---
title: The inspector
description: Browse files, edit them with syntax highlighting, read the git diff, and search the project — on this Mac or on the machine the session runs on, without leaving the terminal.
---

The inspector is Termio’s side panel for everything *around* the terminal:
files, changes, and search. It sits beside your sessions so you can glance at
code without switching apps.

Every pane reads the project on the machine the selected session runs on. Point
at a session on a VPS and the tree, the search and the diff are that box’s —
read over the session host, not copied down.

## Files

The file tree mirrors the working directory. Single-click a file to open it in a
built-in editor with syntax highlighting, soft-wrap, and a live line/column
readout. Edits auto-save — there’s no save button, and a file read from another
machine is written back to that machine. Images, PDFs, and HTML open in a Quick
Look preview instead.

### Editing

The editor is a real one, not a viewer:

- **Find and replace** with the Mac find keys — `⌘F`, `⌘G`, `⇧⌘G`, `⌘E`, and
  replace or replace all.
- **Comment lines**, and **move** or **copy** a line or a selection up and down.
- **Tab** indents a block and **Return** keeps the indent you were on, with
  indentation guides drawn behind the code.
- Other occurrences of the word under the caret get a quiet wash, so you can see
  where a name is used without searching for it.

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/06-files-editor.png"
  alt="The Termio Files inspector with a Swift file selected and open in the syntax-highlighted editor beside a terminal"
  width={2424}
  height={1664}
/>

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/23-quick-look.png"
  alt="A file selected in the Termio Files inspector with its image open in a read-only Quick Look preview"
  width={2424}
  height={1664}
/>

## Changes

The git pane has three read-only tabs:

- **Changes** — the current diff, rendered as a clean unified view.
- **Compare** — this branch against the branch it would merge into: the files and
  commits a pull request from it would carry, diffed from the merge base so the
  list matches what the forge will show.
- **History** — recent commits with author avatars, expandable file lists, and
  per-commit diffs.

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/07-changes-diff.png"
  alt="The Termio Changes tab with build-app.sh selected and its red and green unified diff beside the terminal"
  width={2424}
  height={1664}
/>

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/08-commit-history.png"
  alt="The Termio History tab with a commit, one of its files, and that file's per-commit diff visible together"
  width={2424}
  height={1664}
/>

It’s deliberately read-only: writing to git (commit, push, PR) stays in the
terminal, where the agent and your own commands already live.

## Search

The inspector’s **Search** tab runs a content search across the project (backed
by `git grep`) and jumps you straight to the matching line in the editor — it
searches inside files, not just filenames. This is the “find in files” you know
from an editor.

Results read as excerpts, painted where the matcher hit, so you can tell which
match you want before opening anything. Search follows the session too: a
checkout on another machine is searched there, and a `cd` in that session moves
the search with it.

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/09-project-search.png"
  alt="The Termio Search inspector showing a DiffGapText query, grouped matches across files, and highlighted matching text"
  width={2424}
  height={1664}
/>

Looking for a file *by name* instead? That’s [Open Quickly](/docs/navigation)
(`⇧⌘O`), which also jumps between sessions and recent projects.

## Opening files from the terminal

Cmd-click a file path in terminal output — even inside an agent’s TUI — and
Termio opens it in the editor. Cmd-click a URL to open it in your browser, or a
`file://` link for a read-only preview overlay.

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/22-open-terminal-path.png"
  alt="A relative Swift file path in a Termio terminal opened into the built-in read-only editor beside it"
  width={2424}
  height={1664}
/>