You're not getting old; this is a real nuisance. That said, and to add onto the other reply, you're in luck: OpenSSH 8.8p1 includes support¹ for setting TERM i

You're not getting old; this is a real nuisance. That said, and to add onto the other reply, you're in luck: OpenSSH 8.8p1 includes support¹ for setting TERM in your SSH config with SetEnv². In my experience this works fine with just the client OpenSSH being up-to-date connecting to servers with older SSH versions and terminfo databases. In your case, you might want to use a wildcard host at the end of your file to default to a more compatible TERM variable, and then override to foot's TERM variable value for the hosts you use that do have up-to-date terminfo: Host my-up-to-date-terminfo-host SetEnv TERM=foot Host * SetEnv TERM=xterm-256color I've been using Foot for months now and just came across this issue, so it's nice there's now a path to get the full-fledged Foot experience only where it's supported. I usually stay comfortably inside GUI Doom Emacs for most shell workflows, but it's nice to have a modern, Wayland-native, no-nonsense terminal emulator when I do break my config :P. ¹ https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/commit/f64f8c00d158acc1359b8a096835849b23aa2e86 https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/commit/f64f8c00d... ² https://www.mankier.com/5/ssh_config#SetEnv https://www.mankier.com/5/ssh_config#SetEnv