A terminal for Windows, macOS and Linux, built on the Tabby
codebase and diverged from it. It keeps Tabby's plugin API — third-party plugins written for Tabby
load unchanged — and catalogues its additions in docs/, covering
diagnostics, link previews, session resume, build management and the terminal itself.
| Windows | torbie-<version>-setup-x64.exe — an NSIS installer; pick your own install directory. Or torbie-<version>-portable-x64.zip, which keeps its settings in a data folder beside the binary and runs alongside an existing install. |
| macOS | torbie-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg (or -x86_64). |
| Linux | .deb, .rpm, .pacman, .tar.gz and an AppImage. The deb and rpm replace tabby-terminal if you have it. |
Every build is on the releases page. Builds are not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run and macOS will need Open anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
Installing does not disturb an existing Tabby: Torbie has its own application id, its own install directory and its own config directory. On first launch it copies your Tabby profile forward — settings, plugins, credentials, window geometry and your saved tab layout — by copying, never moving, so the original is left exactly as it was.
A VT220-compatible terminal with tabs, nested split panes, an SSH/SFTP/Telnet client and connection manager, a serial terminal, an encrypted vault for secrets, and full profile and shortcut configuration. On Windows it drives PowerShell, WSL, Git-Bash, Cygwin, MSYS2, Cmder and CMD.
It is an alternative to conhost, PuTTY, Terminal.app and iTerm. It is not a shell, and it is not lightweight — it is an Electron application, and if resident memory is the deciding factor, Alacritty or WezTerm will serve you better.
Each of these has a page in the feature catalogue with what it does, what it deliberately does not claim, and the commits behind it.
| Link previews | A hover card over terminal links, driven by declarative integration manifests that fetch what a link refers to — Jira, GitHub, Slack and more. Rules customise per-pattern behaviour; a preview can open in a real pane beside the terminal. |
| Session resume | A restored pane comes back running what it was running, not just a shell — the agent, the multiplexer, the dev server. |
| Claude Code awareness | A docked session panel and tab hover cards for Claude Code sessions, joined to tabs by launch directory. |
| Diagnostics | diagnostics.log records what blocks an event loop, in the main process and every renderer, with attribution to the synchronous calls responsible. Plus render timing, for the frames the event loop cannot explain. |
| A watchdog | A process that can never show a window does not get to hold the single-instance lock indefinitely. |
| Builds | Every build on the machine, with live process attribution, health checks, and two managed build slots. |
| Per-window geometry | Each window remembers its own position and size, rather than every window sharing one. |
| Jump list icons | Taskbar profile entries wear their own icons, rasterized from the profile's Font Awesome class or SVG. |
See HACKING.md for the prerequisites; the short version once they are in place:
yarn --network-timeout 1000000
yarn run build
node scripts/prepackage-plugins.mjs
# run it from source
./node_modules/electron/dist/electron.exe --dev --user-data-dir=<profile> app
# or produce the installer and portable zip in dist/
node scripts/build-windows.mjs # build-macos.mjs / build-linux.mjs--user-data-dir must come before the app path, or Electron hands the switch to the app and
silently ignores it.
A tagged push builds all three platforms in CI and publishes them to a GitHub release; the same scripts run locally and produce the same artifacts, unsigned.
Torbie loads plugins built for Tabby. The package-name prefix (tabby-), the npm keywords
(tabby-plugin, tabby-builtin-plugin) and the module names plugins require are all unchanged,
and there is no version gate — a plugin that worked with Tabby works here. That compatibility is the
reason this codebase is a Tabby derivative rather than a rewrite, and it is not going to be traded
away.
Third-party plugins are installed from Settings → Plugins, which searches npm for the tabby-plugin
keyword.
Colour schemes and window themes are plugins like anything else, and Tabby's are compatible. The built-in schemes are unchanged.
Torbie began as a fork of Eugeny/tabby and owes it the entire foundation. It no longer tracks upstream: changes are cherry-picked across when they are worth taking, in either direction, rather than the fork sitting rebased on a moving base. Settings → Upstream reports how far apart the two are and which settings this codebase added.
Bugs found here that belong upstream should go upstream. Torbie's own issues belong in this repository.
MIT, as Tabby is. See LICENSE.