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iTerm2 Version 3 Now in Beta (iterm2.com)
622 points by rickhanlonii on Feb 18, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 242 comments



(author here). I pushed out a promotion today to let users know about the new version before auto-updating everyone. It breaks backward compatibility with applescript, so it'll be a rough upgrade for some folks.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on how to make this less painful.

My first experiment with in-app advertising (promoting the beta version through a popup dialog) has gone well, with a 31% click-through rate, and of those 25% downloaded the beta.


You know iTerm is a tool I use so often that I've taken its existence for granted. Thank you for all your hard work over the years. You've made a beautiful piece of software.


I also use iTerm most of the day for most of the work week. It makes my life just a little bit better. Thanks!


I agree. That's why I donated to the project :)


iTerm2 was my first choice when I joined a company where most of the people were doing all their stuff on the CLI and started my own journey into the CLI. I never looked back since then.

Thanks a lot for creating a wonderful piece of software which I use on a daily basis at work.


Agreed... It's a really nice, smooth experience... ConEmu is close, but not quite the same in Windows, and I haven't seen anything that even compares in Linux.


I'm a Linux user, and I use iTerm when I'm on a Mac and ConEmu on Windows. Are there some features I'm missing out on?


A nice tabbed interface... though, doing another search, this time I've found a few options.

ROXterm, LilyTerm and Sakura judging from screenshots... per: http://www.tecmint.com/linux-terminal-emulators/

I'd spent some time trying to find an "alternative to iterm for linux" and the like, coming up pretty short.


Did you try http://cmder.net ?


ConEmu + Clink... and it looks so pretty. Thanks, will give it a go!


I use iterm all day, everyday. Thank you!


I literally just made an account on here since I never normally comment just to say thank you to you for all your work on iTerm. I'm especially happy about the issue I was having with iTerm2 windows not resizing correctly but the beta seems to have changed this to work flawlessly, it used to not fit correctly to the borders of the screen height nor width, but it works great now. So thank you once again.


Hey, that's actually in version 2 as well! It frustrated me too, even made a checkout of the source to fix it myself, and then found that it's in the advanced options. Go to preferences -> advanced and all the way to the bottom there is "Terminal windows resize smoothly.". Set that to yes, and it will resize to the edges of the screen.


Hello George, many many thanks for all the hard work you've put in. Yours is hands down the most heavily used application many people's macs.

Is it possible to try the beta while still having around the normal version? Is the configuration compatible between the two?

Again, thanks!


You can have both installed and even running at the same time. Applescript might get confused about which app to talk to, in which case you need to do `tell application "/path/to/iTerm.app"` to make it unabiguous.


George, longtime iTerm 2 user here - thanks for all your hard work; I can't count how many hours of productivity I've saved by using iTerm.

I've given a donation in the past - and anyone else interested can see the big donate button on the site.


And add Bitcoin donation as well!


On donations, it's kind of ridiculous that the PayPal mobile checkout doesn't support 2FA: Your Security Key can't be used to log in here. But, you can still complete your purchase with PayPal by checking out on your computer.

It also looks like it was designed in 2004 and never touched again. This same issue affects the Cydia store, and the only workaround there is to disable 2FA.


PayPal and ridiculous sounds about right


iTerm2 is the most beautiful, customizable and usable OS X terminal replacement in the history of everything. Full stop.

Go2shell also makes iTerm2 slightly even better, just don't mistype it without that 's'.

Sadly, iTerm2 doesn't make coffee or answer email, and for these couple of trivial, unrealistic failings I'm anonymously internet outraged with a cohort petition of at least 235k signatures so far to have your head boiled in stew for Christmas dinner served with canapés, yorkshire pudding and choclate creme pie. Yum. Can't wait. :-)

Leaping to somewhat serious now: another project support stream is actually cool schwag: stickers, t-shirts, mugs, hats, tech bits, so forth.. Some limited edition stuff.

Mahalo, Some random weirdo


Not the greatest, but I did this a few years ago… http://www.zazzle.com/iTerm2


Hey nice, it's a start.

<unsolicited public advice without listening or asking questions because im a git> Sales is two things: good product and having/inventing a plausible/worthwhile excuse to mention it.

