Claude Code /tui Command: Switch to Flicker-Free Rendering Without Restarting

Claude Code Gets /tui: Flicker-Free Rendering On Demand

Claude Code v2.1.110, released on April 15, 2026, ships the /tui command — a long-awaited improvement for developers frustrated by terminal flickering during streaming output. For the first time, users can switch to the alt-screen, flicker-free rendering engine in the middle of an existing conversation, without restarting the CLI, without modifying environment variables, and without losing session context.

Background: The Flickering Problem

Terminal flickering in Claude Code has been a persistent pain point. Because Claude Code uses React and the Ink rendering library, each streaming update triggers a full re-render of the terminal output. In terminals lacking DEC mode 2026 (synchronized output) support, this produces visible flicker — a strobing effect that is particularly jarring during long tool calls or file-heavy operations. Anthropic had previously introduced the CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 environment variable to activate an alternative alt-screen renderer with virtualized scrollback, but this required a restart and awareness of the configuration option. Community interest was significant — Hacker News threads about the issue attracted hundreds of comments from developers working around the limitation.

What /tui Changes

The /tui command brings that rendering engine into the standard slash-command interface. Typing /tui in any active session switches the current conversation to the flicker-free alt-screen renderer immediately. No restart is required. A new tui config setting persists the preference across sessions so users do not need to invoke the command each time.

The same release reorganizes related keyboard shortcuts for clarity:

• Ctrl+O now toggles exclusively between normal and verbose transcript views — a focused, well-defined action.
• /focus is the dedicated command for toggling focus view (previously also accessible via Ctrl+O), which collapses the transcript to show only the prompt, a one-line tool summary, and the final response.

This separation makes each control easier to discover and remember independently.

Additional v2.1.110 Highlights

Beyond the /tui command, the release includes several other notable changes:

• autoScrollEnabled config — users can disable automatic conversation auto-scroll in fullscreen mode, useful for reviewing earlier output while a task is running.
• Show last response as commented context in external editor — configurable via /config, this places Claude's most recent response as a comment in the external editor buffer for easier reference.
• --resume/--continue resurrects scheduled tasks — sessions resumed with these flags now restore any unexpired scheduled tasks active when the session ended.
• Fixed non-streaming fallback retries — resolved multi-minute hangs when the API was unreachable and the streaming fallback triggered.
• Fixed garbled startup rendering in macOS Terminal.app and other terminals without synchronized output support.

Why It Matters

The /tui command removes one of the most visible rough edges in Claude Code's day-to-day experience. Developers running long sessions — the primary use case Anthropic has been optimizing for — were the most affected by flickering, since it interfered with tracking Claude's progress and reading intermediate tool output. Making flicker-free mode accessible via a slash command lowers the adoption barrier dramatically and aligns with the broader push toward a polished interface at any terminal width or emulator.