---
title: Set a terminal emulator to be default for Ubuntu 25.04+
date: 2025-07-04 04:22:39.423949 UTC
---
Ubuntu comes with a default terminal emulator, GNOME Terminal. But due to the limit of the underlying [vte](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte), many users don't want to use it. If you want to set a different program as default terminal, so that you can invoke it with Ctrl + Alt + T, here is how to do it.

Determine the desktop file of your terminal, by searching in */usr/share/applications/* or *~/.local/share/applications/*. For example, kitty has one at *~/.local/share/applications/kitty.desktop*, Ghostty has one at */usr/share/applications/com.mitchellh.ghostty.desktop*.

Edit the *~/.config/xdg-terminals.list* file (create it if it does not exist). Add the name of the desktop file at the top. For example, here is mine:

```
com.mitchellh.ghostty.desktop
org.gnome.Terminal.desktop
```

Before Ubuntu 25.04, there was another way, that is to set via `update-alternatives --set x-terminal-emulator`. But it is no longer respected by Ubuntu 25.04.