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Scroll view up (OSC 720)

Category: extensions · Baseline: legacy · Tags: Operating System Commands (OSC) · Specification ↗

ESC ] 720 BEL
OSC 720 scrolls the visible terminal view up by N lines into the scrollback buffer, as if the user pressed Shift+PageUp. The sequence is ESC ] 720 BEL (some forms accept a count parameter). The companion OSC 721 scrolls back down toward the live region. Both are rxvt-unicode-only extensions, intended for scripts that wanted to drive the scrollback view from inside the terminal. Modern terminals do not expose scrollback navigation over escape sequences — the scrollback is considered a user-interface concept owned by the emulator, not the application — so these sequences are silently consumed everywhere except urxvt.
How this is testedpartial
Send OSC 720 BEL and verify the terminal consumes the sequence (cursor position unchanged).

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by all 4 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Unicode baseline.

Supported by 6 of 14 backends (43%)

Terminal Applications

TerminalVersionSupportNotes
iTerm23.6.9✓ yes
Ghostty1.3.1✓ yes
Terminal.app2.15✓ yes
Kitty0.46.2✓ yes
VS Code1.113.0? unknown
Warp0.2026.03.18.08.24.03? unknown
Cursor2.6.21? unknown

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a means the parser accepts the sequence.

BackendVersionSupportNotes
Alacritty0.26.0? unknown
vt100.js0.2.1? unknown
vterm0.2.0? unknown
WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5? unknown
xterm.js5.5.0? unknown