7 ms·

Cool, I might give this a try and consider moving back to iTerm. I was using it previously but decided to go back to the default Terminal + Fish shell for bette

Cool, I might give this a try and consider moving back to iTerm. I was using it previously but decided to go back to the default Terminal + Fish shell for better performance and not having to install an extra application.

itchynosedev 8y ago
I switched from iTerm to Terminal about a year ago, since I am using tmux for multiplexing and emacs for file management with magit. I don't really miss any iTerm features. Have to look up what's new!
jakear 8y ago
Agreed on using standard terminal. I’d like if someone could explain what utility they get out of iTerm (or any other non-builtin terminal). I’ve found the performance of iTerm in particular to be far inferior to builtin, especially when the buffer grows large. iTerm even has a fixed buffer size by default and still has worse performance. Alacritty is supposed to be fast, but then doesn’t support any scrolling, has a poor window resizing flow, and doesn’t have tabs. The suggestion is to use tmux for all that, but then Alacritty+tmux is slower than builtin. - “performance” above means smoothness of scrolling and general “perceived performance” type things. Haven’t actually tried any real tests.
- rys 8y ago
  My favourite feature of iTerm is broadcasting keyboard input to multiple windows. I use that when doing certain kinds of server maintenance.
  - breck 8y ago
    tmux can do this too inside of regular terminal (where windows = panes)
- aroman 8y ago
  for me the #1 thing is the non-standard full-screen behavior, which lets my hit cmd+return and instantly full-screen the window, without any animation or creating a second workspace.
  - nordsieck 8y ago
    You might be interested in spectacle. It's a light weight window manager for os x that will let you do that (and more) with any app. https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
    - aroman 8y ago
      I use spectacle extensively, that's why I enjoy iTerm' fullscreen feature so much :-)
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Can't that be accomplished in any macOS terminal by redefining the application's keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences?
    - aroman 8y ago
      It's not about the shortcut, it's about the behavior. iTerm'a fullscreen behavior works fundamentally differently than the standard macOS fullscreen behavior (no animation, no dedicated space, etc). Much more like spectacle, but hiding the window chrome.
      - tern 8y ago
        To get this, you need to uncheck "Native Full-screen" in preferences
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        Using non-standard interface elements and methods is the #1 way to get me to stop using a macOS product. Your program has to be pretty darned special for me to learn a whole new set of muscle memory movements for it. Heck, I about dumped OS X when Apple changed the default application opening method. It used to be that when an application was loading and you switched to another window, the application opened behind what you were now working on. Or if you were working on something and another application in the background opened a window, you only got the jumping icon to let you know. Today, applications can hijack focus pretty much whenever they want, aping one of Windows' most annoying UI features.
- gnclmorais 8y ago
  The ability to set a hotkey to toggle the terminal is a must. I assigned ± to it (i.e. pressing it will toggle the window).
- memco 8y ago
  For me it’s the split pane features. I know tmux and screen can do this, but I feel like it’s a better experience in iterm.
- rikkus 8y ago
  I keep being told I must use iTerm2 and I have been. But I haven’t found anything it does that is better than the built in Terminal app. I’m going back to Terminal unless I find some reason to stick with it.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Not everyone needs the features iTerm provides. I used to use Terminal for a long time, but now I use iTerm because it gives me nice things like shell integration and notifications when jobs finish.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  I’m a huge fan and every day user of tabs and split windows features in iTerm. Any performance hit for it for me has been negligible— save for one buggy update which was promptly fixed. I use tmux coupled with that, btw.
- ksudf 8y ago
  My main reason is very simple, there is a setting to allow resizing the widow by pixel instead of but character, which means I can make the window fill all the available space on my desktop
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Alacritty is supposed to be fast, but then doesn’t support any scrolling, has a poor window resizing flow, and doesn’t have tabs. The suggestion is to use tmux for all that, but then Alacritty+tmux is slower than builtin. Alacrity is just an experiment at the time.
- dm3 8y ago
  The one feature I miss most in Terminal.app is smart selection and automatic copy on double-click. For example, on double click the Terminal.app will select `path.txt` from `some/long/path.txt`. iTerm will select the whole thing and copy it to the clipboard.
