How to really clear the terminal?

Question

I can issue the clear command or press Ctrl + L to clear the current Ubuntu terminal, but this just shifts previous output upwards and if you use mouse scroll or PgUP and PgDown keys it's hard to distinguish where the output of previous command ends and output of current command begins.

Is there a way to really clear the terminal so I won't see previous command results?

Answer 1

Yes, the command you're looking for is

reset

In contrast to clear, or Ctrl+L, reset will actually completely re-initialise the terminal, instead of just clearing the screen. However, it won't re-instantiate the shell (bash). That means that bash's state is the same as before, just as if you were merely clearing the screen.

As @Ponkadoodle mentions in the comments, this command should do the same thing more quickly:

tput reset

---

From the other answers:

• You can set a Keyboard Shortcut to reset the terminal, as explained by towolf.

• If you're running Kubuntu, and your terminal is Konsole, you need to go to Edit → Clear history, since reset doesn't work the same way there, as UncleZeiv notes.

Answer 2

I was looking for this for a while and I found some genius that posted this:

clear && printf '\e[3J'

Clears the whole screen buffer, very clean. Works on OS X and believe it works fine on most *nix terminals.

For curious, this part '\e[3J' is a terminal escape command.

Answer 3

You can also assign a shortcut in gnome-terminal by going to Edit → Keyboard Shortcuts. I useShift+Ctrl+Alt+C.

Answer 4

Cross posting my answer from stackoverflow.

Use the following command to do a clear screen instead of merely adding new lines ...

printf "\033c"

yes that's a 'printf' on the bash prompt.

You will probably want to define an alias though...

alias cls='printf "\033c"'

Explanation

\033 == \x1B == 27 == ESC

So this becomes <ESC>c which is the VT100 escape code for resetting the terminal. Here is some more information on terminal escape codes.

Edit

Here are a few other ways of doing it...

printf "\ec" #\e is ESC in bash
echo -en "\ec" #thanks @Jonathon Reinhart.
# -e    Enable interpretation of of backslash escapes
# -n    Do not output a new line

KDE

The above does not work on the KDE console (called Konsole) but there is hope! Use the following sequence of commands to clear the screen and the scroll-back buffer...

clear && echo -en "\e[3J"

Or perhaps use the following alias on KDE...

alias cls='clear && echo -en "\e[3J"'

I got the scroll-back clearing command from here.

Answer 5

run this command:

reset

This has the same effect as launching a new terminal.

Answer 6

My favorite is printf "\ec". This can also be printf "\033c" or printf "\x1bc". That is an ansi escape sequence that miraculously clears the screen and buffer for the terminal output (for most standard terminals I have worked in it seems - I know it works in such as gnome-terminal, terminator, xterm, etc. on Ubuntu-like Linuxes)

I know this works in Linux Mint and Ubuntu 14.04, so I don't know why people are appending and prepedning things like clear && echo -ne "\033c. printf "\ec" has always worked for me.

Additionally, in my .bashrc I have a binding like this:

bind -x '"\C-t": printf "\ec"';

Now I press ctrlt all the time.

Answer 7

Here are all the ways you can clear the terminal screen in Unix:

clear               # only clear visible screen
clear && clear      # clear buffer as well
tput clear          # same as clear but by sending escape seq
reset               # clear + reset internal terminal state + 1sec delay
tput reset          # same as reset but without 1sec delay
stty sane           # don't clear screen but reset some terminal options
echo -e "\033c"     # same as tput reset but hardcoded escape seq
printf "\033c"      # same as tput reset but hardcoded escape seq
setterm -reset      # same as tput reset, setterm has friendlier commands

Answer 8

Well it really depends, if you are using Konsole for instance even reset doesn't prevent you to scroll past the first line. In that case you have to use some feature of the particular terminal you are using. For Konsole, it's Edit > Clear History.

Answer 9

I have found the following to be quite successful with Kubuntu:

alias clc="echo -en '\033c\033[3J'"

You can use cls to keep with the Windows tradition, use the Matlab version clc, or one of your own. Good luck!

Answer 10

If you're using yakuake or Konsole, try Ctrl+Shift+K.

Source: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309008

Answer 11

Alternatively to reset, you can do echo -e "\033c", or have in your .bashrc, something like alias cls="echo -ne '\033c'"

The UNIX/Linux StackExchange, has a thread on this: How to clear terminal completely? (unix.stackexchange.com), as well as SuperUser : Clear terminal using keyboard shortcut (superuser.com).

Answer 12

Another alternative to the @Hibou57 answer:

# The Octal Way
alias clear="echo -e '\033c\c'"

OR

# The Hex Way
alias clear="echo -e '\x1b\c'"

Basically this will have exactly the same effect, it will print the ^[ character (which clear your terminal) and does not output the trailing new line.