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Frequently Asked Questions
A terminal emulator is a program that makes your Android phone act like an old fashioned computer terminal. It is useful for accessing the Linux command line shell that is built into every Android phone. This lets you run various Linux command line utilities.
If you don't know what all that means, and why it's cool, then this probably isn't the program for you. (Sorry!)
I've written a brief, incomplete, guide to using the built-in Android shell: Android Shell Command Reference
Sorry, this is a terminal emulator, not a game emulator. It has nothing to do with games.
Sorry, no. The Android Terminal Emulator does not help you root or hack your phone.
It is somewhat useful on an ordinary phone. You can access the entire /sdcard file system, and you can install and run Linux command-line applications in the parts of the /data file system that are accessible to the Android Terminal Emulator process.
You can also run command-line programs that access the Internet.
This message is being printed out by the Android shell. It means one of two things:
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It might simply mean that you have misspelled the command name, or are trying to use a command that is not installed on you device. The Android shell will print "permission denied" when it just can't find the command, instead of a more accurate error message like "command not found".
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It could mean that the command exists, but you don't have permission to run it. By default the Android Terminal Emulator runs using the permissions of the Android Terminal Emulator application. You may need to become "root" in order to gain permissions to run some commands. You can use the "su" command to do this. Of course, most consumer Android devices don't have root access enabled by default, so you may not be able to use the "su" command on your device.
By itself, the Android Terminal Emulator doesn't access the Internet or write to the SD Card. However, many users of Android Terminal Emulator want to run command line programs, such as "telnet" or "cp" that need to access the Internet and/or write to the sd card.
The way Linux (and therefore Android) works, a child process inherits the permissions of the parent. Android Terminal Emulator requests the Internet and SD Card write permissions so that the command-line programs that it runs can have access to the Internet and can write to the SD Card.
If giving these permissions to the terminal emulator makes you uncomfortable, you could always download the source code to Android Terminal Emulator and compile your own version. (Edit the AndroidManifest.xml file to remove the INTERNET and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions.)
They do work, sort of. They send the proper escape sequences for VT-100 terminal arrow keys. What's missing is that pre-Gingerbread (pre 2.3) versions of the default Android shell do not handle these escape sequences. Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and later versions of Android work correctly. But that doesn't help people with older versions of Android.
If you have a Froyo (2.2) or earlier version of Android, you can fix this problem by installing an alternate shell, such as the one in Busybox. The Busybox "ash" shell recognizes the arrow escape sequences sent by the terminal emulator.
It sends the "ESC" character by default. Use the Preferences panel to change this behavior:
Menu Key -> "More"-> "Preferences" -> Back button behavior
Several people have reported this bug. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce it using Swype 3.25 Beta on Android 2.3.6. Maybe it's fixed in the latest version of Swype. Please try installing Swype 3.25 or later and see if that fixes the problem.
I have reproduced this with SlideIt version 4.0.1 on Android 2.3.6. There is a work-around, which is to tap on the "ABC" button on the upper-right-hand-corner of the SlideIt soft keyboard. This switches SlideIt into letter-at-a-time mode.
That's a good question! I guess I really ought to. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to it. In the meantime, see Installing BusyBox and ssh without Rooting your Device
Similar to the "Arrow Keys" question above, tab completion is the job of the shell, not the terminal emulator. The built-in Android shell prior to the Ice Cream Sandwich release does not provide tab completion. You can turn on tab completion by installing an alternate shell, such as the one that comes with Busybox.
Busybox is a collection of Linux utility programs that is designed to be run on small Linux devices, such as your Android phone.
Do a web search for "Android Busybox" and read through the results.
No! If you have Android 2.3 or newer, see Installing BusyBox and ssh without Rooting your Device
Sure, go for it. Tips for Including ATE in a custom ROM
What's up with the ZTA Technology version of Terminal Emulator in the market? Are they ripping you off?
I don't know the story behind ZTA's version of Terminal, but it appears to be based on an early version of "Android Terminal Emulator" that was present in the Android source tree several years ago. Since Android Terminal Emulator is open source, there's nothing legally wrong with what ZTA is doing. It is confusing to users to have an old version of Android Terminal emulator available under a different name, but hopefully the market rating system will help people decide which version to use.
The Nook does not have a physical menu key. If you want Android Terminal Emulator to work with a Nook, you will have to install a version of Android that supports soft menu keys. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) provides support for soft menu keys.
See the instructions here: Translating to Foreign Languages
Android Terminal Emulator uses the Native Development Kit (NDK) to access Linux APIs required to provide a Linux shell.
Unfortunately there are currently no publicly available Android devices that support the x86 NDK.
Therefore, currently Android Terminal Emulator is not available for x86 Android devices.
Android Terminal Emulator is compiled with support for x86 devices, and should therefore be able to run on x86 devices as soon as x86 devices that support the NDK become available.
For what it's worth, Android Terminal Emulator runs fine on the Android 4.0 x86 emulator.