Every ANSI escape sequence

Clear all text attributes and colors back to the terminal default.

Render following text in bold (or bright on some terminals).

Render following text at reduced intensity (faint).

Blink the following text (≤ 150 blinks/minute).

Render following text invisibly (cursor still advances).

Render following text with a horizontal line through it.

Reset only the foreground color (leaves attributes + bg intact).

Reset only the background color (leaves attributes + fg intact).

Pick a background color from the 256-color xterm palette.

Pick any of 16,777,216 background RGB colors directly.

Render following text in italic; not universally supported.

Render following text with an underline.

Swap foreground and background colors.

Set foreground to one of black/red/green/yellow/blue/magenta/cyan/white.

Set background to one of black/red/green/yellow/blue/magenta/cyan/white.

Bright variants of the 8 basic foreground colors (aixterm/xterm extension).

Bright variants of the 8 basic background colors.

Pick a foreground color from the 256-color xterm palette.

Pick any of 16,777,216 foreground RGB colors directly.

Render text with a double underline — distinct from single underline (SGR 4).

Render text with a line drawn ABOVE the glyphs — mirror of underline. Disable with SGR 55.

Defined by ECMA-48 as 'proportional spacing on' — but no common terminal emulator implements it. Document the gotcha.

Use `:` (0x3a) instead of `;` (0x3b) between extended-color sub-parameters — the spec-blessed form that disambiguates compound SGR codes from independent ones.

Mintty's superscript / subscript SGR pair, now shipped by Kitty 0.32+, WezTerm, foot, and iTerm2. The first SGR attribute that lets terminal output typeset math, footnotes, and chemical formulae without trick characters.

Move the cursor up / down / right / left by N cells.

Move the cursor to column 1 of the line N below (CNL) or above (CPL).

Move the cursor to column N of the current row (1-indexed).

Move the cursor to absolute row/column (1-indexed).

Erase part or all of the screen.

Erase part or all of the current line.

Scroll the screen contents up (SU) or down (SD) by N lines without moving the cursor.

Change the cursor shape: block, underline, or bar (with optional blink).

Reset DEC private modes and SGR to defaults WITHOUT clearing the screen or scrollback.

Move the cursor back N tab stops — the reverse of pressing Tab.

Clear one or all tab stops, changing where HT and CBT land.

Define the vertical scrolling region — rows outside it stay pinned, rows inside scroll.

CSI-style save (s) and restore (u) of cursor position — distinct from ESC 7 / ESC 8 (DECSC / DECRC).

Advance the cursor N tab stops — the parameterized form of pressing Tab.

Ask the terminal what kind of VT it is — primary (CSI c) returns features, secondary (CSI > c) returns model + firmware.

Ask for terminal status (5n) or the current cursor position (6n) — the reverse channel TUIs use to size the terminal.

Ask the terminal whether a specific DEC private mode is enabled — used for feature detection at runtime.

Shift the rest of the current line right by N cells and blank-fill the gap — the primitive vim's insert mode is built on.

Delete N cells at the cursor and shift the rest of the line left to fill the gap — the inverse of ICH.

Open N blank lines at the cursor row and push subsequent lines down within the scrolling region — vim's 'O' command primitive.

Remove N lines starting at the cursor row and pull subsequent lines up within the scrolling region — vim's 'dd' command primitive.

Erase N cells in place at the cursor — same shape as DCH but the rest of the line does NOT shift left.

Repeat the most-recently-emitted printing character N times — a bandwidth-saver for runs of identical glyphs.

Move the cursor to an absolute row, keeping the current column.

Move the cursor to absolute (row, col) — semantically identical to CUP but uses final byte `f` instead of `H`.

xterm's window-manipulation family — resize, minimise, raise/lower, query size, push/pop title.

Erase only the unprotected cells in the display (DECSED) or current line (DECSEL) — the private-mode siblings of ED / EL.

Scroll the screen content left (SL) or right (SR) by Ps columns — the horizontal counterpart of CSI S / CSI T.

Mark subsequently-written cells as DECSED/DECSEL-protected (Ps=1) or unprotected (Ps=0/2).