No one has to be an artist (the best I can do is about the 2nd grade level: stick figures and writing which gradually changes size and slants to one side.). There are plenty of really good designers in most major metros whom will work for some % of gross, credit and/or fee... Dribbble, 99designs, sortfolio, elance, odesk, craigslist, on and on. See what folks can come up with and do small test runs to see if it's worth stocking (Amazon fulfillment will hold stock for cheap). Zazzle typically makes bank at a high price-point and leaves you with a pittance %. Indie graphics shops can usually make quality shirts at various volumes for super cheap, some will drop ship directly to customers and others can send to Amazon Fulfillment and let Amazon handle it.

Also for shwag concepts, it's possible to crowdsource ideas & voting from a massive community (creds on actual product)... It's a plus for at least 3 reasons.

Promoting: vlogging YT, podcast interviewing people, conference and meetups, so on... Always bring more value and humanity to an event or forum than just pitching sales robot, that's what people respond to usually

</unsolicited public advice without listening or asking questions because im a git>


> Go2shell also makes iTerm2 slightly even better, just don't mistype it without that 's'.

There's also OS X's "cdf" command to cd to the currently open Finder window (I think of "cdf" as shorthand for "cd to finder")


Whao I needed Go2Shell. Badly. Thank you.


I was actually just very mildly annoyed by this in-app promotion. (trying to convey the absolute minimum amount of annoyance while still being annoyed)

While I was typing it popped up and opened a browser when I hit enter, entirely without me seeing more than a flash of the ad.


That flow may explain his excellent click through rate ;)


Same here, except I didn't even see the ad at all. I only realized it when I looked back at the screen and Chrome had focus and was on a new tab with the "promo". Not a big deal, though.


Hi! Thanks for the good work! If you ever accept feature requests, I'm annoyed when I have multiple iTerm2 windows opened on another desktop, and I swipe to that desktop. I have the "focus follows mouse" feature enabled, but in the situation above, sometimes it's not the window under the mouse that gets the focus. I realize however that this might be a hard-to-solve problem (because of how the OS works)...


Yeah, sounds like an OS bug, but file an issue at https://iterm2.com/bugs.


(user here). Thank you, so much, for creating iTerm2 and keeping it going all these years. iTerm is now my only development environment, I also use the shell for email, HipChat, IM and of course IRC. I can stay in the shell pretty much all day. It's straightforward, easy to customize, and has built-in support for tmux. What more could I ask for? :)


If you don't mind me asking, what do you use for all of those applications in your terminal? I love to know what other people use for email, irc, etc.


mutt, weechat, bitlbee.

My world would be complete, if only Firefox and Xcode were ncurses applications. :)


+ inline images in iTerm2 v3 ;)


emacs


This looks great. Will applescript support be coming back? I'm using consular iterm to start and stop projects. https://github.com/achiu/consular-iterm

Can anyone recommend another macro tool that can set up a bunch of processes running in tabs?


Applescript support is improved, not removed, but incompatibly. https://iterm2.com/applescript.html


Applescript is supported, just in a more consistent way now.

This is the new syntax: https://iterm2.com/applescript.html

Edit: I'm not the developer! I'm just a fan.


Awesome and thanks for the great work!!


What you are looking for sounds a lot like TMUX + Bash (scripted tmux setup). Then you can run that inside of iTerm.

Tmux supports tabs and dynamic splits nicely via ncurses.

Also check out tmux ressurect [1] for saving tmux session persistence.

[1] https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect


FWIW, I've been running the dev builds for ages now (currently on 2.9.2015111), and it wasn't a big deal to update my (few) scripts. The new AppleScript dictionary is definitely a bit better, and simplified my scripts.


Hey - I wrote one for iTerm called iTermocil:

https://github.com/TomAnthony/itermocil

Yiu can use teamocil style files to configures panes/tabs and starting commands for each pane.

Let me know how you find it! :)


Thanks for all your hard work! iTerm2 is bar none, my absolute favourite program. No other OS has a terminal this good.


I don't remember what made me use iTerm in the first place. I think I didn't find out how to use tabs in Apple's terminal right away, but now I have routinely 10-12 tabs open, and being able to save and restore the arrangement is very, very convenient.

Thank you very much for the good work!!!


If you're interested in the regressions iTerm2 has compared to Terminal.app, the two I've noticed are:

- Terminal.app will focus the tab triggering "prompt before closing if there are jobs running besides" and name the job that's running. iTerm2 always ask "Quit iTerm2?" and leave you to hunt down which tab is preventing it from being closed.

- Triple-clicking in Terminal.app will select from the previous \n to the next \n (i.e. it will select multiple lines if the lines are wrapped), while triple-clicking in iTerm2 will select only that line.

