17 ms·

ITerm2 2.0

584 points by gnachman 12y ago

neduma 12y ago
Awesome & Thanks.
beltex 12y ago
Awesome, congrats on the release! Aside: Check For Update... still gives 1.0.0.20140629 as the latest version. Have to download a 2.0 build explicitly. http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html
- duskwuff 12y ago
  You have to switch off development releases to get 2.0.
  - gpvos 12y ago
    That's pretty backwards.
  - luxbock 12y ago
    Where does this option exist? I've been going through Preferences and every other menu I could think of but could not find it.
    - dpd126 12y ago
      Preferences > General Tab > Services Group > "Prompt for test-release updates"
    - stith 12y ago
      It's labeled "Prompt for test-release updates" on the General tab.
  - apas 12y ago
    Thank you! Most valuable comment in this thread.
  - joeyspn 12y ago
    Unchecked and updated.. thanks for the tip!
dshep 12y ago
Sweet look forward to trying out the new trigger and escape sequence features
chetanahuja 12y ago
iTerm is what the Terminal.app should have been. Thanks to the devs for your work.
canadev 12y ago
So, I have this bash script that runs AppleScript that I use to start up a bunch of servers at once, each in their own Terminal tab. At the heart of it is this 'new-tab' function[1]. I don't really like AppleScript, and would like to not use it. Can I duplicate this functionality using iTerm, without using AppleScript? [1] Here's the code; I cobbled it together from some StackOverflow snippet or something: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f16a46c327a14ec8a5b5 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f16a46c327a14ec8a5b5
- bshimmin 12y ago
  You might want to put it in a GitHub Gist, or similar, for better readability.
- mweibel 12y ago
  Probably this: http://superuser.com/questions/299482/how-do-i-set-up-an-applescript-to-open-a-new-iterm2-tab-and-change-the-directory http://superuser.com/questions/299482/how-do-i-set-up-an-app...
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Take a look at tmux and tmuxinator. I have a config that looks like this: # ~/.tmuxinator/blah.yml name: blah root: ~/Development/blah windows: - web: layout: even-vertical panes: - cd web - cd web; gulp server default watch --device desktop - admin: layout: even-vertical panes: - cd admin - cd admin; gulp dev - ssh:test: layout: even-vertical panes: - clear; ssh ubuntu@web.test - ssh:prod: layout: even-vertical panes: - clear; ssh ubuntu@web1.prod - clear; ssh ubuntu@web2.prod and I just run `mux start blah` and that will either start a new tmux session and set up everything as I need, or resume an already running session.
- remi 12y ago
  I built teamocil for this purpose. https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil
voltagex_ 12y ago
The tmux integration is a really interesting piece of work. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6bgvMoEbcTcA2N21ncmU/view?hl=en&authkey=COHZn78P https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6... http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- INTPenis 12y ago
  Yes it's technically interesting but am I alone in thinking that it sort of defeats the purpose of using tmux in the first place? I use tmux partly because I come from a background of low resources, but also because I want my essential tools to use as little resources as possible so that they always work as well as possible on any system. Yet iTerm proposes that you use their GUI tabs, split their GUI terminals instead of drawing it all with tmux in one text console. I guess you sacrifice some resources for usability.
  - boomlinde 12y ago
    If your main purpose for using tmux is sparing resources, then sure, but I think most people use tmux for session management, persistence and multiplexing. If I can use these features in a way that is better integrated with the windowing system, and still be able to attach to the session from a plain terminal remotely, I'm not going to complain.
  - crucialfelix 12y ago
    but the scroll wheel finally works
    - Jgrubb 12y ago
      A couple improvements I found in some other HN Tmux thread -- set -g mode-mouse on set -g mouse-resize-pane on
- 12y ago
hayksaakian 12y ago
to HN: What changed you from "terminal.app is good enough" to "I prefer iTerm"? Because that's what I'm asking myself.
- klausa 12y ago
  I use Terminal almost exclusively in full-screen mode, and iTerm allows me to do just that. And no, Terminal.app does not have full-screen mode that is useful. Lion-style fullscreen apps are absolutely useless to me, since you can't bind them to ctrl-[1-9] hotkeys to switch between spaces.
  - paulrov 12y ago
    Of course you can… System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control > Switch to Desktop #
  - jacobolus 12y ago
    paulrov (sibling to this comment): you seem to be hellbanned.
    - klausa 12y ago
      (and he's also wrong: you can't bind "App Desktops" or whatever the full-screen app windows are officially called, to ctrl-[1-9] key combo.)
    - paulrov 12y ago
      Of course I'm hellbanned, it's Hacker News.
  - err4nt 12y ago
    I might have a workaround for you! I use a launcher for OS X called 'Quicksilver'. It's free and absolutely changed the way I approach computing (at the speed of thought, not the speed I can aim and click icons on my screen) and one of the handiest features Quicksilver let's you configure is called 'triggers'. Triggers are system-wide shortcuts that run a quicksilver command. So I have a quicksilver trigger for EVERY application I use. Any time I hit my special trigger key combination, it will 'launch' that app. If it is open it gives it focus, and if it is not running it opens the app. This means I can rearrange my apps and desktops however I like and I always instantly travel to the app I want next. Terminal is command-shift-I anywhere. Chrome is command-shift-c for example. Firefox is command-shift-f. Let's say I'm editing an HTML file over ssh and I want to test it. It doesn't matter whether chrome or Firefox are running, full screen, on the same virtual desktop, if I strike command-shift-c Chrome is instantly in front of me. I flip between programs all day and don't use my dock except to empty trash (and yes I know command-option-shift-delete but that is living on the edge!)
joshpadnick 12y ago
