New MacBook. Terminal suggestions?

[Dunkyl]

Long time windows and linux user who just bought a used 2022 MacBook Air. I learned my way around the OS, but I am totally unfamiliar with what great software is around that might not be cross platform. Any suggestions from devs/admins for a nice free or pay-once terminal on mac? I am all for gimmicks and candy. Other software recommendations are welcome! I currently use just windows terminal and terminator. 🔣🔣

[cowjuice]

The de-facto standard for terminal emulator on OS X is iTerm2 but also worth checking out Kitty and Alacritty

[arcsinx]

Terminal.app that comes with macOS is actually Quite Good after a small amount of poking around in the settings to turn on option-means-meta, choose a nice theme and so on. iTerm2 has been a solid choice for years and that's what I used a few years ago.

[mle]

 

15 minutes ago, arcsinx said:

Terminal.app that comes with macOS is actually Quite Good after a small amount of poking around in the settings to turn on option-means-meta, choose a nice theme and so on. iTerm2 has been a solid choice for years and that's what I used a few years ago.

Agreed with all this. I used to use iTerm2 but have switched back to Terminal.app because it's just what I need and nothing extra. OP if you want "gimmicks and candy" (and I mean that in the best way), iTerm2 is a great option.

Depending on what I'm working on, I'll use the built-in terminal in VSCode, too, but I wouldn't really consider that a standalone option.

[Vyrus]

after using both alacrity and iterm2 on MacOS id ++ iterm2, specifically with oh-my-zsh and a good theme setup

PS: tmuxinator and some aliases has also been a pretty significant game changer

Edited November 6, 2022 by Vyrus

[Sh0ckFR]

I use guake on my side with some aliases

[BenjaminN117]

I'm currently running Iterm2 with an Oh My ZSH! config. Working really well atm, highly recommend

[clarkee]

+1 iterm2

[SiliconJesus]

ITerm2 but install and keep it maintained using brew. Brew is more important and I suggest using automation (I use ansible) to keep your package installation somewhere else in case you ever need to reinstall your operating system. 

[Dema]

Can't recommend iTerm2 more. I personally rock it with fish shell instead of zsh  https://github.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish

[shellcromancer]

My setup is iTerm2 + zpresto.

Using iTerm2 triggers has become super useful for using regex to make Jira tickets and other patterns clickable. zpresto over oh-my-zsh because I got tired of the lag using oh-my-zsh and zpresto comes with S P E E D.

[Darryl]

Another vote for the default terminal app. I guess I just don’t need that many bells and whistles 😀

[aiakared]

+1 to iterm2. if you want something kinda gimmicky https://www.warp.dev/ looks interesting although i haven't used it much personally. in terms of other general mac software: i'd recommend looking at https://www.raycast.com/ (free) which replaces spotlight, better snap tool or magnet for window snapping (both paid), and https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden (free) for cleaning up your status bar

[Zanidd]

+1 to iterm2 as well. Easy to use, works and you can have multiple profiles, scripts/macros and more 😄

[sysadminafterdark]

I couldn't live without iTerm 2 paired with brew/cask -- an excellent package manager for macOS. You may find a list of available packages and setup instructions here: https://brew.sh/

I will say there is a bit of annoying nuance with modern versions of macOS and brew. Be sure to utilize the  --no-quarantine flag, otherwise the application will fail to launch due to Apple forcing "blessed" apps down everyone's throats. (eg. brew install --cask --no-quarantine firefox will install firefox on your system without the nag.)

[Dunkyl]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I will checkout terminal.app and iterm2. Brew i am used to from linux already but it is good to know about --no-quarantine. :)

[Zanidd]

6 hours ago, Dunkyl said:

Thanks all for the suggestions. I will checkout terminal.app and iterm2. Brew i am used to from linux already but it is good to know about --no-quarantine. 🙂

There's brew for Linux? o.o

[michel_cryptadamus]

On 11/6/2022 at 9:05 AM, SiliconJesus said:

Brew is more important and I suggest using automation (I use ansible) to keep your package installation somewhere else in case you ever need to reinstall your operating system. 

1. Another vote for the default Terminal app. It's extremely full featured to the point where I'm always discovering new features and have never wished for something it can't do.
2. homebrew is basically essential. you can install tons of applications with it, both CLI tools and windowed applications (e.g. Wireshark can be installed via brew)...
3. Little known fact (at least to me until recently) you can use use homebrew to install fonts, including every single google web font and many others.
4. @SiliconJesus has good advice here - anything you install with homebrew just record it in a bash script. In the last 6 months I finally converted all my initial macOS setup to a series of bash scripts that do things like install important homebrew packages, configure my finder settings, change browser config, etc etc and it was the best move I've made in a while... to switch Macs I literally just checkout a git repo and type one command and my environment is completely reconstructed. if you do that from the get go as @SiliconJesus advises you'll be way ahead of the pack.

[Rob]

Terminal app with tmux and oh-my-zsh and you can't go wrong in my opinion.

The only issue I've run into in this setup is reverse shells tend not to like ZSH as a Bash shell.

[gilmx]

On 11/6/2022 at 5:29 PM, Dema said:

Can't recommend iTerm2 more. I personally rock it with fish shell instead of zsh  https://github.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish

+1 same here