "nohup",
    "args": ["warp-terminal warp://action/new_tab?path=$ZED_WORKTREE_ROOT"],
    "reveal": "never",
    "hide": "always",
    "shell": "system"
  }

Or if you are using Warp in Mac, I think this will work

  {
    "label": "external-terminal",
    "command": "open",
    "args": ["\"[warp://action/new_tab?path=$ZED_WORKTREE_ROOT\""],
    "reveal": "never",
    "hide": "always",
    "shell": "system"
  }

Once you add the task you can spawn the task to check if it works.

Then you can create your custom key binding to spawn your task like this:

[
  ...
  {
    "context": "Workspace",
    "bindings": {
      "ctrl-alt-c": ["task::Spawn", { "task_name": "external-terminal" }]
    }
  },
]

And thats all, I hope this solution works for you while Zed adds support for this feature.