First, thanks for releasing this! Second, silly question, but what is the recommended way to navigate long commands? Is there a way to click my cursor to a specific point, or a keyboard shortcut to navigate large blocks of words? I tried OPTION+LEFT-CLICK, but sometimes it will have the effect of moving my history to the current command.
- girvo 12y ago
  I have Alt + Left and Alt + Right set to send `^[ b` and `^[ f` which are set to move backwards one word in most readline-based apps (IIRC).
  - boomlinde 12y ago
    If you prefer vi-like editing and navigation over emacs, you can also use readline in vi mode with "set -o vi".
  - jsmeaton 12y ago
    Thank you so much. I lost this feature with my new machine and I was sure it used to work.
ricardobeat 12y ago
> When you cmd-click on a filename in a diff, remove the a/ or b/ prefix and replace with the real directory to open the file. Still doesn't work for me :(
dangayle 12y ago
Besides Firefox, iTerm2 is my most used app, by far. I love the customizability of it, the Visor mode, and how stable it it to work with. I've used it so long, I don't even remember why I don't use Terminal.app any more.
stephenitis 12y ago
I like the idea of triggers. auto-highlighting the following regex's makes life a bit better whille reading logs and traces. .[eE](rror|xception). highlight error lines :\d+ highlight line numbers in ruby (captures bits of time stamps though...) [lL]ine \d highlight line numbers in python I bet there are more creative uses. please enlighten me.
- john2x 12y ago
  I tried to use it with terminal-notifier[1], but couldn't get it to work :( Would've been awesome though. (Notifications after build completes, etc.) [1]: https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier
- joepvd 12y ago
  Sounds really useful. Anyone knows if such a thing is available for rxvt-unicode?
itafroma 12y ago
Dang, looks like there/s still no preference to disable creating a new window when iTerm launches or is clicked on in the Dock. I only ever use iTerm via system-wide hotkey (i.e. Quake-style HUD mode), and it's kind of annoying that it automatically creates a duplicate window whenever it launches that can't be hidden via the hotkey.
- sk_ 12y ago
  It doesn't do that for me. Whenever I click on the dock icon or fire it up via spotlight, iTerm goes in the foreground, but there is no duplicate windows created.
  - itafroma 12y ago
    Odd: I wonder what about your configuration differs from mine. I'd love to fix that once and for all.
- Froist 12y ago
  You need to create a saved window arrangement (Window -> Save arrangement) with no windows open, then set this as the default arrangement in Preferences -> Arrangements, and finally change the Startup preference to "Open default window arrangement" (on the General tab).
  - itafroma 12y ago
    Wow, this is great: it still creates a new window when clicking on the dock, but it no longer creates one on startup. That's still a lot better than before. Thanks!
    - Froist 12y ago
      Ah, I work with iTerm hidden from the dock and purely in "Visor" mode. If I actually want a regular window to keep around, I can create one by bringing up the visor and then hitting Cmd+N.
PaulMest 12y ago
One feature I really wish iTerm2 2.0 would have introduced was better session restoration support. With Terminal.app, you can issue a command like 'ls' and then quit and re-open Terminal.app and the previous output from 'ls' shows up. This is incredibly useful when you have to restart or if your system crashes and you have some output that you wanted to preserve. I see from the changelog that some type of restoration has been included: "Support for OS 10.7 features including fullscreen, retina graphics, and window restoration"... but upon actually trying it out, it doesn't do what Terminal.app does.
- klausa 12y ago
  I assume it pertains to Lion-style window restoration. Before 10.7, when you restarted your computer, you had to open each and every app (and every window!) again. Since 10.7, system (assuming the app cooperates, that is) does that for you and reopens everything.
- kybernetyk 12y ago
  > One feature I really wish ... It's open source. Why don't you add it yourself? I wanted a borderless terminal and as I couldn't find one I hacked the functionality into iTerm: http://i.imgur.com/jOc04sf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jOc04sf.jpg /edit: Wow, being downvoted for suggesting to hack something yourself on Hacker News ... that's a new one. I guess I'll take a time out.
  - riquito 12y ago
    > It's open source. Why don't you add it yourself? In your mind a developer can realistically contribute to any possible open source project, whatever the language and the domain? He may have to learn an humongous quantity of things to implement a feature and then never use that knowledge anymore. Founding the project while asking for a feature could be a better advice.
    - afarrell 12y ago
      *funding
jiyinyiyong 12y ago
You page has some bug, try scroll down very quickly.. the page is jumping. I like it BTW.
SingAlong 12y ago
If anyone else is wondering where the toolbelt is, once you enable toolbelt with "Toolbelt" -> "Show toolbelt", you'll have to resize the iterm window.
- meowface 12y ago
  I didn't have to resize anything for it to show up, for whatever reason.
mooism2 12y ago
Am I right in thinking that the tmux integration won't work if you use mosh? (iTerm2 -> mosh -> tmux)
- joeshaw 12y ago
  It appears so. Probably worth filing a bug about this, but I suspect that something about mosh's terminal emulation filters out the VT100 command sequences tmux uses to perform the handshake with iTerm2. Details on the protocol are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6bgvMoEbcTcA2N21ncmU/view?hl=en&authkey=COHZn78P https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6...
  - mooism2 12y ago
    I expect it would require explicit support from mosh.
jestinjoy1 12y ago
Do we have something similar in GNU/Linux?
- drsintoma 12y ago
  Terminator* is the closest that comes to mind. *https://launchpad.net/terminator https://launchpad.net/terminator
- billiob 12y ago
  There is Terminology: http://enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/terminology&l=en http://enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/terminology&l=en
john2x 12y ago
I couldn't get the Triggers to work with terminal-notifier[1]. Bug? Or something to do with terminal-notifier? [1]: https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier
- Watabou 12y ago
