Picocom Clear Screen Review

picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 You enter a pass-through terminal. Keystrokes are sent directly to the serial device, and incoming data is displayed on your screen. The usual terminal control sequences (like clear or Ctrl+L ) are not interpreted by picocom itself—they are passed to the remote device. Unless the remote device understands the escape sequence for clearing its own display (e.g., an embedded Linux shell or a microcontroller firmware that parses ANSI codes), pressing Ctrl+L will have no effect or may send an unexpected byte.

Unlike a standard shell (e.g., bash with clear or Ctrl+L ), picocom does not have a built-in screen-clearing command by default. Understanding why and how to work around this is key to a smooth serial debugging workflow. When you connect to a serial device using: picocom clear screen

This works without requiring any special support from the remote device and is shell-agnostic. picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 You enter a pass-through