  - revscat 8y ago
    I do too, kinda, but I use tmux to copy text from the terminal into the clipboard, and have for years. The muscle memory around that is so ingrained now that I only rarely found myself using iTerm’s smart selection. It was nice, though.
- RayDonnelly 8y ago
  Alacritty are developing a scrolling feature. Should land soon ish.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobsenscott 8y ago
  I use iTerm simply because the standard emacs keybindings don't work in Terminal. I'm sure there's some configuration somewhere that can fix that. But iTerm is properly configured out of box.
  - breatheoften 8y ago
    Do you mean the readline bindings (in bash shell) or do you mean when you run emacs? I usually enable the readline style keybindings system wide (move character forward/backward, move word forward/backward) using a custom DefaultKeyBinding.dict — but then typically have to figure out workarounds for programmer type applications which try to resupply these shortcuts expecting the keys to be bound to random Unicode characters rather than already rebound to the actions ... as I recall — with my customization the keybindings don’t work by default in iterm2 and I had to go in and change something to get the correct behavior (fortunately there is an option). Many programmery type applications have the same issue (fortunately it’s mkstly possible to customize them all). So it’s stjll possible to get the emacs keybindings at all text inswertion points systemwide — but it’s a hassle... In the glory days of OS X — pre 10.5, none of this was necessary — option-f option-b etc were just bound to the right thing by default rather than printing pointless Unicode characters ... I’m still annoyed by that change and by the fact that a bunch of complicated configurations are required to get the right behavior nowadays ...
    - jacobsenscott 8y ago
      I mean the readline bindings in the shell, but I just launched terminal to see which ones don't work, and they all appear to work now. So maybe that's been fixed. That's great it if works. I don't use any of iTerm's bells and whistles.
  - sirn 8y ago
    If you meant Meta keys doesn't work in Terminal.app, then the option is in Preferences → Profiles → (Choose your profile) → Keyboard → [/] Use Option as Meta key
- fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
  My favorite feature of iterm2 is that it can detect borders and confine the selection within them (e.g. only selecting one side of a tmux or vim split). This means I don’t have to bother figuring out how to synchronize the clipboards of OS X and various terminal apps, for most use cases.
- throwaway287391 8y ago
  > Agreed on using standard terminal. I’d like if someone could explain what utility they get out of iTerm (or any other non-builtin terminal). For me it's simply that I couldn't get custom colors (e.g., the Solarized Dark theme) to display correctly with built-in Terminal. I haven't tried in 5+ years though -- maybe it's fixed now, and/or maybe I was doing something wrong at the time. But iTerm "just worked", and I never noticed performance issues so once I switched I never looked back. shrug
  - 101km 8y ago
    That is actually fixed now.
    - throwaway287391 8y ago
      Cool, thanks -- maybe I'll give built-in Terminal another whirl at some point then.
    - cseelus 8y ago
      Seems macOS Terminal app still hasn't True Color support. Tried running https://github.com/tclamb/iTerm2/blob/d0ecb297727a59c9ee551144caeade675d9ae04b/tests/24-bit-color.sh https://github.com/tclamb/iTerm2/blob/d0ecb297727a59c9ee5511... both in Terminal app and iTerm 2, and only iTerm 2 shows all colors, whereas Terminal app still shows only some colors. My VIM themes also look more bleak in the default Terminal app.
- kccqzy 8y ago
  Some features I just can't live without: * tmux integration. Whether I'm in a remote server or my own machine, just use -CC and I can now use tmux with the same keybindings I would use without tmux. * Watch for the completion of a command. Especially useful if you happen to be using a language with a slow compiler like Haskell or Rust. Plays a nice ding when the command is done. (This may require shell integration). * Even if you forgot to run your command with time, iTerm can still tell you the wall clock time of your command. (Shell integration too). And then just small things that the builtin Terminal doesn't have: * focus follows mouse * smart selection (for example it could detect a URL and you can select the whole URL, then command-click to open) * copy on select
  - arh68 8y ago
    Just wanted to note: focus follows mouse is possible with Terminal.app with defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool true [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/98310/focus-follows-mouse-plus-auto-raise-on-mac-os-x https://stackoverflow.com/questions/98310/focus-follows-mous...
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure iTerm took its focus follows mouse implementation from Terminal.
      - gnachman 8y ago
        It existed before I took it over but it has changes quite a bit since then, kinda maybe?
