Quickstart

This is the five-minute tour. By the end you will have a split-pane grid running, a saved SSH server, and you will have seen session restore in action. None of it requires configuration.

First run

Install DiceTerm (see Install) and open it. You will land in a single pane running your default shell — PowerShell if it is present on your system, powershell.exe otherwise. The left rail shows one workspace named workspace 1.

Step 1 — Pick a shell

The default shell is auto-detected, but every new tab lets you choose. Click the dropdown arrow next to the new-tab + button in the rail — you will see:

• PowerShell (powershell.exe)
• PowerShell 7 (pwsh.exe, if installed)
• Command Prompt (cmd.exe)
• Git Bash (bash.exe, if installed)
• WSL (wsl.exe, if installed)

Select any entry to open a new tab running that shell. You can set a different default in Settings → Behavior → Default shell.

Step 2 — Split into a grid

Splits add panes to the current workspace without opening new tabs.

Action	Shortcut
Split right (vertical divider)	Ctrl+Shift+E
Split down (horizontal divider)	Ctrl+Shift+O
Instant 2×2 grid	Ctrl+Shift+G

Press Ctrl+Shift+G now. You will have four panes arranged in a 2×2 grid, all running the same shell. Drag any divider to resize. Move focus between panes with Alt+Left / Right / Up / Down, or cycle with Ctrl+Shift+] / Ctrl+Shift+[.

To maximize a pane temporarily, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. The other panes keep running in the background. Press the same shortcut again to restore the grid.

Tip: If you close a pane by accident, Ctrl+Shift+Z brings it back.

Step 3 — Add a workspace

Workspaces live in the left rail and each holds its own layout. Press Ctrl+Shift+T (or click the + in the rail) to create a second workspace. The first workspace — its panes, its processes, its scrollback — keeps running while you are on the second one. Switch back with Alt+1 and Alt+2, or Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown.

Rename a workspace by clicking its name inline. Drag workspaces to reorder them.

Step 4 — Find something in scrollback

Press Ctrl+F to open find. Type a string and every match in the current pane lights up. Use Enter to step forward, Shift+Enter to step backward, and Esc to close. Find supports case-sensitive, whole-word, and regex modes via the toggles in the bar.

To search across every pane at once, use Ctrl+Shift+F instead.

Step 5 — Explore settings and shortcuts

Click the ⚙ icon in the left rail to open Settings. The most useful stops on a first visit:

• Appearance — theme (Tokyo Night is the default), font, font size, cursor style, opacity.
• Behavior — default shell, scrollback size (default 10,000 lines), summon hotkey.
• Keyboard — remap any command by recording a new accelerator.

To see every shortcut without leaving the terminal, press Ctrl+Shift+/ (or click the ? in the rail). The full shortcut reference appears as an overlay.

Step 6 — See session restore

Press Ctrl+Shift+W to close a few panes, then quit DiceTerm entirely. Reopen it. Your workspaces come back exactly as you left them: layout, pane positions, scrollback buffers, working directories. Nothing to configure — this happens automatically every time.

Tip: Session state is saved to %APPDATA%\DiceTerm\session.json with a rolling backup at session.backup.json. If a session file is ever corrupted, DiceTerm falls back to the backup automatically.

Where to go next

• Settings → Keyboard — remap any shortcut to something that suits your hands.
• Saved servers — add an SSH server via the + in the servers section of the rail (label, host, user, port), then connect with one click. Auth goes through your system OpenSSH client.
• Command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) — fuzzy-search workspaces, panes, and saved servers from one place.
• Instant replay (Ctrl+Shift+B) — scrub back up to 5 minutes in any pane's output history.
• Composer (Ctrl+Shift+L) — write a multi-line command in a proper editor, then send it with Ctrl+Enter.