Work with tabs and split panes

Every session, shell and tool opens in a tab in the strip across the top of the window. Each tab can hold up to four panes side by side, so you can watch a firewall and a switch at once, or keep a ping running under an SSH session.

The ⌂ Home tab, your inventory, is always first and can’t be closed.

Open a new tab

Click + at the end of the tab strip, or press Ctrl+T (Ctrl+Shift+T while you’re typing in a terminal). The tab opens on the new-tab screen.

Connecting from a Launch Button, the sidebar or global search opens the session in a tab too.

Split a pane

Each pane has a header with its name, host and a row of buttons on the right.

1. Click Split right or Split down in the pane header. You can also right-click the header and choose Split, then Right, Left, Down or Up.
2. The new pane opens on the new-tab screen. Pick a session, shell or tool, or click ⧉ Duplicate to open another session to the same target.

A tab holds at most four panes. When it’s full, the split buttons are disabled. Drag the divider between panes to resize them.

To make one pane fill the tab for a moment, click Maximize pane or double-click its header. Do the same again to restore it.

Keyboard shortcuts for panes

These work while a terminal pane has focus:

Keys	Action
Alt+Shift+=	Split right
Alt+Shift+-	Split down
Alt+← → ↑ ↓	Move to the pane in that direction

The full list is under ☰, Help, Keyboard Shortcuts.

The tab menu

Right-click a tab, or right-click a pane header, or click ⋮ in the header, to open the tab menu. Inside a terminal, use Shift+right-click, because a plain right-click pastes.

The top of the menu has the actions for that pane (disconnect, logging, scripts and so on). The bottom has the actions for the whole tab.

Pin a tab

1. Right-click the tab and click Pin tab.

Pinned tabs move to the left of the strip and show a pin instead of the close button. Middle-click and the Close other tabs, Close tabs to the right and Close all tabs commands skip them. Click the pin, or choose Unpin tab, to unpin.

Rename a tab

1. Right-click the tab and click Rename tab….
2. Type a name, for example Northwind core, and click Rename.

Leave the name empty to go back to the automatic name.

Color a tab

1. Right-click the tab and point to Tab color.
2. Choose None, Red, Amber, Green or Blue.

The color shows as a stripe on the tab’s left edge. A common use is red for production, green for lab.

Close tabs and panes

• Close a pane: click × in the pane header, or choose Close pane from the menu.
• Close a tab: click × on the tab, middle-click it, or choose Close tab.
• Close several: choose Close other tabs, Close tabs to the right or Close all tabs. Pinned tabs stay open.

Sessions end with the window: when ArkhiNet closes, no plink or shell processes are left running.

The close guard

ArkhiNet asks before it ends live work:

• When you close several tabs at once and any of them have live sessions, a Close tabs dialog says how many sessions will end.
• When you close ArkhiNet with sessions still open, it lists how many are open and asks you to confirm with Close ArkhiNet.
• Unsaved Notepad files always ask before they’re closed.

Caution

Closing ArkhiNet ends every session in it. Windows shutdown, sign-out and installing an update close it without asking.