10.8.0 — Your own pictures behind a busy terminal

A snapshot as of 10.8.0 (released 2026-10-17). It will go stale as the app moves on — that is expected, and the living reference is the guide each section links to.

New features

Add your own GIFs, images and videos to the playful effects

Now and then a picture appears behind a terminal that has been working hard for a while: a bomb, a kettle, a sumo bout. You can now add your own pictures to those nine (#3074, #3073). Each session picks one at random from the built-in pictures and yours together.

There is no control for this in Settings. To try it:

Put a file anywhere on the computer that runs MulmoTerminal, for example ~/Pictures/heat/fire.gif.
Open ~/.mulmoterminal/config.json and add:
```
{ "playfulMedia": { "builtIn": false, "files": ["~/Pictures/heat/fire.gif"] } }
```
"builtIn": false leaves the nine built-in pictures out, so every session uses your file. Remove it later to mix yours in with them.
In Settings, press Reload config file. No restart is needed.

An entry can also be { "file": "...", "finale": "..." }. The finale file plays once, at full strength, when a busy session calms down.
Paths start with / (or a drive letter on Windows), ~/ for your home directory, or ./ for the directory MulmoTerminal was started in. Anything else is ignored.
Images: GIF, APNG, WebP, PNG, AVIF and SVG up to 20 MB. Videos: MP4 and WebM up to 50 MB, always muted.
"playfulEffects": "off" still turns everything off, your files included, and naming one built-in picture still shows only that one.

How to tell it worked: run a long build or test in a terminal. Your picture appears behind it and gets stronger the longer the session stays busy. If it never shows, look in the terminal you started MulmoTerminal from: a skipped file is named there with the reason.

More: Your own pictures behind a busy terminal, including what makes a good picture.

What looks different

Nothing changes unless you add playfulMedia. Without it, the same nine pictures appear as before.

Under the hood

A test that sometimes failed on Windows CI is fixed (#3072, #3071). The Files tree’s git status test created 2001 files to cross a limit, and timed out on slow Windows runners. The app itself behaves as before.
Some duplicated code was shared to clear the repository’s duplicate-code alerts (#3070, #3069): the heat pictures’ body shading, the document watchers’ start and stop, and one type. Nothing on screen changes, and nothing needs doing.