  - crehn 8y ago
    Regarding watching command completion, I built a tool for that purpose [1]. I use it mostly when working through SSH on the go and with slow connections. [1] https://github.com/hoffa/pingu https://github.com/hoffa/pingu
  - jakear 8y ago
    To be fair, the shell itself can tell you the wall clock time. I have fish doing that for me on Terminal.app.
- BlackFingolfin 8y ago
  Things I love in iTerm include the following: * cmd-click on URLs or filenames to open them in my browser resp. editor -- even recognizes "FILENAME:LINE" to jump to the right line in my editor, which is super useful for errors printed by a compiler * changing the theme when using SSH and/or root, so I don't accidentally issue commands on the wrong machine or as root * split views * lots of other, often "small" features, which I can't think of right now but which I usually notice quickly if forced to use Terminal.app
- jsmeaton 8y ago
  The main iterm features I use extensively are split panes, broadcasting, and profiles. CMD+O brings up the profile switcher, type the tag I want and hit enter. Profiles let you configure cwd, commands to run (virtualenv activation), theme colours, and a bunch of other things. My “prod” profile ssh’s into a management box, sets the background to pink, and puts a “PROD” badge in the top right corner.
- stuuuuuuuuu 8y ago
  In my case, iTerm2 can do more sophisticated keyboard remapping than the standard terminal. Specifically: I have Caps Lock globally remapped to Command. Except, in iTerm, it acts as Control. Except, if I'm using some specific combos, like Cmd-Tab or Cmd-`; then it acts as Command again.
  - Crazor 8y ago
    Oh wow, great idea! Now that I'm working more often with linux, I kinda got Caps+C etc. in my muscle memory, because I set Caps as Ctrl. When I switch back to macOS, it takes a while of wondering why my shortcuts won't work. Care to explain how exactly you set this up? I guess in System Preferences -> Keyboard you set Caps to Cmd. And then?
    - stuuuuuuuuu 8y ago
      In iTerm Preferences, Keys, set Left Command to Control, then in the Key Mappings list, add each Cmd-xyz combo you want to preserve, and set its action to "Do Not Remap Modifiers".
- klum 8y ago
  I like Terminal, but a very specific feature of iTerm2 I wish Terminal had is using one of the option keys as meta, while letting you keep the other for typing characters like "@" on some non-english keyboards.

itchynosedev 8y ago

I switched from iTerm to Terminal about a year ago, since I am using tmux for multiplexing and emacs for file management with magit. I don't really miss any iTerm features. Have to look up what's new!

jakear 8y ago

Agreed on using standard terminal. I’d like if someone could explain what utility they get out of iTerm (or any other non-builtin terminal). I’ve found the performance of iTerm in particular to be far inferior to builtin, especially when the buffer grows large. iTerm even has a fixed buffer size by default and still has worse performance. Alacritty is supposed to be fast, but then doesn’t support any scrolling, has a poor window resizing flow, and doesn’t have tabs. The suggestion is to use tmux for all that, but then Alacritty+tmux is slower than builtin. - “performance” above means smoothness of scrolling and general “perceived performance” type things. Haven’t actually tried any real tests.

rys 8y ago
My favourite feature of iTerm is broadcasting keyboard input to multiple windows. I use that when doing certain kinds of server maintenance.
- breck 8y ago
  tmux can do this too inside of regular terminal (where windows = panes)
aroman 8y ago
for me the #1 thing is the non-standard full-screen behavior, which lets my hit cmd+return and instantly full-screen the window, without any animation or creating a second workspace.
- nordsieck 8y ago
  You might be interested in spectacle. It's a light weight window manager for os x that will let you do that (and more) with any app. https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
  - aroman 8y ago
    I use spectacle extensively, that's why I enjoy iTerm' fullscreen feature so much :-)
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Can't that be accomplished in any macOS terminal by redefining the application's keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences?
  - aroman 8y ago
    It's not about the shortcut, it's about the behavior. iTerm'a fullscreen behavior works fundamentally differently than the standard macOS fullscreen behavior (no animation, no dedicated space, etc). Much more like spectacle, but hiding the window chrome.
