Switching from VS Code or JetBrains

Next Term can use the shortcuts and settings you already have. Nothing changes unless you choose it: you see every change first, and one click undoes the whole import.

Bring your settings over

On first launch, if Next Term finds VS Code, Cursor, Devin Desktop, a JetBrains IDE (PhpStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, Android Studio and the rest), Zed, iTerm2, Ghostty, Warp, or a Terminal profile you chose or changed, it asks Coming from another app? The default keeps Next Term’s shortcuts. Any time later: Next Term › Import Settings and Shortcuts…, or Settings › Import.

Choose an app and the preview lists what it would bring, each item a checkbox with where it came from:

• Shortcuts: the matching set of keys (below).
• Your shortcuts: the keys you changed yourself, from VS Code’s keybindings.json (and Cursor’s, Devin Desktop’s), your JetBrains keymap, or Ghostty’s keybind lines that have a Next Term command. A key another command already has, or a Control key without ⌘, comes in unticked with the reason.
• Settings: font size, line height, soft wrap, Option as Meta, where the terminal sits and the sidebar’s side, from the values you set in that app.
• Fonts: the editor font and the terminal font. A font comes over only when it is installed on this Mac and monospaced; from a list such as VS Code’s editor.fontFamily, the first one that is.
• Terminal colours: the 16 ANSI colours, text, background, cursor and selection, shown as a row of swatches. A colour the other app doesn’t set keeps Next Term’s.
• Recent projects: your recent folders, added to Open Recent and the Welcome window after Next Term’s own.
• Not brought over: everything else, each with the reason (“not installed on this Mac”, “never imported: can hold secrets”). Copy List for Your Agent puts it on the clipboard, so Claude Code or Codex can help with the rest.

Apply saves what it is about to change first. Settings › Import › Undo Import puts every one of those values back, your shortcuts, fonts and colours included.

Fonts and colours from each app

App	Fonts	Terminal colours
VS Code, Cursor, Devin Desktop	editor.fontFamily, and terminal.integrated.fontFamily (the terminal uses the editor’s while it is unset, as in VS Code)	The terminal.* colours in workbench.colorCustomizations, the block for your colour theme winning
JetBrains IDEs	The editor font (or your colour scheme’s own) and the console font	Your colour scheme’s console colours, when the scheme is one you saved or edited
Zed	buffer_font_family, and terminal.font_family	—
iTerm2	The default profile’s font	The default profile’s colours, its Dark Mode ones when it keeps both
Ghostty	font-family	Your theme by name, then your own palette, background, foreground, cursor-color and selection-background
Warp	font_name	A custom theme in ~/.warp/themes or a folder inside it; when Warp follows the system’s light and dark, the dark one
Terminal	The default profile’s font	The default profile’s colours

A built-in colour scheme or theme lives inside its app, so it can’t be read; the preview says so. Change either one later in Settings › Editor › Font, Settings › Terminal › Font and Settings › Terminal › Colours, where Next Term default goes back to Next Term’s own and imported colours stay in the menu to choose again.

Keep the keys you know

Settings › Import › Shortcuts from chooses the keys, and an import can set it for you. Only the commands whose keys differ change; everything else keeps Next Term’s keys, and your own changes in Keyboard Shortcuts always stay on top.

Command	Next Term	VS Code	JetBrains (macOS)
New Window	⌘N	⇧⌘N	⌘N
Go to File	⌘P	⌘P	⇧⌘O, and ⌘P still works
Save	⌘S	⌘S	⌥⌘S
Save All	⌥⌘S	⌥⌘S	⌘S
Split Right	⌘D	⌘\	⌘\
Replace (in the open file)	⌥⌘F	⌥⌘F	⌘R
Replace in Files	⇧⌘R	⇧⌘H	⇧⌘R
Indent / Outdent	⌘] / ⌘[	⌘] / ⌘[	no key (⇥ and ⇧⇥ indent)

With either set, ⌘K clears only while a terminal has the keyboard, because both editors use ⌘K for other things in their editors.

Two rules keep the terminal working the way your shell and agents expect: a set never takes a Control key without ⌘ (Claude Code and the shell use ⌃R, ⌃G and the rest), and never a key macOS keeps for itself.

What it reads, and what it never touches

• Only this Mac, only reading. Next Term never writes to the other app, never copies its databases, and sends nothing anywhere.
• Only the settings it can use. Files that can hold credentials, such as license keys, saved logins and terminal environment variables, are never opened, and anything that looks like a secret never enters the preview. In Warp’s settings, the API keys, agent profiles and redaction list are skipped over unread.
• Nothing runs. Shell paths, terminal profiles, start-up commands, tasks and launch configurations are listed, never imported. What a Ghostty keybind types into the terminal is never shown, and Terminal’s saved fonts and colours are read as plain data, without decoding them into objects.

Coming next

Coming next Zed’s own key changes.