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by philsnow 755 days ago
At the very end of the article,

> Upgrade to iTerm2 3.5.0

I had just gotten the upgrade notification for 3.5.0 a few minutes ago. I scrolled through the release notes a bit and got to the "AI" section and I would like very much to get off this ride. I am grumpy and a terminal should be a terminal.

Features of iTerm2 I don't use and don't think belong in a terminal emulator:

  - tmux integration
  - shell integration
  - ssh integration
  - password manager integration
  - hooks
  - syntax highlighting *that's baked into the terminal*
  - installing its own python runtimes (?!)
  - ~blindly~ opening URLs when rendering a certain escape sequence [0]
[0] https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/10994 the discussion in there makes it seem like it's okay because many schemes that aren't http[s] cause the browser to open a dialog box

Features of iTerm2 I use:

  - fullscreen without using MacOS's spaces implementation of fullscreen

.... This got away from me and went from grumpy muttering to a snarky rant. I like iTerm2, it's just starting to feel like somebody else's terminal, that's all.

Edit: tried to cross out "blindly" above, it does ask you whether you want to open the URL, though it offers to always allow it for that host which seems like it might be iffy, but at least if I never click "always allow", I'll be notified if anything tries to inject this OSC sequence.

8 comments

Give wezterm a try: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/index.html

It is cross OS (learn once and use the same terminal in Windows, macOS and Linux), actively developed and written in rust

While it is nice to have options, I still think iTerm2 is one of the best terminal emulators for OS X out there. It has also most likely been audited more thoroughly than newer options out there. There was a security audit sponsored by Mozilla in 2019 [1].

1. https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/10/09/iterm2-critical...

Written in Rust is nice, but it also uses `libssh` which has a history of security issues and bad support for recent ciphers. Would be interesting if it also has issues with terminal escape sequences.

I'm not sure I want any features in my terminal at this point...

I had major slow down in wexterm on my MBA. I didn't really look into it because the terminal is something I want to install and forget about, so the solution may be trivial. But it was so laggy as to be unusable.
It's a bit heavy, but I've liked Tabby outside Windows a bit... I really like the new Windows terminal from MS, but it's Windows only, Tabby is about the closest I've found to it.
Just to double-check: you know that option-clicking on the green fullscreen icon does something close to fullscreen-without-spaces-implementation right?
The only reason I use iterm is so I have tmux integration and can scroll my tmux windows. That is the killer feature for me.
people talked about this elsewhere, the AI part is fully optional and disabled by default
> I would like very much to get off this ride

What's keeping you? It sounds like you want a much more lightweight terminal emulator that iTerm, which is totally fair, and I bet that exists!

If you don't want the terminal to have any features then why don't you just use the default Terminal app?
Honestly I never understood the need to replace macOS Terminal. I'm heavy terminal user, that's my most used application by far. But macOS Terminal is absolutely fine for my needs and I never felt the need for any additional features.
MacOS has terrible window management by default. Having one window with multiple panes helps a lot.

You could use screen or tmux of course, but they have a more steep learning curve.

Terminal.app seems in no hurry to add truecolor support, which is really nice for editor color schemes and other things once you’ve gotten used to it.
Huh? Typing passwords would be a nice feature, nicer than the myriad of other ancient teletype control codes. Something like ^p (type password) ^P (return to terminal).