Constrain horizontal cursor movement + scrolling to columns Pl…Pr — the horizontal counterpart of DECSTBM.

Save / restore / inspect xterm's ANSI palette via a process-local stack — useful for TUIs that mutate the palette temporarily.

Delete (DECDC) or insert (DECIC) Pn columns at the cursor — the column-oriented counterparts of DL (CSI Pn M) and IL (CSI Pn L).

Switch xterm's modifyKeyboard / modifyCursorKeys / modifyFunctionKeys / modifyOtherKeys resources at runtime — the foundation for Ctrl+letter, Alt+letter disambiguation.

Switch how xterm interprets / returns window-title and icon-name strings — hex vs UTF-8 encoding, truncation, set-vs-query behaviour.

Adjust the audio volume of the C0 BEL (DECSWBV) and the right-margin warning bell (DECSMBV) — almost universally ignored by modern emulators.

The three on-wire formats a terminal uses to report mouse events: legacy CSI M Cb Cx Cy, modern SGR ?1006, and urxvt ?1015 — what's actually in the input stream after DECSET ?100x enables tracking.

Ask the terminal for a human-readable name + version string — the modern alternative to DECDA for feature detection in tools like Helix, Zellij, Neovim.

DEC private Device Status Reports — extended cursor position (?6 DECXCPR with page), printer / UDK / locator / macro-space / memory-checksum status.

ECMA-48's row/col-preserving cursor moves — HPA (absolute column), HPR (relative column), VPR (relative row) — completing the trio anchored by VPA.

Read / set the terminal's graphics limits — number of sixel color registers, sixel graphics area, ReGIS area. The standard knob for image-aware TUIs to size their bitmaps.

Pick which display surface (main vs status line) receives subsequent output (DECSASD), and what the status line is for (DECSSDT) — DEC VT320's split-screen status row.

Ask xterm what the current modifyKeyboard / modifyCursorKeys / modifyFunctionKeys / modifyOtherKeys value is — the companion query for XTMODKEYS.

Save / restore / inspect the current SGR attributes via a stack — the SGR analogue of XTPUSHCOLORS for the palette.

Resize the active page to 80 or 132 columns — the data-side request that DECCOLM expresses as a private mode toggle.

Decoder reference for the secondary Device Attributes reply — what each Pp model code means and how kitty / wezterm / alacritty / iTerm2 / Ghostty encode their version in Pv.

Stash one or more DEC private mode states on a stack, then restore them later — the foundation tmux / screen / fzf use to safely toggle mouse / alt-screen / paste modes without trampling user prefs.

Choose VT100 / VT200 / VT300 / VT400 / VT500 conformance level — controls which subset of escape sequences the terminal honours, plus 7-bit vs 8-bit C1 emission. Implicitly performs a hard reset (RIS) first.

Reference enumeration of every DEC mode / attribute that DECSTR (soft reset) restores to its default — what gets cleared, what survives, and where xterm vs kitty vs iTerm2 diverge.

How to read the `CSI ? Ps ; Pm $ y` (and `CSI Ps ; Pm $ y`) reply that DECRQM returns — the `Pm` value tells you whether the mode is set / reset / always-set / always-reset / unrecognised.

The original DEC pointing-device protocol (predates xterm SGR mouse modes by a decade). Four sequences enable, filter, select, and query locator events; modern interactive UIs use SGR mouse modes (`?1000` + `?1006`) instead.

VT100-era legacy probe — ask the terminal for its serial-line parameters (parity, bit-count, baud, clock multiplier, flags). Predates DA / DA2 / XTVERSION; almost never the right tool now, but xterm and most modern emulators still answer with synthetic defaults.

Set or XOR SGR attributes across a rectangle of cells without rewriting any character data — the rectangular-attribute siblings of the copy/fill/erase ops in `dec-rect-ops`.

DEC VT520 musical-tone playback — `Pv` volume, `Pd` duration, then one or more `Pn` MIDI-style note numbers. Niche but implemented by xterm, WezTerm, Ghostty, mlterm; the only ANSI way to make the terminal beep at a specific pitch.

