Animated terminal

Also called terminal animation, typing terminal, or terminal window

A terminal window on a landing page that types out commands and prints their output line by line, to show how a developer tool is used.

What is Animated terminal?

An animated terminal draws a small window with a dark background, three dots in the title bar, and monospaced text. It types a command one character at a time behind a blinking cursor, pauses, prints the output a line at a time, and moves on to the next command. Developer tools use it in heroes and docs to show install and setup steps without a video.

Build it from a script: a list of steps, each a command to type or output to print, with a delay for each. Type commands at about 40 to 70ms per character, print output lines about 100ms apart, and hold the final screen for a few seconds before looping, or stop at the end so people can read and copy it.

Use real commands that work when pasted. Keep the full text in the page so it can be selected, searched, and read by screen readers, and animate only how it is revealed. Pause when the terminal scrolls out of view, and under reduced motion show the finished transcript right away. A copy button next to the first command saves people from selecting text.

Often confused with

Typewriter effect
A typewriter effect reveals any text one character at a time. An animated terminal uses it inside a terminal window and adds prompts, command output, and pauses.
All terms

Typewriter effect

A text animation that reveals a line one character at a time, as if someone were typing it, usually with a blinking caret at the end.

Stagger

Animating a group of items one after another with a small delay between each, so they arrive as a cascade.

Hero section

The large first section at the top of a landing page, with a headline, a short subhead, a call to action, and a visual.

Looping animation

An animation that plays more than once, either a set number of times or forever, set in CSS with animation-iteration-count.

Build it with Layerwise

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