  Works for me with pync: python -c 'from pync import Notifier; Notifier.notify("hello")'
jwr 12y ago
ITerm is great. It really is. But I wish more time was spent on optimizations. People these days seem to forget that terminals are often used for displaying huge amounts of rapidly scrolling text and that speed is of paramount importance. To put this in perspective, my computer has two CPUs with 4 cores each, 24GB RAM, a graphics card with 1600 Stream Processing Units (engine running at 850MHz) and 1GB of RAM, and yet it scrolls text in a terminal slower than my 386 machine 20 years ago.
- tinco 12y ago
  Not just fast scrolling text. For some reason there is a noticeable delay when just typing text into a shell in iTerm. I didn't notice it until one day I started Terminal.app for no reason at all, and typing in it gave me that feeling that it was predicting my keystrokes, meaning of course that my brain expected a lag that wasn't there.
  - karlkatzke 12y ago
    What's hilarious is that nine or ten years ago, the opposite was true: Terminal lagged greatly, and iTerm was much faster.
    - danudey 12y ago
      I had the good (?) fortune to come into OS X at the end of the 10.3 days (in fact, my Powerbook didn't come with an OS install so I put Debian on it for a week until Tiger was released), so I suppose I missed this phase. When I got Tiger on, Terminal was more than sufficient, and iTerm felt immature and impractical for daily use. I never understood why so many people used it, but reading this, it makes a lot of sense now.
  - goblin89 12y ago
    After this thread I've updated iTerm2 to 2.0… and switched back to Terminal. I couldn't believe I could forget about such lag throughout my work. On the other hand, such lag is ever-present with SSH—and now it will subjectively increase as I get used to Terminal again.
Alex9762 12y ago
ITerm is great. Congrats on the release!
Alex9762 12y ago
congrats on the release!
Alex9762 12y ago
cool
tdxAbc 12y ago
This is cool~
jawns 12y ago
On the downloads page, the link text for the stable release says "iTerm2 2.0 (OS 10.6+, Intel-only)" but the description below it says "It requires OS X 10.7+ and an Intel CPU." Can anybody confirm whether it works on 10.6?
- jawns 12y ago
  Answering my own question: I downloaded it on 10.6 and it seems to work correctly.
carlosvega 12y ago
How about fish? I would like some of the fish features implemented in iTerm. http://fishshell.com http://fishshell.com
- dschep 12y ago
  Fish is a shell & iTerm is a terminal emulator. Just use them together. Or am I missing something?
bluedino 12y ago
Probably my most-used OS X program and the first thing I use when I setup a new Mac. Terminal.app is just so...janky.
pyre 12y ago
"Check for Update" from the menu in iTerm tells me: iTerm 1.0.0.20140629 is currently the newest version available.
- sjm 12y ago
  As mentioned above, in Preferences -> General, untick "Prompt for test-release updates", then run a check for updates again.
chenster 12y ago
Can anyone convince me the benefit of iTerm2 over Terminal.app? I'm on an Intel Mac. Thanks.
teddyknox 12y ago
The developers seem to really be promoting their deeper support for tmux integration. I'm probably what you'd call a tmux noob, but after a few months of using it on its own with minimal key remappings, I feel like my efficiency with the keyboard-only UI has already surpassed any gains I might get from sticking tmux integration with mouse support and tmux shortcuts. It's not that I'm opposed to this integration, but that I don't think it goes deep enough. Ideally, I think tmux would be inseparably integrated with the terminal emulator, with no shims to add complexity to the UI. For instance, it irks me that the workflow for integrating iTerm with tmux is running `tmux -CC` and then leaving that window open in the background for as long as it runs. I'm bothered by the fact that I have to run a command to begin the integration in the first place. Wouldn't it be better to check a box in preferences that says "Integrate with tmux if tmux is installed" and then from then on make sure that the tmux concepts of sessions, windows, and panes deeply align with corresponding concepts with iTerm?
kator 12y ago
I love iTerm, couldn't live without it.. To me Terminal.app isn't much better then PuTTY on Windows. That said I'm a bit worried when I read stuff like "manipulate the pasteboard remotely" and "performed when text matching a regular expression is received". Are these potential security concerns and/or what is the performance impact of regex'ing every single line of text etc?
- gnachman 12y ago
  Remote pasteboard twiddling is guarded by an off-by-default preference (prefs>general>allow clipboard access to terminal apps). Triggers are user-defined; while most people use them to change text colors, you are given enough rope to hang yourself, so be careful when creating a trigger that runs a command.
- philsnow 12y ago
  PuTTY on windows is a fantastic terminal emulator, certainly the best one available for windows that I'm aware of. Despite all the configurability, it still feels quite minimalistic. A single fullscreen PuTTY window is my favorite way to use a windows machine.
  - kator 12y ago
    Booting a Linux install disk is my favorite way to use a Windows machine.. ;-) Just kidding, I love PuTTY in windows but it's not my favorite emulator. I actually enjoyed Centry Term's TinyTERM [1] but I have a feeling that is WAY before most people here's time. I still have a couple 3" floppies with TinyTERM on them and a copy of the activation codes. [1] http://www.centurysoftware.com/products/tinyterm-terminal-emulator.php http://www.centurysoftware.com/products/tinyterm-terminal-em...
    - rplnt 12y ago
      You might be kidding, but I actually run VMWare Player with full-screen linux at all times to have a terminal. It's free, switching to VM is simple alt-tab. You can share folders/drives, copy/paste works, it's even accelerated so I can use any "modern" window manager. Only things missing are snapshots, but I don't have those on hardware either. If I need to reboot the host, I can just pause the VM.
macinjosh 12y ago
Just tried out the tmux integration. Seems to be extremely buggy. The tmux session would randomly detach and you have to have an extra window open the entire time you are using the tmux integration. Nice idea but the execution seems pretty hacky.
IgorPartola 12y ago