Ask the terminal to dump its current horizontal tab stops as a DCS report. Closes the round-trip story: set via HTS (`esc-hts`), clear via TBC (`csi-tbc`), query the current set via DECTABSR.

Ask the terminal to compute a 16-bit checksum over a rectangle of cells (`CSI Pi;Pg;Pt;Pl;Pb;Pr*y`); reply arrives as DCS DECCKSR (`\x1bP<Pi>!~<hex4>\x1b\\`). The xterm vttest / ConPTY conformance pin.

Turn the keyboard's front-panel L1–L4 LEDs on / off (`CSI Ps q`). Surviving in Linux-console terminfo as `KEYBOARD_LED 1/2/3/4` — modern emulators silent no-op except xterm + Linux console.

The four content-side rectangle ops missing from the DEC rect family — copy a block, fill it with a glyph, erase to space, or erase only non-protected cells. Pairs with DECCARA / DECRARA (attribute-side) and DECSACE (block-vs-stream toggle).

Toggle whether DECCARA / DECRARA treat their rectangle as a literal cell block (default) or as a stream from start-position to end-position. The content-side rect ops (DECCRA / DECFRA / DECERA / DECSERA) are unaffected.

ECMA-48 §8.3.82 control that historically routed terminal output to an attached printer. Survives today as the 'print screen' hook on xterm/mlterm, the IBM-3270 emulator pass-through, and as private-mode `CSI ? 4 / 5 i` auto-print toggles consumed by `expect`-style automation.

VT420+ pagination query — ask the terminal how many rows / columns are currently displayed and where the scroll window sits inside the page memory. Reply tells the host the visible viewport without relying on `tput lines / cols`.

Push and pop the cursor state (position + attributes).

Switch to a separate screen buffer (like vim/less do on launch).

Show or hide the text cursor.

Wrap pasted text in distinct escape markers so apps can tell paste from typing.

Receive mouse click / drag / scroll events as escape sequences.

Toggle whether the cursor wraps to the next line at the right margin (default: on).

Make the terminal report when its window gains or loses keyboard focus.

Buffer screen updates until you signal end-of-frame — eliminates flicker on full repaints.

Enable or disable the blinking attribute of the cursor — independent of cursor shape.

Make the cursor's row/column origin (1,1) be the top-left of the DECSTBM region instead of the screen.

Switch to / from the alt screen WITHOUT saving the cursor — the bare-bones precursor to ?1049.

Choose the cursor's resting position after a sixel render — at top-left of the image (private-mode set) or below the image (reset, the modern default).

Globally swap foreground and background colours for the entire screen — the screen-wide reverse-video toggle, distinct from per-cell SGR 7.

Toggle between smooth (one-line-per-frame animated) and jump (instant) scrolling — a DEC VT100 hardware-era setting that modern emulators almost universally ignore.

Toggle whether the terminal repeats key bytes while a key is held down — a TUI-relevant knob for games and editors where holding `j` should NOT spam the buffer.

Toggle between 80 and 132 column page width — DEC VT100's flagship 'wide mode' switch, gated by an opt-in resource on every modern emulator.

Suppress DECCOLM's (and DECSCPP's) implicit screen-clear side-effect. With DECNCSM set, switching between 80- and 132-column modes preserves cell contents instead of wiping them.

Change the terminal window's title bar text.

Render clickable hyperlinks in terminal output (gnome-terminal 3.26+, iTerm2, Windows Terminal, kitty, ...).

Set the terminal's default foreground (OSC 10) or background (OSC 11) color, or query the current value.

Set (or query) the host system clipboard via the terminal — works over SSH without X11 forwarding.

Change one of the 256 palette colours, or query its current value.

Trigger a native OS desktop notification from the terminal — long-running job done, build finished, etc.

Tell the terminal which directory the shell is in — used for tab labels, 'new tab here', and remote-aware split-pane workflows.

Restore the terminal's user-default foreground, background, or cursor colour after OSC 10 / 11 / 12 overrode it.

