Session Archives

A session archive is a saved copy of a session's scrollback that you can restore later. It captures the session's contents so you can set aside a terminal's history and reopen it whenever you need it.

Saving and Restoring Archives

The archive commands live under Shell > Archives.

Choose Save Archive of Current Session… to write the current session's scrollback to a file. Choose Restore Archive… to pick a saved archive and reopen it. iTerm2 remembers your ten most recent archives and lists them in the Archives submenu, so you can restore a recent one without hunting for the file.

Restoring an archive reopens the session's scrollback in a new window.

Archiving Sessions Automatically

You can have iTerm2 archive a session for you when it closes. In Settings > Profiles > Session, turn on Archive sessions on closure and choose a destination directory. When a session using that profile closes, iTerm2 automatically writes an archive of its scrollback to that directory. See Profiles > Session for the related settings.