Contour 0.7 was released on August 21, and it closes most of the feature gap between Contour and the terminal emulators people actually settle on.

Tabs and splits, natively

The release adds native GUI tabs, split panes, and saved layouts.

This matters more than it might seem, because of a long-running argument in terminal emulator design. One camp holds that tabs and splits belong in a multiplexer like tmux, and the terminal should just draw text quickly. The other holds that making users run a multiplexer to get basic window management is passing your problem to the user.

The multiplexer argument is strong when you work on remote machines, where tmux sessions survive disconnection in a way local tabs cannot. It is weaker for purely local work, where you are running an extra process and learning a second keybinding layer to get something the window could do itself.

Contour now supports both, which is the correct resolution.

Saved layouts are the feature that will keep people. Reopening a terminal into the same arrangement of panes you had yesterday removes a small daily setup cost.

Command palette and GUI settings

A command palette gives keyboard access to actions without memorizing bindings, and a graphical settings interface removes the requirement to hand-edit a config file for basic changes.

Configuration files are fine and a graphical settings panel is not a betrayal of anything. Most people want to change their font size once and never think about the terminal again.

Experimental daemon sessions

The release adds experimental daemon sessions, which is the mechanism that would let terminal sessions persist independently of the window displaying them.

If that matures it addresses the remaining reason to run tmux locally.

Where Contour sits

Contour is a GPU-accelerated terminal in the same category as Alacritty, Kitty, WezTerm, and Ghostty, a group that has become crowded and competitive over the last few years. Its differentiators have been strong Unicode and emoji handling plus support for newer terminal protocols.

With 0.7 it is no longer missing table stakes. Whether it displaces an incumbent in anyone’s setup is a different question, since terminal choice is famously sticky.