Show status line on narrow terminals (respect newlines in multi-line output)

Resolved 💬 1 comment Opened Mar 22, 2026 by wwwyo Closed Mar 22, 2026

Problem

The status line is completely hidden when the terminal width is below a certain threshold. Even when the status line script outputs multi-line content (using \n), which should fit within narrow widths, the entire status line area is suppressed.

Current behavior

  • Status line disappears entirely on narrow terminals
  • No configuration option to override this behavior
  • Multi-line status line output (which handles width constraints by stacking vertically) is still hidden

Expected behavior

  • Status line should always be displayed regardless of terminal width
  • If the content is too wide, truncation is acceptable — but hiding the entire area is not
  • Multi-line output already mitigates width issues, so the minimum width check seems overly aggressive

Context

My status line script outputs 3 lines (folder/model, git branch, usage meters). The vertical layout already handles narrow widths well, but the UI suppresses it before the script even runs.

[~/project]  opus-4
[main] +12 -3
ctx ◔ 15%  5h ○ 2%  7d ○ 0%

Proposal

Either:

  1. Remove or lower the minimum width threshold for status line rendering
  2. Add a setting like "statusLine.alwaysShow": true to override the threshold

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