---
title: Terminal UI
description: minipaw picks how to show status from where its streams point, a status panel, a chat view, plain lines or nothing, and never mixes status into stdout.
---

minipaw picks how to show status from where its streams point. Nothing but
data ever goes to stdout.

| Mode             | When                                                                                         | What you see                                                                                                                                                                     |
| ---------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Status panel** | stdout is redirected or piped, and stderr is a terminal, as when sending or receiving a file | A small panel on stderr: the ticket, the connection state, relay or direct, bytes sent and received, rates, and an ETA when sending a regular file.                              |
| **Chat**         | stdin and stdout are both terminals                                                          | The conversation prints into your terminal's normal scrollback, above a small input box with the connection state and traffic. Enter sends, Ctrl-D ends your side, Ctrl-C stops. |
| **Plain lines**  | stderr isn't a terminal, or `--plain`                                                        | `#` status lines. This is what scripts and logs see.                                                                                                                             |
| **Nothing**      | `-q`                                                                                         | Only a fatal error prints, not even `-v`'s log.                                                                                                                                  |

The panel and chat need stderr to be a terminal, `TERM` set to something
other than `dumb`, and a terminal of at least 40×8. The chat also needs raw
mode to work. Otherwise minipaw falls back to plain lines.

[`minipaw serve`](/docs/ssh) always prints plain `#` lines, so it runs as is
under systemd or nohup.