Xfce4-terminal has the functionality to have 1 drop-down window. This mode is inspired from consoles in computer games such as Quake which slide down from the top of the screen when a key is pressed, and slide back up when the key is pressed again.

You can start the drop-down mode by running xfce4-terminal --drop-down. Since the application as no keybinding code, it is advised to Application Shortcuts for this.

The first time xfce4-terminal --drop-down is passed to the application, it will create a drop-down window and show it on top of the active ¹⁾ monitor. Each other time the command is executed, the drop-down window will toggle its visibility.

When you start the drop-down window for the first time, the application opens a window on top of other windows at the top of the screen without window borders.

Drop-down window with 3 tabs

You can open the drop-down preferences by clicking the small button are the bottom-right corner of the tabs. The dialog can also be opened by right-clicking the tray icon – if enabled.

Drop-down window Preferences

? Keep window open when it loses focus ! This setting is applied during startup only and controls the initial state of the down toggle-button shown in the tab bar. If enabled the window will not close when it loses focus (not the active window anymore). ? Always keep window on top ! If enabled it asks the window manger to not be overlapped by other windows. ? Use shortcut to focus visible window ! In case you have the keep-open option enabled, enabling this option will force focus to the opened window, instead of hiding it. ? Show status icon in notification area ! Put a terminal icon in the system tray. The icon responds to clicks to toggle the window visibility or with right-click to access the Xfce Terminal preferences.

? Width ! Width of the window. The size is the percentage of the monitor the terminal is displayed on. ? Height ! Height of the window. The size is the percentage of the monitor the terminal is displayed on. ? Opacity ! If you have compositing enabled, it will control the transparency of the window. ? Duration ! Animation time for the roll-up and -down effect. To disable this set the time to 0 milliseconds. ? Always show tabs ! Hide the tabs at the bottom of the window when there is only a single tab opened. Then there are than 1 tab the bar will always be visible.

? Position ! Horizontal position of the window on the monitor. ? Move to monitor with pointer ! If the window should be moved to the monitor containing the mouse pointer when the xfce4-terminal --drop-down option is executed. If disabled, the window will stay on the monitor is was first started on.

When started the first time the --drop-down option also accepts window and tab command-line parameters. You can use this to start a drop-down with multiple predefined commands. The example below will open three tabs in the drop-down window (with IRC client, music on console and process overview).

xfce4-terminal --drop-down --title "Irssi Client" -e irssi --tab -e mocp --tab --title "System Status" -e top

Note that some of the window options don't apply to the drop-down window, like --fullscreen and --show-borders.