Settings Reference

While PhanTerm encourages managing most tasks through its TUI interface, all underlying data is persisted using human-readable, structured plain text. This facilitates backups, version control, and even writing external automation scripts for power users.

Configuration Paths

All data is stored in the user’s private configuration directory.

• Windows: %APPDATA%\phanterm\
• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/phanterm/

Core File List

File Name	Purpose	Format Description
config.yaml	Global preferences	Contains basic settings like locale, update toggles, and concurrency limits.
connections.yaml	Host list	Your server inventory. Sensitive fields like passwords will display as empty or special references if utilizing the system keyring; otherwise, they store strongly encrypted AES ciphertext.
known_hosts.yaml	Trusted fingerprint database	Records all host addresses, algorithm types, and SHA-256 fingerprints you have previously verified.
snippets.yaml	Command snippet library	Stores all custom command snippets and tag metadata.
master.key	AES fallback key	[Top Secret] Please store this file securely and never commit it to any public code repositories.

Tip

All YAML configuration files are designed to be “unknown-field compatible”. This means you can safely retain deprecated fields from older versions in your config; PhanTerm will elegantly skip them during parsing without causing application crashes.

Customizing config.yaml

config.yaml provides control over the application’s global behavior. You can manually edit this file to customize how PhanTerm operates. If the file does not exist, PhanTerm automatically generates one with default values on the next startup.

Example Configuration

Below is a typical example of a config.yaml file:

# Interface language setting. Currently supports 'en' (English) and 'zh' (Chinese).
locale: "en"

# Automatic update channel: 'stable' or 'beta'.
update_channel: "stable"

# Whether to automatically check for updates on startup.
check_updates_on_startup: true

# Advanced configuration for Multi-Exec parallel execution [Pro]
multi_exec:
  # Maximum concurrency when initiating temporary connections to multiple saved servers (default: 10, range: 1-10)
  temp_connect_concurrency: 10

  # Maximum timeout for command execution on each target server, in seconds (default: 300, i.e., 5 minutes)
  target_timeout_seconds: 300

Configuration Options Explained

• locale: Defines the display language of the TUI interface. If left empty or set to an unsupported language, it defaults to English.
• update_channel and check_updates_on_startup: Controls how the application receives new version updates.
• multi_exec: This section is dedicated to controlling the underlying behavior of the Multi-Exec feature. You can adjust temp_connect_concurrency based on your network environment to manage parallel connection load, or increase target_timeout_seconds to ensure extremely long-running scripts (like huge file packaging or full system upgrades) complete successfully without being forcefully interrupted.