wezterm/docs/config/files.md

Configuration Files

wezterm will look for a lua configuration file in the following locations, stopping at the first file that it finds:

• (since version 20210314-114017-04b7cedd) if the --config-file CLI argument was specified, then that path will be used. If that path fails to load, then the defaults will be used instead.
• If the environment variable $WEZTERM_CONFIG_FILE is set, it will be treated as the path to a configuration file. Since version 20210314-114017-04b7cedd: if that path fails to load then the defaults will be used instead. In earlier releases, the following steps would be used as a fallback.
• On Windows, wezterm.lua from the directory that contains wezterm.exe. This is handy for users that want to carry their wezterm install around on a thumb drive.
• $HOME/.config/wezterm/wezterm.lua,
• $HOME/.wezterm.lua

wezterm will watch the config file that it loads; if/when it changes, the configuration will be automatically reloaded and the majority of options will take effect immediately. You may also use the CTRL+SHIFT+R keyboard shortcut to force the configuration to be reloaded.

The configuration file may be evaluated multiple times for each wezterm process both at startup and in response to the configuration file being reloaded. You should avoid taking actions in the main flow of the config file that have side effects; for example, unconditionally launching background processes can result in many of them being spawned over time if you launch many copies of wezterm, or are frequently reloading your config file.

Configuration Overrides

since: 20210314-114017-04b7cedd

wezterm allows overriding configuration values via the command line; here are a couple of examples:

$ wezterm --config enable_scroll_bar=true
$ wezterm --config 'exit_behavior="Hold"'

Configuration specified via the command line will always override the values provided by the configuration file, even if the configuration file is reloaded.

Each window can have an additional set of window-specific overrides applied to it by code in your configuration file. That's useful for eg: setting transparency or any other arbitrary option on a per-window basis. Read the window:set_config_overrides documentation for more information and examples of how to use that functionality.

Configuration File Structure

The wezterm.lua configuration file is a lua script which allows for a high degree of flexibility. The script is expected to return a configuration table, so a basic empty configuration file will look like this:

return {
}

Throughout these docs you'll find configuration fragments that demonstrate configuration and that look something like this:

return {
  color_scheme = "Batman",
}

and perhaps another one like this:

local wezterm = require 'wezterm';
return {
  font = wezterm.font("JetBrains Mono"),
}

If you wanted to use both of these in the same file, you would merge them together like this:

local wezterm = require 'wezterm';
return {
  font = wezterm.font("JetBrains Mono"),
  color_scheme = "Batman",
}