Claude/Code/Q/What is the new TUI mode in Claude Code about?
What is the new TUI mode in Claude/Code about?
- AI/Response
- Short answer: TUI mode is a fullscreen alternate-screen renderer that displays Claude Code conversations in a dedicated terminal view, separate from native terminal scrollback. It shipped in v2.1.110 (April 2026) and has since become the default renderer.
- How to use it:
- Run
/tui fullscreen within a session to switch to the renderer mid-conversation, no restart needed. - A
tui setting can set the default for all new sessions. - To opt out and stay in inline/scrollback mode:
export CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_ALTERNATE_SCREEN=1
- Key features:
- Flicker-free rendering — draws into a separate alternate screen buffer instead of streaming into terminal scrollback
- Lower memory usage than the inline renderer on long sessions
- Mouse support: scroll and click links with the mouse
- Keyboard navigation: arrow keys, Page Up/Down, Home/End
- Clickable hyperlinks rendered in the conversation
- Auto-follows new messages; a "jump to bottom" pill appears when scrolled up
- What problem it solves: The old inline renderer appended each turn into terminal scrollback, which caused visible flicker on large sessions and held all output in memory. The alternate-screen renderer keeps conversation output in a managed buffer — cleaner display, lower overhead — at the cost of not being in normal terminal scrollback (where you'd need
CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_ALTERNATE_SCREEN=1 to recover that behavior). - Sources: Claude Code Changelog · Claude Code v2.1.110 release — ClaudeWorld