DECSTR — Soft terminal reset

Byte forms

Every common string-literal form so you can paste-and-search either direction.

Description

DEC Soft Terminal Reset (DECSTR). Standard CSI with an intermediate ! (0x21) before the final p (0x70): \x1b[!p. xterm-ctlseqs §DECSTR documents the exact reset set — SGR (colour + bold + italic + underline + reverse + blink + strikethrough), DECAWM auto-wrap (?7), DECOM origin mode (?6), IRM insert / replace mode, keyboard application / cursor-key modes, character sets G0–G3, DECSTBM scrolling region (top = 1, bottom = visible height), DECSCUSR cursor style (back to user default), and several other DEC private modes. It explicitly does NOT clear the screen, does NOT touch the scrollback buffer, and does NOT exit the alt-screen — that's what makes it the "soft" reset, the surgical complement of RIS.

Portability — universal across xterm, iTerm2, kitty, alacritty, wezterm, gnome-terminal, Konsole, Ghostty, Linux console, Windows Terminal, and ConPTY 1809+. Windows legacy cmd.exe (pre-ConPTY) ignored DECSTR entirely. The canonical recovery scenario: a TUI crashed in the middle of vim or htop with reverse-video active, auto-wrap turned off, the scrolling region restricted to lines 5–20, the cursor hidden, and DECSCUSR set to a steady bar. \x1b[!p puts every one of those private modes back to default in a single round-trip — without losing the scrollback the user might want to review. Contrast RIS (\x1bc, see ris-reset) which does the same reset *plus* clears the screen, wipes the scrollback, and on Linux console reinitialises the entire terminal state (font table, palette) — RIS is the bigger hammer when DECSTR isn't enough but is destructive to scrollback the user may still need.

The catch list matters when planning a recovery script. DECSTR does NOT clear the screen (use \x1b[2J\x1b[H separately if needed), does NOT exit the alt-screen (use \x1b[?1049l, see alt-screen), and on some xterm builds does NOT undo DECSET ?1000 / ?1006 mouse tracking, ?2004 bracketed paste, or ?1004 focus events — the xterm matrix has shifted across releases, and kitty / wezterm reset more private modes than xterm does. For a guaranteed full cleanup after a crashed TUI, the durable shell-prompt recipe is printf '\x1b[?1049l\x1b[?1000l\x1b[?1006l\x1b[?2004l\x1b[?1004l\x1b[!p\x1b[?25h' — DECRST the leakage-prone private modes one by one, then DECSTR for everything else, then explicitly show the cursor. Some shells expose a built-in for this (reset-tty in fish, stty sane covers the kernel side but not the terminal-emitter side). Related: ris-reset (RIS \x1bc — hard reset, wipes scrollback), sgr-reset (SGR 0 — colour / attribute reset only, the lightest hammer), alt-screen (DECSET ?1049 — must be disabled separately from DECSTR).

Spec citation: xterm-ctlseqs (DECSTR, CSI ! p)

Examples

printf '\033[!p'   # soft reset; scrollback preserved

import sys; sys.stdout.write('\x1b[!p')

fmt.Print("\x1b[!p")

process.stdout.write('\x1b[!p')

printf("\x1b[!p");

Terminal support

xterm

yes

Linux console (fbcon)

yes

macOS Terminal.app

yes

iTerm2

yes

Windows Terminal

yes

cmd.exe / ConPTY

partial

kitty

yes

alacritty

yes

WezTerm

yes

Ghostty

yes

GNOME Terminal

yes

Konsole

yes

tmux

yes

GNU screen

yes

Related sequences

• RIS — Reset to Initial State (full terminal reset)
• SGR 0 — Reset / Normal
• DECSET 1049 — Alternate screen buffer

In the family cookbook

↗ESC cookbook · 1. Hard reset vs. soft reset — `\x1bc` (RIS) and `\x1b[!p` (DECSTR)