Terminal & Exec
A fully native terminal emulator built into Krust — no web views, no Electron, just macOS performance.
Native Terminal
Krust's terminal is rendered directly by the macOS graphics stack — not a web-based emulator like xterm.js. This gives you:
- Instant rendering — GPU-accelerated output with no browser overhead
- Full color support — 256-color and truecolor output renders correctly
- Smooth resize — Terminal dimensions update instantly when you resize the panel
- Native clipboard — Cmd+C/Cmd+V just works
- Full TTY — Interactive programs like
vim,top, andhtopwork out of the box
Pod Exec
Right-click any pod and select Exec to open an interactive shell session inside the container. Krust uses a shell fallback chain — it tries bash first, then ash, then sh — so exec works on minimal container images out of the box.
For multi-container pods, a container picker appears so you can choose which container to exec into.
Local Shell
Press Ctrl+` to toggle the terminal panel. This spawns your default shell ($SHELL) with full environment, history, and tab completion.
The kubectl context is automatically injected to match whichever Kubernetes context is active in Krust, so kubectl commands target the same cluster you're viewing in the GUI — no manual kubectl config use-context needed.
Multi-Tab
Open multiple terminal sessions in tabs. Each tab can be either a pod exec session or a local shell instance. Tabs are independent — closing one does not affect others. Switch between tabs with a click or keyboard shortcut.