Making the terminal beautiful one pixel at a time
Source: Google Developers Blog
Date: NOV. 13, 2025
We’re excited to announce a significant upgrade to the Gemini CLI user experience, making your terminal interactions more robust, intuitive, and visually stable. The rendering foundation has been overhauled to eliminate visual noise, delivering a level of polish usually reserved for graphical interfaces—right in your terminal. No more flickering screens, bouncing input prompts, or losing your place in long output streams. It’s the same powerful Gemini CLI, just dramatically smoother.
Key Enhancements
Mouse‑Based Navigation
You can now click directly within the input prompt to move the cursor, eliminating the need to repeatedly press arrow keys.
Persistent Header
Context is vital when working in the CLI. We’ve introduced persistent header lines for tool confirmations and actions, ensuring you never lose track of what you’re doing, even during complex interactions.
Flicker‑Free Experience
The new design virtually eliminates screen flicker. Modern terminals such as VS Code, iTerm, Ghostty, etc., will now provide a smooth, steady display.
Robust Rendering
Resizing your terminal window no longer causes visual glitches or artifacts. The display remains clean and polished regardless of window size.
Stable Input Prompt
The input field now stays firmly anchored at the bottom of the terminal, offering a consistent and predictable experience.
Preserved History
Even though an alternate screen buffer is used for the seamless experience, your complete chat history remains accessible in the standard terminal after you exit Gemini CLI.
Getting Started with the New UI
These UI improvements are enabled by default in Gemini CLI as of v0.15.0. Upgrade to the latest version with:
npm install -g @google/gemini-cli@latestWhat’s Next
This is just the beginning. Upcoming work includes click‑and‑drag functionality for scrollbars (currently you can scroll with the mouse wheel or Shift+Up/Shift+Down). We’re also exploring a more seamless copy‑and‑paste solution. In the meantime, you can press Ctrl‑S to temporarily exit mouse mode and use standard copy/paste shortcuts.
Try out the new UI today and share your feedback on our GitHub!