Screenshot: http://d.pr/i/1eeca/4bWrRR3r

Top: Terminal.app, bottom: iTerm2. This technically isn't a "regression", but I prefer the Terminal.app behavior so it'd be nice if there was at least a toggle.


> Triple-clicking in Terminal.app will select from the previous \n to the next \n (i.e. it will select multiple lines if the lines are wrapped), while triple-clicking in iTerm2 will select only that line.

In iTerm2, toggle "Triple-click selects full wrapped lines" in the Pointer tab in Preferences.


Man, and I thought I had scoured all of the Preferences, too. Thanks!


In terms of hours spent in an application, only Chrome and Tweetbot exceed how many hours each year I live inside iTerm2+tmux. In terms of what contributes to my ability to get my job done - and just sheer joy at using software that is rock solid, and integrates well with the tools that I use - there is nothing even close to iTerm2 - it's the single reason why I couldn't even consider using an operating system other than OS X.

I'm embarrassed to admit it's been about 5+ years since I last made a donation, which I'm fixing right now.

Thanks so much for iTerm2 - it's made my life better.


Love iTerm. If you guys ever integrated with 1Password I would be in heaven!



If that worked with dashlane, I'd could die a happy man.


When i read "Password Manager" on the iterm2 V3 announcement page i hoped to read about 1Password integration! PLEASE PLEASE George Nachman - i would donate (again) for iTerm2! :)


Like everybody else I just wanted to say thanks! I just downloaded the beta and it looks great!


ITerm 2 is my absolute favourite piece of software I've ever used. It's a delight to work with. Thank you so much for your work!


I've been on 2.9 series for few months now, since this appeared on HN, so sadly nothing new here... [1] I had such a great time getting to know these features then.

I haven't noticed any instabilities, and new features have been working great. I've yet to learn to use shell integration (muscle memory is a hard thing to forget), but using full screen shell with insivible tabs and the "quake shell" that's similarly full screen has made a really big difference for the better.

Syncing profile settings between computers could work without user action. Now I got automatic import and export when I restart iTerm. Changes I make on one machine tend to stay there, till I remember to restart, and by then I usually have changed something else on the other machine.

So thank you very much for the most useful software on my mac! I have to get get Paypal for donation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9880694


Thanks for making a great app.

Where's the place I can report issues in the beta version? I noticed a small graphical issue with the cursor when using a certain font.



I did try ITerm2 out for a long time but I found it dramatically reduced the battery life of (newish) macbook, I'd get perhaps 2 hours less per charge, as a result i've switched back to Terminal and using MouseTerm for scrolling in vim.

Have you looked into ITerms' performance in comparison to Terminal?


Maybe it's because you're getting so much more work done! ;)


I'm ever a lurker here on HN, but I have to tell just how amazing it is that something you made affected the lives of so many people. The fact is, iTerm is arguably the most dependable piece of software on my computer and has been since I ever got a mac. So props to you!


Those are pretty amazing click/follow through rates, and I'm not surprised because they're 100% deserved. This is a great app clearly made with care and dedication, thanks for all your hard work!


Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to making a difference and adding value in all your users lives.

This new version merits another donation. The stability of the current version is excellent.


George, huge thanks for your work. Please consider putting iTerm2 on the App Store for a couple of bucks (in addition to providing it for free on your site).


I think the App Store Sandbox would restrict iTerm's ability to be useful. (Can only access files it has created, or via a standard OSX file open dialog, for instance.)


Thank you for all the work. Finding a specific setting in the settings panels is sometimes hard. I wish you could add search for setting items sometime in future.


I just wanted to add to the line of replies saying thanks for your hard work on iTerm2. I use it every day. Thank you for making it. It's awesome.


iTerm is amazing. But it's incredible how many people I see that have the old (unsupported) iTerm installed. Presumably having heard that 'iTerm is da bomb' and not realizing they were referring iTerm2. The old iTerm is way inferior to OSX's Terminal.app, so it kinda sucks seeing these people crippling themselves without even knowing it.


Thanks for the great app! Setting marks in the new beta has saved me hours of flipping back and forth to see when a command finishes!


Thank you for your hard and continuous work on iTerm2! It is one of the two things i install very first on my mac. Thank you


> I pushed out a promotion today... auto-updating everyone... My first experiment with in-app advertising...

Do not go down that dark road.


Any chance that this new beta has support for borderless windows? I still use a forked version that doesn't have border.


You can make a window without a title bar now, if that's what you mean. It's one of the window styles in Prefs>Profiles>Window.


<3


This is the only app I miss on Linux, kudos!