    - tern 8y ago
      To get this, you need to uncheck "Native Full-screen" in preferences
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Using non-standard interface elements and methods is the #1 way to get me to stop using a macOS product. Your program has to be pretty darned special for me to learn a whole new set of muscle memory movements for it. Heck, I about dumped OS X when Apple changed the default application opening method. It used to be that when an application was loading and you switched to another window, the application opened behind what you were now working on. Or if you were working on something and another application in the background opened a window, you only got the jumping icon to let you know. Today, applications can hijack focus pretty much whenever they want, aping one of Windows' most annoying UI features.
gnclmorais 8y ago
The ability to set a hotkey to toggle the terminal is a must. I assigned ± to it (i.e. pressing it will toggle the window).
memco 8y ago
For me it’s the split pane features. I know tmux and screen can do this, but I feel like it’s a better experience in iterm.
rikkus 8y ago
I keep being told I must use iTerm2 and I have been. But I haven’t found anything it does that is better than the built in Terminal app. I’m going back to Terminal unless I find some reason to stick with it.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Not everyone needs the features iTerm provides. I used to use Terminal for a long time, but now I use iTerm because it gives me nice things like shell integration and notifications when jobs finish.
52-6F-62 8y ago
I’m a huge fan and every day user of tabs and split windows features in iTerm. Any performance hit for it for me has been negligible— save for one buggy update which was promptly fixed. I use tmux coupled with that, btw.
ksudf 8y ago
My main reason is very simple, there is a setting to allow resizing the widow by pixel instead of but character, which means I can make the window fill all the available space on my desktop
coldtea 8y ago
>Alacritty is supposed to be fast, but then doesn’t support any scrolling, has a poor window resizing flow, and doesn’t have tabs. The suggestion is to use tmux for all that, but then Alacritty+tmux is slower than builtin. Alacrity is just an experiment at the time.
dm3 8y ago
The one feature I miss most in Terminal.app is smart selection and automatic copy on double-click. For example, on double click the Terminal.app will select `path.txt` from `some/long/path.txt`. iTerm will select the whole thing and copy it to the clipboard.
- revscat 8y ago
  I do too, kinda, but I use tmux to copy text from the terminal into the clipboard, and have for years. The muscle memory around that is so ingrained now that I only rarely found myself using iTerm’s smart selection. It was nice, though.
RayDonnelly 8y ago
Alacritty are developing a scrolling feature. Should land soon ish.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jacobsenscott 8y ago
I use iTerm simply because the standard emacs keybindings don't work in Terminal. I'm sure there's some configuration somewhere that can fix that. But iTerm is properly configured out of box.
- breatheoften 8y ago
  Do you mean the readline bindings (in bash shell) or do you mean when you run emacs? I usually enable the readline style keybindings system wide (move character forward/backward, move word forward/backward) using a custom DefaultKeyBinding.dict — but then typically have to figure out workarounds for programmer type applications which try to resupply these shortcuts expecting the keys to be bound to random Unicode characters rather than already rebound to the actions ... as I recall — with my customization the keybindings don’t work by default in iterm2 and I had to go in and change something to get the correct behavior (fortunately there is an option). Many programmery type applications have the same issue (fortunately it’s mkstly possible to customize them all). So it’s stjll possible to get the emacs keybindings at all text inswertion points systemwide — but it’s a hassle... In the glory days of OS X — pre 10.5, none of this was necessary — option-f option-b etc were just bound to the right thing by default rather than printing pointless Unicode characters ... I’m still annoyed by that change and by the fact that a bunch of complicated configurations are required to get the right behavior nowadays ...
  - jacobsenscott 8y ago
    I mean the readline bindings in the shell, but I just launched terminal to see which ones don't work, and they all appear to work now. So maybe that's been fixed. That's great it if works. I don't use any of iTerm's bells and whistles.
- sirn 8y ago
  If you meant Meta keys doesn't work in Terminal.app, then the option is in Preferences → Profiles → (Choose your profile) → Keyboard → [/] Use Option as Meta key
fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
My favorite feature of iterm2 is that it can detect borders and confine the selection within them (e.g. only selecting one side of a tmux or vim split). This means I don’t have to bother figuring out how to synchronize the clipboards of OS X and various terminal apps, for most use cases.
throwaway287391 8y ago
> Agreed on using standard terminal. I’d like if someone could explain what utility they get out of iTerm (or any other non-builtin terminal). For me it's simply that I couldn't get custom colors (e.g., the Solarized Dark theme) to display correctly with built-in Terminal. I haven't tried in 5+ years though -- maybe it's fixed now, and/or maybe I was doing something wrong at the time. But iTerm "just worked", and I never noticed performance issues so once I switched I never looked back. shrug
- 101km 8y ago
  That is actually fixed now.
