this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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What's better with a drop down terminal vs a normal terminal invoked with global short key?
It's a genuine question, never heard about drop down terminal and looked it up. As I understand they are just normal terminal with a visual effect when they open. Am I missing something?
I've used a drop down terminal before and I find the position convenient. I can never lose it among other windows and it's always on top. If I want to see below, I just slide it back.
Your point is correct, it is functionally nearly identical. Since the terminal is arguably the most important or most central piece of software, I do find it convenient to always have it in the same place and to give it priority over other windows.
This is definitely a matter of opinion, I do admit
It really has nothing to do with the opening animation, in fact, I'm not even sure if Guake has an animation. It's about having a self contained terminal "window" where all of your terminals live and you can quickly navigate between them. Then you can hide said window just as fast as it arrived and get back to what you were doing. Keep in mind, these drop down terminals are not treated as traditional windows and are always-on-top.
The problem with traditional terminal windows is: let's say that I have 4 terminals up for different tasks; it causes a little friction to my workflow when I have to deal with which window is which. That friction is just not present with a drop-down. Of course, you can have a traditional terminal emulator that supports tabs and splitting and set a hotkey to bring the one window into focus with an always-on-top flag; at that point though, you've just recreated another drop-down.