Thank you for all your hard work on this, this new version looks and performs so much better than the previous one


George, iTerm2 has made my life much better. Thanks a lot for your immense contribution to developer productivity!


I am an iTerm2 user. I think it's a fantastic product.

That being said, if I see a pop-up dialog with an advertisement coming from my terminal application, I am going to uninstall it immediately and never think twice about it again.

I thought iterm was open source.


It is. The advert was to notify you that the iTerm 3 beta is available and that it has some cool features.

It did not ask for donations. It was purely informational.


I'm a 25%er! Thanks for the great work!


iTerm 2 is great software. Can't wait to try version 3.


Great app. This announcement reminded me that I use it every day & hadn't donated yet, so I did. $10USD won't be retirement money, but at least have a beer & tip your bartender:)


I'm jumping on the donation train too. Great piece of software, and really impressive update.


I hadn't donated either, and it's a killer app for me. Just fixed that.


I'm sure I'm missing iTerm2's big appeal, but every time I try to use it, I find myself going back to Terminal.app, which I find more responsive and just as featureful, especially when combined with zsh and a windowing manager. That's probably just because I'm familiar with it and I didn't come from tmux or anything similar, but I keep hoping I'll be "enlightened" at some point and realize the error of my ways ;)



> Customizability ends up being pretty important for serious developers who are always in the terminal.

Ironically, I would say customizability ends up being pretty important for serious developers attempting to avoid working. I can't say my terminal itself—as opposed to the shell—requires any serious modifications at all. (I rewire the left option key and color schemes, and that's about it.)


[flagged]


I guess my point is that the terminal has very, very, very little influence as compared to the ACTUAL shell. Yes, there are power users. I don't see them actually get anything done faster.

I moved to Terminal.app when it introduced tabs—KILLER FEATURE—and haven't been happier.



Which one is the killer feature? The ones listed in that article all seem like extremely minor differences to me.


Thanks for that, although it similarly hasn't swayed me :D


I usually use iTerm2, but I tried to switch to Terminal the other day because I noticed how much more responsive it is. There were a couple small things that kept me with iTerm2:

- Both let you set the cursor color, but Terminal doesn't let you set the cursor text color, which is a small annoyance.

- Terminal's full-screen goes into a separate desktop, but iTerm2 lets you disable Lion-style full-screen - another small annoyance.

- The only real deal-breaker for me was that I couldn't get Ctrl-/ working for Terminal (it's what I use for "undo" in emacs and readline).

Even with these things, I tried for a while to get Terminal set up - the faster refresh rate makes it look _really_ smooth compared to iTerm2.


Same. I've tried it several times and have had the same experience you describe. Terminal.app recently got a nice upgrade too, which made switching to a 3rd party emulator even less compelling.

Edit: I tried the beta. It's faster than .app. I'll give it that.


All the more power to you. If it works fine for you then it's good enough. Apple has also really caught up on Terminal.app's features. For example it didn't used to have multiple tabs which was a killer feature of iTerm. Personally, I don't even use most of the power features of iTerm except the custom shortcuts. (even preferring to use tmux directly) Still, some alternatives never hurt.


Command clicking on backtraces to open that line in my editor is pretty bloody great. Although if you've rigged up some way to do that with the keyboard alone you're unlikely to be impressed I suppose.

It seems to resolve paths relative to the working directory and passes them to `open`. It works for URLs too.


I use iTerm2 because I can switch tabs using Command+1 / Command+2 etc.


I've found it so good, I switched to using Terminator on Linux. Terminator sort of mimics iTerm2's multi-pane layout, which I find indispensable on high resolution displays.


tmux4life


I just donated $25. iTerm is an amazing piece of software and I honestly can't imagine living without it.


Iterm2 was one of those things I was not expecting to miss so much when I switched to a Linux desktop. There's something about the look and feel of text that I'm used too. Don't get me wrong, there's good terminals for Linux, but I think iterm2 was the best. I'd gladly pay for a Linux port.


> There's something about the look and feel of text that I'm used too.

Yeah, font rendering is great out of the box on OS X. However, you can also get that on Linux, using Infinality. Check it out. :)


Just curious - what features are you missing on Linux that are available on Iterm2? I've used Iterm2 quite a bit and while I think it is more full-featured than my linux terminal, I don't find myself using any features which are not common to both.


Give Terminator a try.


I love iTerm2, I keep up with the "current" beta versions, using them all day in production.

