# Terminal right-click menu

When terminal mouse reporting is off, right-clicking anywhere in the terminal pane opens a context menu with actions for the current terminal. It uses native system menus, so it looks and behaves like the system menu in other apps. When an application requests mouse reporting, the menu is available while the [mouse ownership control](./mouse-ownership.md) says **Text selection on**; **TUI controls mouse** forwards the gesture to the application instead.

## How to open

While terminal mouse reporting is off or **Text selection on** owns the mouse:

- **Two-finger click** or `Control+click` anywhere in the terminal pane.
- Or right-click with a mouse.

## Available actions

### Copy

Copies the currently selected text to the clipboard. This is the same as using the keyboard copy shortcut after selecting text. If nothing is selected, **Copy** is grayed out.

### Create scratchpad

When text is selected, the menu includes **Create scratchpad**. It creates a new [scratchpad](../scratchpads/using-scratchpads.md) with the selection as its body. The title is derived from the first line of the selection, so a selected error message or log line becomes an easy-to-find scratchpad name.

This is a fast way to capture terminal output - a stack trace, a command result, or a snippet you want an agent to see later. Solo creates and opens the new scratchpad, so the active view moves away from the terminal.

### Paste

Pastes clipboard contents into the terminal. It can paste text, shell-escaped file paths, and image file paths when an image can be written to a temporary file. Useful for:

- Interactive terminal sessions where you want to type a long command.
- PTY-backed agent tabs where you're providing input.
- Sending a command to an interactive process.

Paste is most meaningful in interactive contexts. Solo sends admitted pasted input to the active writable PTY. Missing terminal focus, a blocking overlay, or an unavailable PTY can prevent delivery; Solo does not determine whether the external process reads or uses the bytes.

### Select all

Selects all currently selectable terminal rows in the loaded view.

### Clear selection

Clears the current terminal selection. This appears disabled when nothing is selected.

### Process actions

Depending on the selected process state, the menu can include:

- **[Start selected process](../commands/start-stop-restart.md)**
- **Stop selected process**
- **Restart selected process**
- **Clear output**
- **Search**
- **Enable [automatic renaming](../commands/renaming.md)** or **Disable automatic renaming**

### Clear output

Clears the entire terminal scrollback buffer. The process keeps running and new output continues to appear, but all previous output is gone.

You'll want this when:

- The buffer has grown large and is slowing things down.
- You want a clean slate before triggering a specific operation.
- The display looks cluttered and you don't need the history.

**Clearing output isn't reversible.** Once cleared, previous lines can't be recovered.

### Search

Opens the terminal search bar. See [Searching terminal output](./search.md).

### Link actions

When Solo owns the mouse and you right-click a linked cell - an [OSC 8 hyperlink](./osc-kitty-protocol.md) or a detected URL - the menu includes:

- **Copy link** - copies the link's URL to the clipboard.
- **Open link** - opens the link, same as clicking it.

## Mouse-reporting apps

When a terminal app enables [mouse reporting](./basics.md), **TUI controls mouse** forwards right-click and wheel events to that app and suppresses the normal context menu. Switch to **Text selection on** to keep those gestures in Solo and restore the menu for the current process run.

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Are you a human? Read this doc on the web: https://soloterm.com/docs/terminal/context-menu