5 ms·

I'm a long time Terminal.app user, and I don't understand why you need a different one. Can somebody help me understand what is the main feature of this iTerm2

by jxy 10y ago

I'm a long time Terminal.app user, and I don't understand why you need a different one. Can somebody help me understand what is the main feature of this iTerm2 that you can't live without? FWIW, I use urxvt under X11, and I'm happy with that too.

betenoire 10y ago
https://iterm2.com/features.html https://iterm2.com/features.html Preference, of course. Here are some features that may appeal to many users.
drobertduke 10y ago
It's worth it just for copy-on-select. Auto-complete and mouseless copy are great also.
jrcii 10y ago
For me it was that I wanted full-screen Terminal without a scrollbar. Yet I like having a scrollbar in my browser (which indicates page length for instance) and the scroll visibility is a systemwide setting in OS X. (Actually there is a plist-app-specific version of the setting which Terminal.app erroneously ignores and Apple refuses to fix it). With iTerm2 I get a scrollbar in my browser, and a clean black full screen background in my terminal.
mdaniel 10y ago
iTerm2 permits one to bind command-w to nothing, which is fantastic if you are going really fast and you meant to do that to Chrome but your iTerm2 has focus. Also great for errant muscle memory when one means to press control w It remembers all the sessions that were open and the directory the shell was in when Yet Another Rebooting Update comes through. Obviously the local command history is lost, but even just restoring the tabs, putting back their titles and changing back to the right directory is a monster time saver. Being open source is a very real benefit in my life, even if I never change a thing, because I can change a thing. The colored tabs are also pretty.
- scott_s 10y ago
  > It remembers all the sessions that were open and the directory the shell was in when Yet Another Rebooting Update comes through. Obviously the local command history is lost, but even just restoring the tabs, putting back their titles and changing back to the right directory is a monster time saver. I believe Terminal does this as well.
  - pellucidar 10y ago
    It restores the tabs, but it doesn't change directories.
    - scott_s 10y ago
      Ah, noted. It does, however, keep the history for that tab, although it's greyed out.
- xoa 10y ago
  >iTerm2 permits one to bind command-w to nothing Just so you know, it has long (always?, can't remember back to 10.0 and before that clearly anymore) been possible do this for arbitrary application menu commands system wide in OS X with no specific application support whatsoever. In System Preferences, go to Keyboard Shortcuts and then Application Shortcuts. You can then add new entries (either system wide or for a given app), the exact name of the menu command, and then a shortcut, and yes you can use this to change an existing supplied one. I use this in many places including Terminal, but what originally drove me to find this feature was browsing. I'd have a few dozen windows open full of sites I was using for a project, then go to hit command-w to close a window/tab and hit command-q instead, closing everything and forcing a full reload to my immense rage each time. Now Safari, Chromium etc are all Control-Command-Q for "Quit", in the Finder "Print" is Control-Command-P (I basically never want to print from the Finder), etc. So while having fully arbitrary internal shortcut control is a mild convenience and decent power user bullet point, for simple cases at least it's also just that, a mild convenience. The same can be accomplished anyway. Which in my opinion is how it should be, power users should be able to trivially change shortcuts to whatever and application authors shouldn't need to worry about going to specific work to make that possible, this is the sort of thing that should be handled by the OS.
jxy 10y ago
Thanks for all the replies. I guess it's just not my thing.
citrusx 10y ago
Terminal.app is actually pretty broken in a lot of ways. If you use iTerm2 for a few weeks, even with minimal or no customization, you'll feel the difference if you go back.

by jxy 10y ago

betenoire 10y ago

https://iterm2.com/features.html https://iterm2.com/features.html Preference, of course. Here are some features that may appeal to many users.

drobertduke 10y ago

It's worth it just for copy-on-select. Auto-complete and mouseless copy are great also.

jrcii 10y ago

For me it was that I wanted full-screen Terminal without a scrollbar. Yet I like having a scrollbar in my browser (which indicates page length for instance) and the scroll visibility is a systemwide setting in OS X. (Actually there is a plist-app-specific version of the setting which Terminal.app erroneously ignores and Apple refuses to fix it). With iTerm2 I get a scrollbar in my browser, and a clean black full screen background in my terminal.

mdaniel 10y ago

iTerm2 permits one to bind command-w to nothing, which is fantastic if you are going really fast and you meant to do that to Chrome but your iTerm2 has focus. Also great for errant muscle memory when one means to press control w It remembers all the sessions that were open and the directory the shell was in when Yet Another Rebooting Update comes through. Obviously the local command history is lost, but even just restoring the tabs, putting back their titles and changing back to the right directory is a monster time saver. Being open source is a very real benefit in my life, even if I never change a thing, because I can change a thing. The colored tabs are also pretty.

scott_s 10y ago
> It remembers all the sessions that were open and the directory the shell was in when Yet Another Rebooting Update comes through. Obviously the local command history is lost, but even just restoring the tabs, putting back their titles and changing back to the right directory is a monster time saver. I believe Terminal does this as well.
- pellucidar 10y ago
  It restores the tabs, but it doesn't change directories.
  - scott_s 10y ago
    Ah, noted. It does, however, keep the history for that tab, although it's greyed out.
xoa 10y ago
>iTerm2 permits one to bind command-w to nothing Just so you know, it has long (always?, can't remember back to 10.0 and before that clearly anymore) been possible do this for arbitrary application menu commands system wide in OS X with no specific application support whatsoever. In System Preferences, go to Keyboard Shortcuts and then Application Shortcuts. You can then add new entries (either system wide or for a given app), the exact name of the menu command, and then a shortcut, and yes you can use this to change an existing supplied one. I use this in many places including Terminal, but what originally drove me to find this feature was browsing. I'd have a few dozen windows open full of sites I was using for a project, then go to hit command-w to close a window/tab and hit command-q instead, closing everything and forcing a full reload to my immense rage each time. Now Safari, Chromium etc are all Control-Command-Q for "Quit", in the Finder "Print" is Control-Command-P (I basically never want to print from the Finder), etc. So while having fully arbitrary internal shortcut control is a mild convenience and decent power user bullet point, for simple cases at least it's also just that, a mild convenience. The same can be accomplished anyway. Which in my opinion is how it should be, power users should be able to trivially change shortcuts to whatever and application authors shouldn't need to worry about going to specific work to make that possible, this is the sort of thing that should be handled by the OS.

jxy 10y ago

Thanks for all the replies. I guess it's just not my thing.

citrusx 10y ago

Terminal.app is actually pretty broken in a lot of ways. If you use iTerm2 for a few weeks, even with minimal or no customization, you'll feel the difference if you go back.