I would love it if they'd make a "dark" titlebar version of the window chrome. My setup currently has windows without any titlebar at all (thanks to iTerm for that feature!), but it makes rearranging windows challenging.

I look forward to trying out the newer features!


You can change the colour of the title bar in iTerm with an ansi code! I have different colours for all of my servers: http://i.imgur.com/mdF3XBz.png

This will give you a title bar with RGB values 20, 20, 20:

printf -- $'\033]6;1;bg;red;brightness;20\a\033]6;1;bg;green;brightness;20\a\033]6;1;bg;blue;brightness;20\a'

Documentation: https://iterm2.com/documentation-escape-codes.html


Woah, they really should shout about this feature more.


How are you doing this in your servers? Adding it to your shell profiles on said servers?


It's in my .zlogin or .zshrc on my servers, and it's in my PS1 on my home computer, so when I exit the servers it resets nicely.


I didn't know that. Thank you!


This comment may be lost, but for Google posterity, it appears that this feature only sets the window titlebar if you aren't displaying the tab bar. Otherwise, the escape codes set the color of the tab.

It would be nice to have separate escape sequences for the window titlebar and for the tabs.

My interest in this is to dim the glaring-white strip of the Mac OS X window chrome when I have dark tabs, a dark-background terminal, and a dark menubar. If you have many such dark terminals open, the Mac OS X window chrome really interferes with the visual consistency of the setup.


Thanks so much for pointing out the ability to hide the titlebar entirely, as I have the same pet peeve :)

I would suggest using one of the many pseudo tiling window managers to resize your windows so you don't have that problem. I strongly recommend spectacle [1]

[1] https://www.spectacleapp.com/


With the default settings in iTerm, you might not fully fill the screen with shortcuts (half screen would be missing a little bit of the window on the bottom). By default iTerm uses row height to determine the window height.

Advanced Settings > Smooth Resizing - will fix this.


I've been using Magnet for about a year and it works very well: http://magnet.crowdcafe.com

I always forget it's there, then when I use someone else's Mac I wonder why the Win7-style drag-to-a-place-to-get-a-shadow-preview-of-the-new-size doesn't work.


I had been using Cinch. This seems pretty similar


Is there anyway to achieve something similar to Quicktime? Or is that what you mean by a 'dark' titlebar? I'd love if the titlebar would fade away when not mousing over it.


this is totally feasible with a custom .car file that you can embed into your program. The problem is the titlebar text.

I hacked together a working SIMBL script back in the 10.6 days that fixed the problem, but it's probably lost.

Interestingly, Apple's current DarkAppearance.car (/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources) that ships (but lies unused) in OS X 10.11.3 suffers from the same problems. You can copy it over into GraphiteAppearance.car to test it out. White titlebar text is still glitched to hell.


How do you hide the titlebar entirely?


Preferences > Profile > Window > Style: "No Title Bar"

doesn't seem to then be anyway to move the window (just resize from the edges)


Mirroring my sibling comment here, but thanks for the detailed note on how to get rid of the bright white title bar :)

As far as resizing goes, I would suggest using one of the many pseudo tiling window managers available on mac. I strongly recommend spectacle [1]

[1] https://www.spectacleapp.com/


One of the best mac apps in existence but holy jeebus is the naming a mess:

- It's called iTerm2 Version 3 now, rather than iTerm3 - It's called iTerm2 Version 3 now, but the actual app version is 2.9


The app's name is iTerm2. Version numbers have to increase lexicographically, so the version 3 beta is called 2.9. I'm open to suggestions :)


In SemVer [1], it's prescribed that the first number is for breaking changes, the second number for new features, and the third number for fixes. So this would be v3.0.0.

It also allows you to add a suffix though for beta-type versions, so the beta would be v3.0.0-beta, or v3.0.0-rc1, etc.

[1] http://semver.org/


I want the first "stable" release to be 3.0.0, which is lexicographically before 3.0.0-beta. Admittedly this is only a limitation of Sparkle, but I just haven't prioritized modifying Sparkle above fixing real bugs.


SemVer works great for libraries, but it falls apart for actual software IMO. How would you define a "breaking change" in a software ? Would it be a complete redesign ? Or maybe a feature removal (Does that ever happen ?)

Versions are supposed to convey meaning over how much has changed to the app between two versions. iTerm got soooooo many new features in this new version, anything smaller than a major bump would feel out of place.

I do agree the actual version should be v3.0.0-beta1 tho ^^.


AppleScript isn't backwards compatible, sounds like that would fit just about any definition of a breaking change.