So did everyone here just download this piece of software over HTTP (no HTTPS)? Why is it that large projects like this cannot spend 15 minutes setting up hosting over HTTPS-only using a $10 (or even free) SSL cert? I love me some iTerm but yikers.
- gnachman 12y ago
  I've been putting this off for too long. Waiting to get the cert signed now...
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Thank you! That's awesome. I'll put it on my TODO to send you $10 in the next week or so for the cost of the cert.
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  FYI if you use homebrew-cask to install iTerm2 it will at least check a SHA-256 hash of the zip. Looks like the "formula" has been updated for 2.0: sha256 '6a59e1b96d9037b6ff1b8aaaf7aed5cff572d74d6e58390db16028433769c058' url 'http://www.iterm2.com/downloads/stable/iTerm2_v2_0.zip' Unfortunately the in-app update mechanism also uses HTTP, and I don't know if they check a signature or anything.
- axman6 12y ago
  "Large projects"? I don't think iTerm counts as a large project
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    It's got tens of thousands of users (random guess, I'm sure the author has accurate stats); I'd call that pretty large.
jake223 12y ago
I'm getting a 404 when I try to download this. Anyone have the same problem?
- andoriyu 12y ago
  Yes
mahmoudimus 12y ago
Download link seems broken? http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html/stable/iTerm2_v2_0.zip http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html/stable/iTerm2_v2_0.zip
- gnachman 12y ago
  Oops, I fat fingered something. Try again!
nasalgoat 12y ago
I'm still using version 1 of iTerm because it has the side dock menu, which allows me to maintain a list of the various servers I'd want to connect to, and allows me to close sublists I don't need to see. The last time I looked at iTerm2 it had a separate window where you had to TYPE the name of the server you wanted, which is WAY more work than pointing and clicking a single name in a side list. The developers seemed to think the old side dock was bad and refused to add it back in.
- gnachman 12y ago
  Yeah, hierarchical tree-views suck. In the nightly builds (soon to be betas for v3) tags can define a hierarchy by including slashes in their names. They're also browsable in the toolbelt, which is just like 0.10's side-window. It's mighty close to what you were used to.
  - nasalgoat 12y ago
    I see the Toolbelt - I'll try it out and see if it gives me similar functionality. iTerm 1 has a ton of bugs that bother me so upgrading would be nice.
bado 12y ago
FYI, there are lots of color themes available for iTerm2 at http://www.iterm2colorschemes.com http://www.iterm2colorschemes.com
vok 12y ago
2.0 is unfortunately missing inline images, the killer feature that's still only in the nightlies: http://www.iterm2.com/images.html http://www.iterm2.com/images.html
tlrobinson 12y ago
Is there a good tiling window manager for OS X that has a feature like iTerm2 where I can drag and drop a tab on top of another to split it, and keep those windows together? I use Moom (previously Divvy) but they only really give you hotkeys for moving windows around. Xmonad for OS X seems difficult to setup, and I'm not even sure if it does what I want.
- welldan97 12y ago
  Did you try Amethyst(http://ianyh.com/amethyst/ http://ianyh.com/amethyst/)? So far I was happy with it.
lobster_johnson 12y ago
iTerm looks nice, but is there a reason to switch from Terminal.app? The "jobs" sidebar looked great until I discovered that it only works for local processes, for example. Generally, it seems there is a lot of room for improvement in terminal apps these days: - Probably upwards of 90% of my terminal work involves SSH, and it seems like a huge missed opportunity not to integrate with SSH in any significant way. iTerm doesn't even bother, whereas Terminal.app's "New Remote Connection" is pretty useless. (It should at least be able to infer my commonly used hosts from OpenSSH's known_hosts file.) - A terminal should be able to discover the currently running remote process, or at least what host I'm connected to. Neither Terminal nor iTerm do this. My tabs always say "ssh", and so I have to hunt for the right tab to find my shell. - Persistent shells. Today, when I want to open a remote shell on a host, I open a Terminal tab and do "ssh <host>". If something goes wrong with my connection, I have to go back in manually, and the shell state is lost, and any interactive program not running with "nohup" will probably have terminated. If I close a tab and ssh back in, my state is also lost. If I want multiple shells on the same box, I have to either use multiple tabs, or a kludge like screen or tmux that tries to be a terminal within a terminal. I want to ssh to a server and be exactly where I was. - No I/O integration. Why can't I cat a file into my terminal app in order to copy or download the contents? Why can't I pipe a local file into a remote shell? - Grepping. It would be swell if I could tell the terminal to filter its current window contents by a pattern. I don't mean highlighting results, I mean only showing lines matching a pattern. Often I end up doing "tail -f some.log | grep foo", then "...grep bar", "...grep -C10 bar" because I'm not quite what I'm looking for. With this built-in grepping feature, I could do "tail -f some.log", set up a pattern in the terminal app itself, and I could watch it display different matches interactively as I change the pattern.
- deepGem 12y ago
  For managing SSH connections have you tried the profiles on iTerm ? It's not exactly what you are looking for but might at least save you from repetitive typing.
  - lobster_johnson 12y ago
    That doesn't solve the problem of having to create each one manually, when there is a perfectly good list (known_hosts) lying around. I have several dozens hosts I connect to almost daily. (Yes, I do use tools like Puppet and dsh for configuration management, and probably should use them more, but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty.) Unfortunately iTerm's solution is even less useful than Terminal's remote connections, since in iTerm each profile have associated settings like colours and cursor type, things which should be the same across all connections.
snambi 12y ago
Just downloaded and used it. It is better than Terminal.
tlrobinson 12y ago
Here's a short demo of the tmux integration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9j1GvZypq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9j1GvZypq0

