Editor Terminal for Unity (Windows)

Stop alt-tabbing between Unity and your terminal.

Embedded Terminal hosts a real, interactive PowerShell or cmd.exe session
directly inside the Unity Editor — not a Process.Start wrapper, not a
fake command runner. It uses the native Windows ConPTY API
(CreatePseudoConsole), the same pseudo-terminal system used by Windows
Terminal and VS Code. Your shell behaves exactly like it would in a
standalone terminal: ANSI colors, interactive prompts, line editing,
command history, environment variables — everything just works.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

Most "terminal" assets on the Asset Store are thin wrappers around
Process.Start that capture stdout from a one-shot command. They can't
host an interactive shell, can't render colored output, break on prompts,
and die the moment you recompile a script. Embedded Terminal is
fundamentally different:

• A full pseudo-console (ConPTY) — not stdin/stdout piping
• ANSI/VT100/xterm escape sequence parser with 16/256/truecolor
• Compile-resilient: the shell process survives Unity domain reloads.
Long-running commands keep going across script recompiles
• Persistent scrollback saved to disk and restored on next open
• Native helper process runs outside Unity's Job Object so PTY
children stay healthy (this is the part nobody else gets right)

WHO IT'S FOR

• Developers who use git, npm, dotnet, python, or any CLI tool
alongside Unity
• Build engineers running scripts and watching output from inside
the editor
• Anyone tired of alt-tabbing to PowerShell every five minutes

HOW IT WORKS

A small native .NET Framework helper executable (12 KB, source included)
is spawned with CREATE_BREAKAWAY_FROM_JOB so it lives outside Unity's
process job. The helper hosts the real ConPTY and talks to Unity over
TCP loopback using a tight framed binary protocol. On domain reload,
the editor window reconnects to the existing helper via SessionState —
your shell never dies.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX

• EmbeddedTerminalWindow.cs — dockable IMGUI editor window
• ConPty.cs — helper transport + lifecycle
• TerminalScreen.cs — cell grid + 16-color palette + scrollback
• AnsiParser.cs — VT100/xterm parser
• EmbeddedTerminalHelper.exe — pre-built native helper (12 KB)
• EmbeddedTerminalHelper.cs.txt — helper source (transparent, rebuildable)
• build.cmd — one-click rebuild of the helper

PLATFORM SUPPORT

Editor only, Windows only (Windows 10 1809 or newer, or Windows 11).
The Unity editor itself can run on any platform — this package is
simply a no-op outside Windows. No runtime code is included, so it
does not affect your builds, build size, or target platforms.

PRIVACY

No network access except 127.0.0.1 loopback between Unity and the
helper. No telemetry, no analytics, no external calls. Helper source
code is shipped with the package — you can inspect it and rebuild it.

REQUIREMENTS

• Unity 2021.3 LTS or newer
• Windows 10 1809+ / Windows 11 (Editor host OS)
• No additional dependencies — uses only Windows API and .NET
Framework standard library