> SemVer works great for libraries, but it falls apart for actual software IMO

SemVer is for APIs. From the spec:

> 1. Software using Semantic Versioning MUST declare a public API.


Yes, the public API for a library that the developer interfaces with. Not a web APi.


I think it should be called iTerm 3. George, thank you SO MUCH for your work on this excellent app.


Call it iTerm3


I'm sure if you're reading these comments, iTerm is the program you use the most on the Mac.

Give George a donation through the Donate button on his site (https://iterm2.com/) to let him know how much we care about this tool. Takes 10 seconds if you have PayPal.


I played with iTerm2 for a while (coming from Linux) because I was told I had to have it. I switched back to Terminal.app after my last clean install because I didn't really see what I was getting.

For someone who tmuxes for tabs and splits, what am I missing?


It's very short, but you can checkout my post on vim + [iTerm](http://arianv.com/post/My-First-Month-with-Vim/)

Basically, I really love the fullscreen keybinding, hotkeys, colors and search ( though the default terminal already has this I think)


Appreciate it!

So, the show/hide feature seems to be the one really interesting thing to me. We're both vimmers and it sounds like we have similar workflows. What's killing me right now, is that coming from Debian I always had 5 desktops setup on Alt+1-5. I've got the same thing on Command+1-5 now, but if I force Terminal.app to fullscreen in OSX in the Desktop 1 spot, it's no longer available via Alt+1, since it spins up it's own, new desktop called 'Terminal'. It kills me.

In your post, are you saying that you can have a fullscreen iTerm2 window transposable to any of your desktops with the show/hide hotkey? Because this would push me over the fence.

BTW, I dig the CSS triangle inversions you're using for your ribbon up top.


Hey!

I'm not sure if I fully understand your query, so let me know if I'm off the mark:

The answer is iTerm is incredibly configurable! iTerm can run on it's own 'fullscreen' window (Lion Style, you know, like say, full screen chrome) OR it can use a transparent fullscreen that basically just fills the current screen you are in, not creating a new 'desktop/space' (the gif on my blog post shows this).

APART from that you can also configure iTerm to show up on all desktops - i.e. I'll have documentation on desktop 1 and the actual site on desktop 2 and I can bring up the same terminal window with `alt space`.

So I do think that the answer to your question is YES!

That's probably the awesome thing about iTerm. There's no "super big killer feature" but it just provides enough options that whatever workflow you have/want, it most likely can support it.

And nice to meet a fellow vimmer! Thanks for the appreciating the CSS ribbons too :)


iTerm is OSX' killer app.

Couldn't find anything similar on Windows. I used MobaXTerm which is ok but never feels as polished and slick as iTerm. Especially iTerm's own fullscreen mode which allows to quickly alt-tab is great.


OSX-only apps that I absolutely love and consider must-haves:

Free: Iterm2 Spectacles Sip

Not free: Dash Textmate (I use it as the equivalent of Windows' Notepad.exe) Transmit Sketch Paw

If anyone has any other suggestions for things that they consider must-haves, I'd love to know about them so I can try them out!


I wrote a small blog post on OS X must-have apps[1] back in 2009, but I realize more or less all but the most obvious (e.g., Chrome) have changed.

Now: InsomniaX (like Caffeine.app, but maintained); Bartender; LaunchBar (mostly for clipboard management - easily my favorite manager); iStat Menus; Atom; Tweetbot; Dropbox; and to a lesser extent, iA Writer. (And BowTie for a Last.fm scrobbler, because it's the only one that works with Apple Music)

[1]: http://alanhogan.com/starter-mac-apps


FYI, TextMate has been FOSS for years!


I like Bartender to keep my menu bar clean.

iStatMenus gives you a nice view into various resources and temps.


thanks for the tip on spectacles. I've been using sizeup for the same functionality for years bit it looks like spectacles does the same thing for free. How does paw compare to postman?


Thanks for the mention! What makes Paw different is dynamic values which lets you access/parse data from previous responses and compute anything you want. It's a simple way to do visual programming for your API testing. Also today we're introducing full encryption for users credentials. Also, Paw is a native Mac app, and we love the look and feel it has. (disclaimer: I'm Paw's founder)


Paw is great, use it nearly every day at work :)


Try ForkLift too, I almost never use Finder any more.


Non-free: BetterTouchTool

Free: Control Plane


Snappy and DragonDrop


Cmder (which is Conemu + extras) is my go-to terminal app for Windows, and I know a lot of other folks like it.

http://cmder.net/

iTerm is definitely hard to beat, though.


