iTerm2 - Mac OS Terminal Replacement

July 7, 2011 7:07 AM

iTerm2 - Mac OS Terminal Replacement
iTerm2 is a terminal for Mac OS. It's the successor to iTerm, which had been abandoned. I picked it up about a year ago and fixed lots of bugs and added lots of features. It snowballed from a quick fix-up to a major project! If you spend a lot of time in Terminal, came from Unix to Mac, or hunger for more power at the command line, this is for you.

iTerm2 has some features that have never been seen in a terminal before. Others features can be found here or there but not all in one place. A brief rundown:

Split Panes - View multiple sessions in one tab arranged in a grid.

Hotkey Window - Similar to Visor, you can open an iTerm2 window with a keypress at any time.

Search - The Search UI is similar to Google Chrome: it stays out of the way and highlights all matches immediately. It also supports regular expressions.

Autocomplete - Pressing the shortcut for autocomplete opens a window with suggestions to complete the word or path you've started typing.

Mouseless Copy - Use the search UI to copy text to the pasteboard without having to use the mouse (do a search and then extend it word by word with tab and shift+tab).

Paste History - Remembers the last 20 values copied or pasted in iTerm2 and optionally stores them on disk.

Instant Replay - Allows you to step back in time to see what was on your screen in the last few minutes. This captures things that the scrollback buffer cannot.

Configurability - Users can configure the appearance and behavior of iTerm2 in myriad ways, including separate functions for left and right option keys.

Full Screen - Full screen mode on all versions of OS X, not just Lion.

256 Colors - Renders text in more colors than Terminal.app.

Unixyness - For users coming from a Unix environment, features like "focus follows mouse" and "middle button paste" will make them feel at home.

Readability - Features like "smart cursor color" and "minimum contrast" ensure that the screen is always legible.

Mouse Reporting - Mouse reporting allows you to use the mouse to control programs like vim or emacs.

Growl Support - The user is notified about bells ringing, sessions ending, and activity in background tabs by Growl.

Exposé Tabs - View all your tabs at once and search them in parallel with "Exposé Tabs".

Tagged Profiles - If you connect to dozens or hundreds of different machines, tagged profiles makes it quick and easy to find the configuration or host you're looking for.

Role: Programmer, designer, user support, everything.

posted by jewzilla (12 comments total)

This project was posted to MetaFilter by Mr. Anthropomorphism on July 20, 2011: iTerm2 - Mac OS Terminal Replacement

Ver nice!

Since I spend an awful lot of time in the OSX Terminal (well, an emacs running within OSX terminals usually) I'll take a look!
posted by pharm at 7:21 AM on July 7, 2011

I've been using iTerm as my Terminal.app replacement for years and have been with iTerm2 for several months now. So thanks!
posted by _Lasar at 8:21 AM on July 7, 2011

Wow jewzilla, I had no idea you were a mefite! I've been using and recommending the beta for the last several months, and it quickly became my default Terminal.

I was very pleased to see the 1.0 update come across this morning; you've done absolutely top-notch work!
posted by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 8:23 AM on July 7, 2011

iTerm2 is absolutely wonderful. Split panes and full-screen modes have been a godsend. Also, I filed a bug report the other day and got several speedy responses, which was pleasant to see. Thank you for your work!
posted by gyges at 10:58 AM on July 7, 2011

I just got this the other day and I love it. Thank you!
posted by lesli212 at 2:28 PM on July 7, 2011

Yep. That's nice.
posted by thinman at 3:29 PM on July 7, 2011

Freakin' sweet, man.
posted by ignignokt at 5:23 PM on July 7, 2011

This is a Mefi project!

!!!
posted by chunking express at 8:41 PM on July 7, 2011

Thanks, all! This project has been a lot of fun to work on, and knowing I could eventually post hit here was a big motivator. Glad it was well received :)
posted by jewzilla at 8:26 AM on July 8, 2011

Thanks for this!
posted by churl at 4:47 PM on July 9, 2011

Yay!
posted by odinsdream at 10:22 AM on July 11, 2011

Thank you. I've been using this now as my Terminal app
posted by vacapinta at 2:42 AM on July 13, 2011