Text area (chars)

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Experimental

Text Area Size (chars) is an XTerm window manipulation sequence that queries the character dimensions (rows and columns) of the terminal's text area.

Syntax

CSI 18 t                     Request text area size in characters
CSI 8 ; rows ; cols t        Response: character dimensions

Formal syntax

(* Request *)
text_area_chars_request  = 0x1b, "[", "1", "8", "t" ;

(* Response *)
text_area_chars_response = 0x1b, "[", "8", ";", Pn, ";", Pn, "t" ;
Pn                       = digit, { digit } ;
digit                    = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4"
                       | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9" ;

Response

Field	Description
`rows`	Number of character rows in the text area
`cols`	Number of character columns in the text area

Description

This sequence queries the terminal for the size of the text area measured in characters (rows and columns). It is part of the XTerm CSI Ps ; Ps ; Ps t window manipulation family.

When the terminal receives CSI 18 t, it responds with CSI 8 ; rows ; cols t where rows is the number of character rows and cols is the number of character columns in the text area. The response format matches the parameter format of the Resize (chars) sequence (CSI 8 ; rows ; cols t).

This report provides the same information as the TIOCGWINSZ ioctl or the COLUMNS and LINES environment variables, but it works over any transport (including serial connections and SSH tunnels) without requiring out-of-band signaling.

Applications may prefer this over the Text Area Size (pixels) report when they only need character dimensions and do not perform pixel-level operations.

Examples

# Query text area size in characters
printf '\e[18t'

# Read the response
printf '\e[18t'; read -st 1 -d t response; echo "$response"

Specifications

Specification	Section
XTerm ctlseqs	—

Terminal support

Terminal	Support	Version	Notes
Terminal Emulators
Alacritty	✓	Yes	Implemented via text_area_size_chars() at term/mod.rs:2268, responds with CSI 8 t
Bobcat	✓	0.9.0	Requires WindowReports enabled in profile
contour	✓	v0.2.0.171_rc2
foot	✓	Yes	Implemented at csi.c:1356-1362, reports terminal rows and columns
Ghostty	✓	v1.0.0
iTerm2	✓	Yes	Returns CSI 8;height;widtht format. See VT100Terminal.m:2767-2774
Kitty	✓	Yes	Reports text area size in characters via CSI 8;height;width t
Konsole	✓	Yes	Reports terminal size in characters via CSI 8 t response
mintty	✓	Yes	Reports terminal size in characters via CSI 18 t, implemented in src/termout.c:3046
mlterm	✓	rel-3_8_4
PuTTY	✓	0.52	Implemented at terminal.c:4940-4946, reports text area size in characters via CSI 8;rows;cols t
Rio	✓	v0.0.28
rxvt-unicode	✓	1.2
st	✗	No
terminology	✗	No
VT100	✗	No
VTE	✓	Yes
WezTerm	✓	Yes	Fully implemented in term/src/terminalstate/mod.rs:2025-2033
Windows Terminal	✓	Yes	Implemented as ReportTextSizeInCharacters in WindowManipulationType enum (value 18)
xterm	✓	xterm-406
xterm.js	✓	4.4.0	Requires windowOptions.getWinSizeChars to be enabled
Multiplexers
cy	✗	No	CSI t (XTWINOPS) explicitly ignored since v0.1.0
GNU Screen	✓	v.5.0.0	Reports window size in characters via CSI 18 t
tmux	✓	1.9
tuios	✓	v0.2.2
Zellij	✓	v0.10.0

Syntax​

Response​

Description​

Examples​

Specifications​

Terminal support​

See also​