I don't use Windows a whole lot, but when I do I usually go for ConEmu. Might be worth checking out.

https://conemu.github.io/


putty is the defacto standard Windows SSH terminal. (Though that's not what iterm is.)


Putty never had good tab support even with all the various work-around and frankensteins people had made to do it. If that situation has changed in the past 5 years, I'm sure I'm not the only one here who would be excited to hear about the details.


putty needs some serious UI love. It doesn't look like the UI has been updated in over 10 years. I use MSYS which comes with mingw and works for my purposes.


It worries me slightly that I can still remember the URL for PuTTY - I'm not even sure I've used Windows once in the last 5 years in a context where I would have needed it!


Can't put my finger on it but putty isn't on the level iTerm2 is


Another suggestion: how about simply calling it "iTerm". This can be version 3. I know "iTerm2" was a fork of the defunct original iTerm. But now that you're pushing through to v3, in kind of makes sense to reclaim the title.


So if I'm running iTerm2 Test release 2.9.date (current 2.9.20160206), does that mean I'm running the v3 beta?

Its version names are confusing.


Yes, the current beta's version number is 2.9.20160206 as linked on https://iterm2.com/version3.html


Is there a way to make a previously hidden iTerm window show without also bringing any other iTerm windows to the front?

I'm looking to replace TotalTerminal with iTerm (since TT doesn't work on El Capitan without making OS X less secure), and tried using a function key to hide/show a small iTerm window, but while that does work, the problem is that when it shows the small window, it also shows my regular large iTerm window as well (which I have always running) and the times when I want to show the small iTerm window I don't want the large iTerm window obscuring what's behind it.

Not sure if I explained that well, but that's what I'm hoping to find a way how to do: basically have a small, TotalTerminal-like iTerm2 window that pops up when I hit a certain keyboard shortcut, without also bringing up any other iTerm2 windows that I may have running in the background.

I'm also open to suggestions for other TotalTerminal replacements that work on El Capitan.


Yes, they have had a visor feature for a long time actually. I'm not on my mac right now and i'm not 100% sure if this link is accurate anymore. But it's under the keyboard shortcuts or profile settings. It is not enabled by default, and you can create a new hotkey profile with more transparency or whatever,

http://fokkezb.nl/2014/10/29/using-iterm2s-improved-visor/


That brings other iTerm windows to the foreground.

There is a ticket to fix this, but it's bound by limitations from how OSX does app switching (according to the ticket).


> Is there a way to make a previously hidden iTerm window show without also bringing any other iTerm windows to the front?

HyperDock[1] Lets you do that.

[1] https://bahoom.com/hyperdock/


I have used iterm for a long time and I would like to donate to your project. I make all my donations with Patreon, would be great if you could add support for that, if it's not too much trouble. https://www.patreon.com/


Any other open source projects using it? Curious how they set the rewards and objectives.


I made a donation anyway with paypal, much appreciate your work. Also checkout funding from Travis foundation and DuckDuckGo. If you need help with traffic to your site, let me know, I work at a CDN. http://foundation.travis-ci.org/grants/


I use it to donate to exercism. It's nice to see other contributions


or just you know, use his preferred method of donation.


I have trouble with paypal


Do you honestly expect him to switch his setup because of your particular situation?


why switch? append.


Do you honestly expect him to append his setup because of _aarti's particular situation?


He might be the first one to ask? Unless my grasp of the English language is slipping, he asked politely without any expectations?

On topic: I've seen Patreon used by some of the more well-known YouTube science video creators (CGP Grey, Kurzgesagt, Numberphile come to mind) so it seems to be ok.


But seriously, do you honestly expect him to append his setup just because _aarti asked politely about his particular situation?

Seems like a bit much to ask of a total stranger and it only benefits one person. Everyone else can use PayPal just fine.

Also, asking for a favor implies an expectation. Prove me wrong.


Take it easy. Maybe he's never heard of Patreon - I hadn't. He never asked for a favor. Everything doesn't have to be a fight.


> I make all my donations with Patreon, would be great if you could add support for that, if it's not too much trouble. https://www.patreon.com/

He explicitly, but politely, asked for a favor.

Also, who's fighting? I'm not. It's weird different people keep responding to this thread though.


I don't really get why _aarti is down voted.


> Undo closing sessions, tabs, and windows. If you close a session by accident, you get five seconds to hit Cmd-Z to undo it.

Does that mean my session is not really closed until 5 seconds after I “closed” it?


Yes.


