Determine which tty is in the "foreground" / "currently displayed"? In linux I can use the key combinations `Alt-Ctrl-F1`,`Alt-Ctrl-F2`... to switch to different `tty1` as I could use `man chvt`. using the command `tty` I also get displayed the teletype/linux virtual console I am on. However if I am in `xterm` or in `gnome-terminal` tty will display the relevant pseude-terminal. Given all that: * How can I tell which is the currently "active" `tty` (meaning it being displayed on the screen)? This would be somewhat the solution (however it seems contorted and relies on loginctl logind, there must be a **non-systemd** to find out): for sessionid in $(loginctl list-sessions --no-legend | awk '{ print $1 }'); do loginctl show-session -p State -p TTY $sessionid; done | grep "State=active" -B1 | head -n 1 | sed 's/.*=//g'

cat /sys/devices/virtual/tty/tty0/active


`tty0` refers to the current virtual console (compare this answer). By reading `/sys/devices/virtual/tty/tty0/active` you can learn which console this is.

"Current" means what you see, not where `cat` is running. E.g. if you start this loop


while sleep 1; do
cat /sys/devices/virtual/tty/tty0/active
done


let in run, manually switch to another console, wait few seconds and switch back, then you will see the other console was reported when you looked at it.