Appearance
Reverse Index at Scroll Top
RI (ESC M) at the top of the scroll region scrolls the entire region down, inserting a blank line at the top. This is the inverse of a newline at the bottom of the scroll region. Used for smooth scrolling and status line implementations.
Reverse Index is the upward-scrolling counterpart to a newline at the bottom margin. DEC terminals used it for smooth scrolling and region-local updates; modern terminal emulators still need it for applications that manipulate split panes or status areas by moving content down instead of repainting.
How this is testedautomated
Set scroll region, write text at top row, send Reverse Index (
Set scroll region, write text at top row, send Reverse Index (
ESC M), verify content shifted down by one line.The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.
Analysis2026-05-17
Supported by all 12 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Core TUI baseline.
Supported by 13 of 14 backends (93%)
Terminal Applications
| Terminal | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| iTerm2 | 3.6.9 | ✓ yes | |
| Ghostty | 1.3.1 | ✓ yes | |
| VS Code | ✓ yes | ||
| Warp | ✓ yes | ||
| Kitty | 0.46.2 | ✓ yes | |
| Cursor | ✓ yes | ||
| Terminal.app | ✓ yes |