# How to increase browse-back buffer in terminals?

**URL:** <https://community.learnlinux.tv/t/how-to-increase-browse-back-buffer-in-terminals/4452>\
**Category:** Switching to Linux\
**Created:** [February 1, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://community.learnlinux.tv/t/how-to-increase-browse-back-buffer-in-terminals/4452 "2025-02-01T20:19:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danw](https://community.learnlinux.tv/user_avatar/community.learnlinux.tv/danw/32/1464_2.png) [@danw](https://community.learnlinux.tv/u/danw)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://community.learnlinux.tv/t/how-to-increase-browse-back-buffer-in-terminals/4452/1 "2025-02-01T20:19:35Z")

</div>

I’ve searched for help on this topic, and asked several ai’s for help, and nothing has worked. The problem is this:

I often have lengthy chats with locally running AI’s through (terminal app) ollama, on Philosophy or Physics, or when I need help with a programming problem. But when I go to save the transcript, I find much of it already lost. This is absurd. I have 64 gigs of RAM; linux should be able to notice that and relax its memory paranoias about buffer sizes. I want my read back buffers to be 100 times bigger than they are, but no amount of system tweaking ever seems to do the trick. I’m on Ubuntu, Noble.  
A corollary or alternative question might be, can I put my ollama calls in an alias or batch file that automatically saves my chats to date/time-stamped files?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![greeners](https://community.learnlinux.tv/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/ea5d25/32.png) [@greeners](https://community.learnlinux.tv/u/greeners)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 10:51am UTC](https://community.learnlinux.tv/t/how-to-increase-browse-back-buffer-in-terminals/4452/2 "2026-01-31T10:51:14Z")

</div>

Its 11 months since you asked your question; but I hope this helps.

I Googled ‘ubuntu bash scrollback buffer’ and discovered [Mastering Linux Screen Scroll Up: A Comprehensive Guide — linuxvox.com](https://linuxvox.com/blog/linux-screen-scroll-up/)

This contained the info you seek. My own PoP!\_OS distro didn’t exactly match this article’s info, but I did find the desired scrollback buffer setting (default of 1000 lines). You didn’t say which distro you are using, but I would hope you terminal program also has settings in which you will find a scrollback buffer setting too.