Terminal settings

Control how Test Companion reuses your IDE’s integrated terminal when it runs commands.

Terminal settings control how Test Companion uses your IDE’s integrated terminal when it runs commands. The single setting here controls when the extension reuses an existing terminal instead of opening a new one. Most users can leave it at the default, but it helps when you troubleshoot terminal integration issues.

How to open settings

To open the terminal settings:

Enable aggressive terminal reuse

By default, Test Companion reuses terminal instances to keep your terminal panel clean during a long session. When this option is enabled, the extension reuses an existing terminal even if it is open in a different directory. It changes to the correct directory before it runs the command.

When to disable this

If you notice issues with task lockout after a terminal command, try disabling this setting. Task lockout can occur when the extension reuses a terminal that is in the middle of a long-running process (like a development server) and cannot send new commands to it.

Disabling this setting makes Test Companion create a new terminal for each command when no idle terminal is available in the correct directory. This is safer but may result in more terminal tabs.

Example scenario

You have a terminal running npm run dev (a long-running development server). With aggressive terminal reuse enabled, Test Companion might try to reuse that terminal tab for a new command, which could interrupt the server. With aggressive terminal reuse disabled, it creates a fresh terminal tab instead, leaving the server running.

Troubleshoot terminal issues

If commands are failing silently or producing unexpected results, try these steps in order:

1. Increase the shell integration timeout to 8-10 seconds and try again.
2. Disable aggressive terminal reuse to rule out conflicts with running processes.
3. Close all terminal tabs in your IDE and start a fresh task.
4. Check your shell startup scripts for errors or slow operations. Try running time zsh -i -c exit (or time bash -i -c exit) in an external terminal to measure your shell startup time.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, contact BrowserStack support with your operating system details and any error messages you see.