  - throwaway287391 8y ago
    Cool, thanks -- maybe I'll give built-in Terminal another whirl at some point then.
  - cseelus 8y ago
    Seems macOS Terminal app still hasn't True Color support. Tried running https://github.com/tclamb/iTerm2/blob/d0ecb297727a59c9ee551144caeade675d9ae04b/tests/24-bit-color.sh https://github.com/tclamb/iTerm2/blob/d0ecb297727a59c9ee5511... both in Terminal app and iTerm 2, and only iTerm 2 shows all colors, whereas Terminal app still shows only some colors. My VIM themes also look more bleak in the default Terminal app.
kccqzy 8y ago
Some features I just can't live without: * tmux integration. Whether I'm in a remote server or my own machine, just use -CC and I can now use tmux with the same keybindings I would use without tmux. * Watch for the completion of a command. Especially useful if you happen to be using a language with a slow compiler like Haskell or Rust. Plays a nice ding when the command is done. (This may require shell integration). * Even if you forgot to run your command with time, iTerm can still tell you the wall clock time of your command. (Shell integration too). And then just small things that the builtin Terminal doesn't have: * focus follows mouse * smart selection (for example it could detect a URL and you can select the whole URL, then command-click to open) * copy on select
- arh68 8y ago
  Just wanted to note: focus follows mouse is possible with Terminal.app with defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool true [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/98310/focus-follows-mouse-plus-auto-raise-on-mac-os-x https://stackoverflow.com/questions/98310/focus-follows-mous...
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure iTerm took its focus follows mouse implementation from Terminal.
    - gnachman 8y ago
      It existed before I took it over but it has changes quite a bit since then, kinda maybe?
- crehn 8y ago
  Regarding watching command completion, I built a tool for that purpose [1]. I use it mostly when working through SSH on the go and with slow connections. [1] https://github.com/hoffa/pingu https://github.com/hoffa/pingu
- jakear 8y ago
  To be fair, the shell itself can tell you the wall clock time. I have fish doing that for me on Terminal.app.
BlackFingolfin 8y ago
Things I love in iTerm include the following: * cmd-click on URLs or filenames to open them in my browser resp. editor -- even recognizes "FILENAME:LINE" to jump to the right line in my editor, which is super useful for errors printed by a compiler * changing the theme when using SSH and/or root, so I don't accidentally issue commands on the wrong machine or as root * split views * lots of other, often "small" features, which I can't think of right now but which I usually notice quickly if forced to use Terminal.app
jsmeaton 8y ago
The main iterm features I use extensively are split panes, broadcasting, and profiles. CMD+O brings up the profile switcher, type the tag I want and hit enter. Profiles let you configure cwd, commands to run (virtualenv activation), theme colours, and a bunch of other things. My “prod” profile ssh’s into a management box, sets the background to pink, and puts a “PROD” badge in the top right corner.
stuuuuuuuuu 8y ago
In my case, iTerm2 can do more sophisticated keyboard remapping than the standard terminal. Specifically: I have Caps Lock globally remapped to Command. Except, in iTerm, it acts as Control. Except, if I'm using some specific combos, like Cmd-Tab or Cmd-`; then it acts as Command again.
- Crazor 8y ago
  Oh wow, great idea! Now that I'm working more often with linux, I kinda got Caps+C etc. in my muscle memory, because I set Caps as Ctrl. When I switch back to macOS, it takes a while of wondering why my shortcuts won't work. Care to explain how exactly you set this up? I guess in System Preferences -> Keyboard you set Caps to Cmd. And then?
  - stuuuuuuuuu 8y ago
    In iTerm Preferences, Keys, set Left Command to Control, then in the Key Mappings list, add each Cmd-xyz combo you want to preserve, and set its action to "Do Not Remap Modifiers".
klum 8y ago
I like Terminal, but a very specific feature of iTerm2 I wish Terminal had is using one of the option keys as meta, while letting you keep the other for typing characters like "@" on some non-english keyboards.