Override the terminal's cursor colour, or query the current value via the OSC reply.

Change the background colour the terminal paints behind selected (highlighted) text.

Change the foreground colour the terminal uses for selected (highlighted) text.

Restore one palette index — or the whole 256-colour palette — to the terminal's user-configured defaults.

Set the X11-style icon name independent of the visible window title — historically the label shown when the window is minimised.

Override the mouse-pointer glyph the terminal window draws — historically xterm-specific, exposed via standard X cursor names.

Switch the terminal's display font at runtime, or query the current font — xterm extension, also implemented by a handful of forks.

Tag shell prompt-start / command-start / output-start / command-end so the terminal can jump between prompts, fold output, and decorate exit codes.

Embed images, files, or proprietary iTerm2 state into the terminal stream — the predecessor protocol that Kitty / Sixel later largely supplanted.

Push live progress percentages / paused / error states to the taskbar or tab icon — the ConEmu protocol that Windows Terminal 1.18+ standardised.

Ask the terminal for its current default foreground (10) / background (11) / cursor (12) color — the canonical way to auto-pick a dark or light theme.

Ask the terminal what RGB value is currently bound to palette index `n` (0–255) — used by theme inspectors, screenshot tools, and palette-migration scripts.

Hard reset the terminal: clear screen + scrollback, reset every mode and SGR, home the cursor.

Set a tab stop at the current cursor column — partner to TBC.

The 8-bit C1 control bytes (0x80..0x9F) — CSI, OSC, ST, DCS, NEL, HTS, IND, RI — and their 7-bit ESC <letter> equivalents.

Switch the numeric keypad between sending application escape sequences (\eOM / \eOj …) and plain ASCII digits — the foundation of vim / less / readline keypad behaviour.

Mark the current line as double-height (top or bottom half) or double-width / single-height — DEC's per-line big-banner primitives, used by VT100 splash screens.

Fill the entire screen with capital `E` glyphs — DEC's CRT alignment test, the canonical 'is the page buffer wired up right' smoke test.

ISO 2022 character-set switching: invoke G2 / G3 once (SS2 / SS3), or lock GL / GR to a different G-set (LS2 / LS3 / LS1R / LS2R / LS3R). Pairs with `\x1b(` / `\x1b)` / `\x1b*` / `\x1b+` G-set designators.

The string introducer ECMA-48 reserves for application-to-application messages. Modern use: Kitty graphics protocol, VS Code shell integration, Windows Terminal API patches. Sibling to DCS / OSC / PM / SOS.

Embed pixel images in the terminal stream using the Sixel device-control payload.

Modern alternative to Sixel: stream PNG / RGBA bytes to the terminal via the Kitty APC frame, with sane chunking and a placement protocol.

Ask the terminal to report the current value of any SGR / mode / margin / cursor-shape setting — the catch-all DCS query.

Ask the terminal to report a terminfo capability value by its name — the runtime way to probe true-colour, RGB, OSC 52, etc.

Remap the DEC user-defined function keys (F6–F20) at runtime — legacy DEC VT, still decoded by xterm and its forks.

Download a soft glyph bitmap into a slot the terminal can then display alongside the built-in font — pure DEC VT220+ legacy.

Inverse of DECRQSS — feed back a previously-saved cursor / SGR / margin snapshot to restore the terminal's exact state.

Store a byte sequence under a numeric handle (DECDMAC), then replay it on demand (DECINVM) — DEC VT520's terminal-side macro recorder.

Round-trip the cursor-shape parameter — query side of DECSCUSR via DECRQSS, terminal replies with the current `Ps SP q` setting.

Query (`CSI & u`) and assign (`DCS Ps ! u … ST`) the supplemental character set the terminal maps into the GR slot when no Locking Shift is active. Closes the supplemental-set plumbing left after `single-locking-shift`.

Save (`CSI Ps$u` → DCS reply) and restore (`DCS Ps$p…ST`) the whole DEC terminal state — the terminal-wide complement to `dcs-decrsps`' presentation-state-only scope.

The single-byte C0 control characters that move the cursor or signal events — no ESC introducer needed.