584 points by gnachman 12y ago

Awesome & Thanks.

Awesome, congrats on the release! Aside: Check For Update... still gives 1.0.0.20140629 as the latest version. Have to download a 2.0 build explicitly. http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html

duskwuff 12y ago
You have to switch off development releases to get 2.0.
- gpvos 12y ago
  That's pretty backwards.
- luxbock 12y ago
  Where does this option exist? I've been going through Preferences and every other menu I could think of but could not find it.
  - dpd126 12y ago
    Preferences > General Tab > Services Group > "Prompt for test-release updates"
  - stith 12y ago
    It's labeled "Prompt for test-release updates" on the General tab.
- apas 12y ago
  Thank you! Most valuable comment in this thread.
- joeyspn 12y ago
  Unchecked and updated.. thanks for the tip!

dshep 12y ago

Sweet look forward to trying out the new trigger and escape sequence features

chetanahuja 12y ago

iTerm is what the Terminal.app should have been. Thanks to the devs for your work.

canadev 12y ago

So, I have this bash script that runs AppleScript that I use to start up a bunch of servers at once, each in their own Terminal tab. At the heart of it is this 'new-tab' function[1]. I don't really like AppleScript, and would like to not use it. Can I duplicate this functionality using iTerm, without using AppleScript? [1] Here's the code; I cobbled it together from some StackOverflow snippet or something: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f16a46c327a14ec8a5b5 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f16a46c327a14ec8a5b5

bshimmin 12y ago
You might want to put it in a GitHub Gist, or similar, for better readability.
mweibel 12y ago
Probably this: http://superuser.com/questions/299482/how-do-i-set-up-an-applescript-to-open-a-new-iterm2-tab-and-change-the-directory http://superuser.com/questions/299482/how-do-i-set-up-an-app...
madeofpalk 12y ago
Take a look at tmux and tmuxinator. I have a config that looks like this: # ~/.tmuxinator/blah.yml name: blah root: ~/Development/blah windows: - web: layout: even-vertical panes: - cd web - cd web; gulp server default watch --device desktop - admin: layout: even-vertical panes: - cd admin - cd admin; gulp dev - ssh:test: layout: even-vertical panes: - clear; ssh ubuntu@web.test - ssh:prod: layout: even-vertical panes: - clear; ssh ubuntu@web1.prod - clear; ssh ubuntu@web2.prod and I just run `mux start blah` and that will either start a new tmux session and set up everything as I need, or resume an already running session.
remi 12y ago
I built teamocil for this purpose. https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil

voltagex_ 12y ago

The tmux integration is a really interesting piece of work. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6bgvMoEbcTcA2N21ncmU/view?hl=en&authkey=COHZn78P https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6... http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
INTPenis 12y ago
Yes it's technically interesting but am I alone in thinking that it sort of defeats the purpose of using tmux in the first place? I use tmux partly because I come from a background of low resources, but also because I want my essential tools to use as little resources as possible so that they always work as well as possible on any system. Yet iTerm proposes that you use their GUI tabs, split their GUI terminals instead of drawing it all with tmux in one text console. I guess you sacrifice some resources for usability.
- boomlinde 12y ago
  If your main purpose for using tmux is sparing resources, then sure, but I think most people use tmux for session management, persistence and multiplexing. If I can use these features in a way that is better integrated with the windowing system, and still be able to attach to the session from a plain terminal remotely, I'm not going to complain.
- crucialfelix 12y ago
  but the scroll wheel finally works
  - Jgrubb 12y ago
    A couple improvements I found in some other HN Tmux thread -- set -g mode-mouse on set -g mouse-resize-pane on
12y ago

hayksaakian 12y ago

to HN: What changed you from "terminal.app is good enough" to "I prefer iTerm"? Because that's what I'm asking myself.

klausa 12y ago
I use Terminal almost exclusively in full-screen mode, and iTerm allows me to do just that. And no, Terminal.app does not have full-screen mode that is useful. Lion-style fullscreen apps are absolutely useless to me, since you can't bind them to ctrl-[1-9] hotkeys to switch between spaces.
- paulrov 12y ago
  Of course you can… System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control > Switch to Desktop #
- jacobolus 12y ago
  paulrov (sibling to this comment): you seem to be hellbanned.
  - klausa 12y ago
    (and he's also wrong: you can't bind "App Desktops" or whatever the full-screen app windows are officially called, to ctrl-[1-9] key combo.)
  - paulrov 12y ago
    Of course I'm hellbanned, it's Hacker News.
- err4nt 12y ago
  I might have a workaround for you! I use a launcher for OS X called 'Quicksilver'. It's free and absolutely changed the way I approach computing (at the speed of thought, not the speed I can aim and click icons on my screen) and one of the handiest features Quicksilver let's you configure is called 'triggers'. Triggers are system-wide shortcuts that run a quicksilver command. So I have a quicksilver trigger for EVERY application I use. Any time I hit my special trigger key combination, it will 'launch' that app. If it is open it gives it focus, and if it is not running it opens the app. This means I can rearrange my apps and desktops however I like and I always instantly travel to the app I want next. Terminal is command-shift-I anywhere. Chrome is command-shift-c for example. Firefox is command-shift-f. Let's say I'm editing an HTML file over ssh and I want to test it. It doesn't matter whether chrome or Firefox are running, full screen, on the same virtual desktop, if I strike command-shift-c Chrome is instantly in front of me. I flip between programs all day and don't use my dock except to empty trash (and yes I know command-option-shift-delete but that is living on the edge!)

