The following tutorial will provide the reader with multiple methods of accessing the command line terminal window on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish desktop.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to open terminal window using shortcuts
- Other ways how to quickly open the terminal window

Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
---|---|
System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
Software | A Desktop Environment (GUI) |
Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
Conventions | # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
How to access terminal
The following methods will work on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, regardless of what desktop environment you’re using. The keyboard shortcuts and steps to open a terminal can be followed on GNOME, KDE, Xfce, MATE, LXQt, etc.
- Perhaps the easiest way to open terminal window on Ubuntu 22.04 desktop is to use the keyboard shortcut
CTRL + ALT + T
. Entering this shortcut will instantly open the terminal window, and you can use it no matter where you are on the desktop. - You can also open a terminal from the Activities menu in GNOME, or the equivalent application launcher in other desktop environments. Simply start typing the word “terminal” and click on the result that pops up.
- You can open a terminal by right clicking on the desktop, or while browsing any directory. Using this method will automatically open the terminal with it’s present working directory in the directory of your file browser. If opening from the desktop, then the terminal will already be opened to the Desktop folder.
Opening a terminal from the desktop or present working directory by right clicking - Pressing the
Alt + F2
keybord combination will bring up a run prompt, from which you can executegnome-terminal
to open a terminal. In other desktop environments, the command will be slightly different, such asxfce-terminal
, etc. - If you already have a terminal open, all desktop environments have an easy way to open another terminal with one or two clicks. In GNOME, you just click the plus sign in the upper left corner to open a terminal as a new tab.
Terminal is not opening in Ubuntu
If your GUI desktop is frozen and the terminal won’t open, you might try to open the TTY console. To do so, enter the following shortcut CTRL + ALT + F3
. To return back to your GUI Desktop enter ALT + F2
shortcut.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we learned how to open the command line terminal in Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. The terminal is a very frequently used component in Ubuntu, and thus every desktop environment has various convenient ways to access it.