iTerm2

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Having moved recently to Mac, less than a year now, I am still discovering what works for me and what doesn't. Frankly, I dont see whats the fuss about macs. I dont know if being a lifetime Windows user has biased me for ever or if there is really nothing appealing to me in a mac. Well, thats the topic for some other post.


One of the first things that I was not very happy about on the mac was the built in terminal. Coming from years of Linux & Solaris use, the mac terminal was just not enough. It fell short in a number of ways. It does support tabs, which is great. I am a heavy user of Ctrl+PageUp, Ctrl+home, Ctrl+arrows etc on the PC platform. As many know, the default key board on the Mac does not provide those keys. That was my first annoyance. It took a while to figure out what keys to use instead and till this day, almost a year after I started using it, I am not yet comfortable. Maybe its just me.


Another I found lacking was the support for profiles. Although the terminal does support multiple color profiles, there is no way to save multiple machine profiles.


And this is coming from someone who was very happy with Putty. Go figure.


So I was searching for a better terminal application for Mac. I came across a number of recommendations:

• Visor - A "hack" to the built in terminal.app to make it more useful
• Coda - This app is not specifically designed to be a terminal emulator. It is more directed towards a holistic web development tool.
• iTerm2 - A separate app for terminal emulation
• Terminator - JAVA based terminal emulator

The following may also be considered alternatives:

• Screen for mac - Type screen in your terminal
• Terminator - Not sure if this is available for mac

Given the choices, I decided to try iTerm2. 

It lets you create multiple login/machine profiles, multiple color profiles and lets you remap keys. To be fair, Terminal.app also lets you remap keys. 

Please note, iTerm2 is still in Alpha but do not let that scare you. It is very usable and the developers are very prompt and responsive to any issues you let them know about. I filed two issues and both were answered within a couple of hours. Being a Alpha stage code, it is surprisingly stable and slick. 

Highly recommended.