joshpadnick 12y ago

First, thanks for releasing this! Second, silly question, but what is the recommended way to navigate long commands? Is there a way to click my cursor to a specific point, or a keyboard shortcut to navigate large blocks of words? I tried OPTION+LEFT-CLICK, but sometimes it will have the effect of moving my history to the current command.

girvo 12y ago
I have Alt + Left and Alt + Right set to send `^[ b` and `^[ f` which are set to move backwards one word in most readline-based apps (IIRC).
- boomlinde 12y ago
  If you prefer vi-like editing and navigation over emacs, you can also use readline in vi mode with "set -o vi".
- jsmeaton 12y ago
  Thank you so much. I lost this feature with my new machine and I was sure it used to work.

ricardobeat 12y ago

> When you cmd-click on a filename in a diff, remove the a/ or b/ prefix and replace with the real directory to open the file. Still doesn't work for me :(

dangayle 12y ago

Besides Firefox, iTerm2 is my most used app, by far. I love the customizability of it, the Visor mode, and how stable it it to work with. I've used it so long, I don't even remember why I don't use Terminal.app any more.

stephenitis 12y ago

I like the idea of triggers. auto-highlighting the following regex's makes life a bit better whille reading logs and traces. .[eE](rror|xception). highlight error lines :\d+ highlight line numbers in ruby (captures bits of time stamps though...) [lL]ine \d highlight line numbers in python I bet there are more creative uses. please enlighten me.

john2x 12y ago
I tried to use it with terminal-notifier[1], but couldn't get it to work :( Would've been awesome though. (Notifications after build completes, etc.) [1]: https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier
joepvd 12y ago
Sounds really useful. Anyone knows if such a thing is available for rxvt-unicode?

itafroma 12y ago

Dang, looks like there/s still no preference to disable creating a new window when iTerm launches or is clicked on in the Dock. I only ever use iTerm via system-wide hotkey (i.e. Quake-style HUD mode), and it's kind of annoying that it automatically creates a duplicate window whenever it launches that can't be hidden via the hotkey.

sk_ 12y ago
It doesn't do that for me. Whenever I click on the dock icon or fire it up via spotlight, iTerm goes in the foreground, but there is no duplicate windows created.
- itafroma 12y ago
  Odd: I wonder what about your configuration differs from mine. I'd love to fix that once and for all.
Froist 12y ago
You need to create a saved window arrangement (Window -> Save arrangement) with no windows open, then set this as the default arrangement in Preferences -> Arrangements, and finally change the Startup preference to "Open default window arrangement" (on the General tab).
- itafroma 12y ago
  Wow, this is great: it still creates a new window when clicking on the dock, but it no longer creates one on startup. That's still a lot better than before. Thanks!
  - Froist 12y ago
    Ah, I work with iTerm hidden from the dock and purely in "Visor" mode. If I actually want a regular window to keep around, I can create one by bringing up the visor and then hitting Cmd+N.

PaulMest 12y ago

One feature I really wish iTerm2 2.0 would have introduced was better session restoration support. With Terminal.app, you can issue a command like 'ls' and then quit and re-open Terminal.app and the previous output from 'ls' shows up. This is incredibly useful when you have to restart or if your system crashes and you have some output that you wanted to preserve. I see from the changelog that some type of restoration has been included: "Support for OS 10.7 features including fullscreen, retina graphics, and window restoration"... but upon actually trying it out, it doesn't do what Terminal.app does.

klausa 12y ago
I assume it pertains to Lion-style window restoration. Before 10.7, when you restarted your computer, you had to open each and every app (and every window!) again. Since 10.7, system (assuming the app cooperates, that is) does that for you and reopens everything.
kybernetyk 12y ago
> One feature I really wish ... It's open source. Why don't you add it yourself? I wanted a borderless terminal and as I couldn't find one I hacked the functionality into iTerm: http://i.imgur.com/jOc04sf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jOc04sf.jpg /edit: Wow, being downvoted for suggesting to hack something yourself on Hacker News ... that's a new one. I guess I'll take a time out.
- riquito 12y ago
  > It's open source. Why don't you add it yourself? In your mind a developer can realistically contribute to any possible open source project, whatever the language and the domain? He may have to learn an humongous quantity of things to implement a feature and then never use that knowledge anymore. Founding the project while asking for a feature could be a better advice.
  - afarrell 12y ago
    *funding

jiyinyiyong 12y ago

You page has some bug, try scroll down very quickly.. the page is jumping. I like it BTW.

SingAlong 12y ago

If anyone else is wondering where the toolbelt is, once you enable toolbelt with "Toolbelt" -> "Show toolbelt", you'll have to resize the iterm window.

meowface 12y ago
I didn't have to resize anything for it to show up, for whatever reason.

mooism2 12y ago

Am I right in thinking that the tmux integration won't work if you use mosh? (iTerm2 -> mosh -> tmux)

joeshaw 12y ago
It appears so. Probably worth filing a bug about this, but I suspect that something about mosh's terminal emulation filters out the VT100 command sequences tmux uses to perform the handshake with iTerm2. Details on the protocol are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6bgvMoEbcTcA2N21ncmU/view?hl=en&authkey=COHZn78P https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6...
- mooism2 12y ago
  I expect it would require explicit support from mosh.

jestinjoy1 12y ago

Do we have something similar in GNU/Linux?

drsintoma 12y ago
Terminator* is the closest that comes to mind. *https://launchpad.net/terminator https://launchpad.net/terminator
billiob 12y ago
There is Terminology: http://enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/terminology&l=en http://enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/terminology&l=en

john2x 12y ago

I couldn't get the Triggers to work with terminal-notifier[1]. Bug? Or something to do with terminal-notifier? [1]: https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier

