Command reference ยท Claude Code
/tui
Sets the terminal renderer and relaunches into it.
/tui determines which renderer draws the interface and restarts Claude Code with the conversation history preserved. /tui fullscreen switches to the flicker-free alt-screen renderer (like vim or htop): it reduces the amount of data sent to the terminal, keeps memory usage constant during long conversations, and brings mouse support (clicking, dragging to select, scrolling with the mouse wheel) as well as a fixed input area at the bottom of the screen. /tui default switches back to the classic renderer, which keeps the conversation in the terminal's native scrollback, so that, for example, Cmd+F search and tmux copy mode continue to work directly. Without an argument, /tui only reports which renderer is currently active, without changing anything.
According to the docs, fullscreen rendering is a research preview: it has been tested on common terminal emulators, but may still show rendering glitches on rarer terminals or configurations. Alternatively, the same mode can be enabled permanently at startup via the environment variable CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1.
โ WHEN TO USE IT?
Fix flickering or scroll jumps in the VS Code terminal or tmux
Run /tui fullscreen if the screen flickers while streaming tool output or the scroll position keeps jumping back to the top.
Check which renderer is currently active
Type /tui without an argument to check whether the current session is running in the classic or the fullscreen renderer.
โ WHEN NOT TO?
Expecting the conversation history to be lost or reset in the process
According to the docs, switching keeps the history and only restarts the renderer; the command doesn't perform a reset.
Better: Use /clear to actually clear the history.
Wanting to use native terminal search (Cmd+F) or tmux copy mode directly for the conversation
In the fullscreen renderer, the conversation sits in the alternate screen buffer instead of the native scrollback โ Cmd+F and tmux search find nothing there.
Better: Switch to transcript mode with Ctrl+O and press [ there to write the conversation into the native scrollback, or use /tui default.
SOURCES
- Claude Code docs (official) โ code.claude.com