Watabou 12y ago
Works for me with pync: python -c 'from pync import Notifier; Notifier.notify("hello")'

jwr 12y ago

ITerm is great. It really is. But I wish more time was spent on optimizations. People these days seem to forget that terminals are often used for displaying huge amounts of rapidly scrolling text and that speed is of paramount importance. To put this in perspective, my computer has two CPUs with 4 cores each, 24GB RAM, a graphics card with 1600 Stream Processing Units (engine running at 850MHz) and 1GB of RAM, and yet it scrolls text in a terminal slower than my 386 machine 20 years ago.

tinco 12y ago
Not just fast scrolling text. For some reason there is a noticeable delay when just typing text into a shell in iTerm. I didn't notice it until one day I started Terminal.app for no reason at all, and typing in it gave me that feeling that it was predicting my keystrokes, meaning of course that my brain expected a lag that wasn't there.
- karlkatzke 12y ago
  What's hilarious is that nine or ten years ago, the opposite was true: Terminal lagged greatly, and iTerm was much faster.
  - danudey 12y ago
    I had the good (?) fortune to come into OS X at the end of the 10.3 days (in fact, my Powerbook didn't come with an OS install so I put Debian on it for a week until Tiger was released), so I suppose I missed this phase. When I got Tiger on, Terminal was more than sufficient, and iTerm felt immature and impractical for daily use. I never understood why so many people used it, but reading this, it makes a lot of sense now.
- goblin89 12y ago
  After this thread I've updated iTerm2 to 2.0… and switched back to Terminal. I couldn't believe I could forget about such lag throughout my work. On the other hand, such lag is ever-present with SSH—and now it will subjectively increase as I get used to Terminal again.

Alex9762 12y ago

ITerm is great. Congrats on the release!

Alex9762 12y ago

congrats on the release!

Alex9762 12y ago

cool

tdxAbc 12y ago

This is cool~

jawns 12y ago

On the downloads page, the link text for the stable release says "iTerm2 2.0 (OS 10.6+, Intel-only)" but the description below it says "It requires OS X 10.7+ and an Intel CPU." Can anybody confirm whether it works on 10.6?

jawns 12y ago
Answering my own question: I downloaded it on 10.6 and it seems to work correctly.

carlosvega 12y ago

How about fish? I would like some of the fish features implemented in iTerm. http://fishshell.com http://fishshell.com

dschep 12y ago
Fish is a shell & iTerm is a terminal emulator. Just use them together. Or am I missing something?

bluedino 12y ago

Probably my most-used OS X program and the first thing I use when I setup a new Mac. Terminal.app is just so...janky.

pyre 12y ago

"Check for Update" from the menu in iTerm tells me: iTerm 1.0.0.20140629 is currently the newest version available.

sjm 12y ago
As mentioned above, in Preferences -> General, untick "Prompt for test-release updates", then run a check for updates again.

chenster 12y ago

Can anyone convince me the benefit of iTerm2 over Terminal.app? I'm on an Intel Mac. Thanks.

teddyknox 12y ago

The developers seem to really be promoting their deeper support for tmux integration. I'm probably what you'd call a tmux noob, but after a few months of using it on its own with minimal key remappings, I feel like my efficiency with the keyboard-only UI has already surpassed any gains I might get from sticking tmux integration with mouse support and tmux shortcuts. It's not that I'm opposed to this integration, but that I don't think it goes deep enough. Ideally, I think tmux would be inseparably integrated with the terminal emulator, with no shims to add complexity to the UI. For instance, it irks me that the workflow for integrating iTerm with tmux is running `tmux -CC` and then leaving that window open in the background for as long as it runs. I'm bothered by the fact that I have to run a command to begin the integration in the first place. Wouldn't it be better to check a box in preferences that says "Integrate with tmux if tmux is installed" and then from then on make sure that the tmux concepts of sessions, windows, and panes deeply align with corresponding concepts with iTerm?

kator 12y ago

I love iTerm, couldn't live without it.. To me Terminal.app isn't much better then PuTTY on Windows. That said I'm a bit worried when I read stuff like "manipulate the pasteboard remotely" and "performed when text matching a regular expression is received". Are these potential security concerns and/or what is the performance impact of regex'ing every single line of text etc?

gnachman 12y ago
Remote pasteboard twiddling is guarded by an off-by-default preference (prefs>general>allow clipboard access to terminal apps). Triggers are user-defined; while most people use them to change text colors, you are given enough rope to hang yourself, so be careful when creating a trigger that runs a command.
philsnow 12y ago
PuTTY on windows is a fantastic terminal emulator, certainly the best one available for windows that I'm aware of. Despite all the configurability, it still feels quite minimalistic. A single fullscreen PuTTY window is my favorite way to use a windows machine.
- kator 12y ago
  Booting a Linux install disk is my favorite way to use a Windows machine.. ;-) Just kidding, I love PuTTY in windows but it's not my favorite emulator. I actually enjoyed Centry Term's TinyTERM [1] but I have a feeling that is WAY before most people here's time. I still have a couple 3" floppies with TinyTERM on them and a copy of the activation codes. [1] http://www.centurysoftware.com/products/tinyterm-terminal-emulator.php http://www.centurysoftware.com/products/tinyterm-terminal-em...
  - rplnt 12y ago
    You might be kidding, but I actually run VMWare Player with full-screen linux at all times to have a terminal. It's free, switching to VM is simple alt-tab. You can share folders/drives, copy/paste works, it's even accelerated so I can use any "modern" window manager. Only things missing are snapshots, but I don't have those on hardware either. If I need to reboot the host, I can just pause the VM.

macinjosh 12y ago

Just tried out the tmux integration. Seems to be extremely buggy. The tmux session would randomly detach and you have to have an extra window open the entire time you are using the tmux integration. Nice idea but the execution seems pretty hacky.

IgorPartola 12y ago

So did everyone here just download this piece of software over HTTP (no HTTPS)? Why is it that large projects like this cannot spend 15 minutes setting up hosting over HTTPS-only using a $10 (or even free) SSL cert? I love me some iTerm but yikers.

gnachman 12y ago
I've been putting this off for too long. Waiting to get the cert signed now...
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  Thank you! That's awesome. I'll put it on my TODO to send you $10 in the next week or so for the cost of the cert.
tlrobinson 12y ago
FYI if you use homebrew-cask to install iTerm2 it will at least check a SHA-256 hash of the zip. Looks like the "formula" has been updated for 2.0: sha256 '6a59e1b96d9037b6ff1b8aaaf7aed5cff572d74d6e58390db16028433769c058' url 'http://www.iterm2.com/downloads/stable/iTerm2_v2_0.zip' Unfortunately the in-app update mechanism also uses HTTP, and I don't know if they check a signature or anything.
axman6 12y ago
"Large projects"? I don't think iTerm counts as a large project
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  It's got tens of thousands of users (random guess, I'm sure the author has accurate stats); I'd call that pretty large.

jake223 12y ago

I'm getting a 404 when I try to download this. Anyone have the same problem?

andoriyu 12y ago
Yes

mahmoudimus 12y ago

Download link seems broken? http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html/stable/iTerm2_v2_0.zip http://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html/stable/iTerm2_v2_0.zip

gnachman 12y ago
Oops, I fat fingered something. Try again!

nasalgoat 12y ago

I'm still using version 1 of iTerm because it has the side dock menu, which allows me to maintain a list of the various servers I'd want to connect to, and allows me to close sublists I don't need to see. The last time I looked at iTerm2 it had a separate window where you had to TYPE the name of the server you wanted, which is WAY more work than pointing and clicking a single name in a side list. The developers seemed to think the old side dock was bad and refused to add it back in.

gnachman 12y ago
Yeah, hierarchical tree-views suck. In the nightly builds (soon to be betas for v3) tags can define a hierarchy by including slashes in their names. They're also browsable in the toolbelt, which is just like 0.10's side-window. It's mighty close to what you were used to.
- nasalgoat 12y ago
  I see the Toolbelt - I'll try it out and see if it gives me similar functionality. iTerm 1 has a ton of bugs that bother me so upgrading would be nice.

bado 12y ago

FYI, there are lots of color themes available for iTerm2 at http://www.iterm2colorschemes.com http://www.iterm2colorschemes.com

vok 12y ago

2.0 is unfortunately missing inline images, the killer feature that's still only in the nightlies: http://www.iterm2.com/images.html http://www.iterm2.com/images.html

tlrobinson 12y ago

Is there a good tiling window manager for OS X that has a feature like iTerm2 where I can drag and drop a tab on top of another to split it, and keep those windows together? I use Moom (previously Divvy) but they only really give you hotkeys for moving windows around. Xmonad for OS X seems difficult to setup, and I'm not even sure if it does what I want.

welldan97 12y ago
Did you try Amethyst(http://ianyh.com/amethyst/ http://ianyh.com/amethyst/)? So far I was happy with it.

lobster_johnson 12y ago

iTerm looks nice, but is there a reason to switch from Terminal.app? The "jobs" sidebar looked great until I discovered that it only works for local processes, for example. Generally, it seems there is a lot of room for improvement in terminal apps these days: - Probably upwards of 90% of my terminal work involves SSH, and it seems like a huge missed opportunity not to integrate with SSH in any significant way. iTerm doesn't even bother, whereas Terminal.app's "New Remote Connection" is pretty useless. (It should at least be able to infer my commonly used hosts from OpenSSH's known_hosts file.) - A terminal should be able to discover the currently running remote process, or at least what host I'm connected to. Neither Terminal nor iTerm do this. My tabs always say "ssh", and so I have to hunt for the right tab to find my shell. - Persistent shells. Today, when I want to open a remote shell on a host, I open a Terminal tab and do "ssh <host>". If something goes wrong with my connection, I have to go back in manually, and the shell state is lost, and any interactive program not running with "nohup" will probably have terminated. If I close a tab and ssh back in, my state is also lost. If I want multiple shells on the same box, I have to either use multiple tabs, or a kludge like screen or tmux that tries to be a terminal within a terminal. I want to ssh to a server and be exactly where I was. - No I/O integration. Why can't I cat a file into my terminal app in order to copy or download the contents? Why can't I pipe a local file into a remote shell? - Grepping. It would be swell if I could tell the terminal to filter its current window contents by a pattern. I don't mean highlighting results, I mean only showing lines matching a pattern. Often I end up doing "tail -f some.log | grep foo", then "...grep bar", "...grep -C10 bar" because I'm not quite what I'm looking for. With this built-in grepping feature, I could do "tail -f some.log", set up a pattern in the terminal app itself, and I could watch it display different matches interactively as I change the pattern.

deepGem 12y ago
For managing SSH connections have you tried the profiles on iTerm ? It's not exactly what you are looking for but might at least save you from repetitive typing.
- lobster_johnson 12y ago
  That doesn't solve the problem of having to create each one manually, when there is a perfectly good list (known_hosts) lying around. I have several dozens hosts I connect to almost daily. (Yes, I do use tools like Puppet and dsh for configuration management, and probably should use them more, but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty.) Unfortunately iTerm's solution is even less useful than Terminal's remote connections, since in iTerm each profile have associated settings like colours and cursor type, things which should be the same across all connections.

snambi 12y ago

Just downloaded and used it. It is better than Terminal.

tlrobinson 12y ago

Here's a short demo of the tmux integration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9j1GvZypq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9j1GvZypq0