> Session Restoration allows your jobs to keep running after iTerm2 upgrades, is force-quit, or crashes. It's like tmux without tmux!

Anyone know how this works? From my basic (possibly incorrect) understanding, iTerm currently spawns a bash shell for each tab which in turn has its own children for its processes; so killing iTerm would kill all of its children. Does it use a separate daemon process to spawn children now?



Thank you. It's actually more involved than i thought it would be on the client side, but a good use of the OS' functionality.


Can we configure iTerm2 v3 now with a simple file? It's so difficult to programmatically create profiles, setup typefaces and colors.



Thanks! Can't wait to try it out. Downloading now.


> iTerm2 has been updated for the modern Mac OS X "flat" look and is stunningly beautiful.

It does look very polished! Just two things:

When you choose "No title bar", the rounded corners and drop shadows all disappear so it looks a bit too "sharp".

And it would be really great if you can add an option to specify internal padding, similar to urxvt's internalBorder.

Great work and thanks again!


Didn't know you can ls and then cmd+click to open a folder/file. And alt+click positions the cursor. Nice touches.


Try cmd or right-clicking the path in the window title bar. Should pop open a menu with the CWD path and all parents that you can then click to open in a finder. Apparently this works in other Mac apps as well. I had no idea for many years.

https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/os-x-yosemite... under "Title Bar" section. Also has some other hidden tricks. As cool as this stuff is and as useful as it is, it's not discoverable at all.


You guys deserve all the best. Will make the donation soon... (student here) I have never came across terminal app that is working with you... urxvt and many other on Linux were always working against me. This one was drag and drop and it works.


This is fantastic. I love the new look, and the font rendering seems to be even nicer than before.


Yeah the difference is noticeable: http://dp.hanlon.io/2k2n3G190l2e


The link is broken for me


What color theme is that?


A blend of Solarized and Intellij Darcula:

https://github.com/rickhanlonii/Solarized-Darcula


I have been a long time Visor/TotalTerminal user and wanted to try iTerm2 on 10.11 but was concerned with its use of the Sparkle updater framework. I could find no sign through all of my research if confirm if updates are performed through https instead of http and I declined to install it. I also couldn't find a way to contact the anyone to ask, so I'm glad you posted. So? What does it use? Don't you think this may be worth noting on the announcement or changelog?


Yep, https. Look at the last two URLs at the very end of the file:

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/master/plists/releas...

Likewise, all HTTPS here:

http://iterm2.com/appcasts/testing3.xml

If you're on Mac OS 10.11, we don't disable app transport security, so the OS prevents us from making HTTP requests at all.


OK. Thanks.

And what about the risk of parsing file:// and ftp:// and other protocols inside the WebView component What assurances can you give that there is not security flaw on the server that allows replacing XML file?


Why are you concerned with Sparkle? Is it because it's a third party library or whether or not iTerm2 makes HTTPS updates?

It seems a little debugging with LittleSnitch/Charles would glean an answer how the requests are made and what, if anything else is. Perhaps a ticket https://iterm2.com/bugs is warranted.


Well, if you hadn't heard http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/huge-number-of-mac-a...

I would just like to know before I install. I don't think it is too unreasonable of a prerequisite.


Thank you for this. I had not.


I'm late to the thread but just wanted to say THANK YOU for all the hard work in general; and especially now for this:

"iTerm2 can change your profile (for example, affecting the color of your terminal) when you ssh to a remote host, when you run sudo, or even depending on your current directory."

Like many people, I use profiles mostly to have different colors for different hosts. This will make my workflow a little easier and a lot more consistent Every. Single. Day.

Köszönöm!


There are a lot of people expressing their love for the tool but until now I fail to see why. "Love" is not a good enough reason for me to exchange a seemingly good enough standard tool with something else. Also the situations in which I want to optimize the Terminal are few. Right now I can only think about copy&paste and as far as I can tell that is solved in the standard terminal already.


I've been trying iTerm on and off (sometimes using it for months) but always went back to the Terminal.

So far, this release seems it will finally make me switch.


What was your justification for going back? This is the first I've heard anyone say they went back to Terminal, so I'm pretty curious.


Generally found it slower (dealing with text etc), some term behaviors were incompatible, etc.


Is there a screenshot for the new version...?


Undo closed window is sweet. Nice work.


Amazing work. This app has so many features that I think go unnoticed to many. I recommend going through all of the tips of the day (iTerm2 -> Show Tip of the Day) and perusing the various preferences available in the app.

I donated a while back and will be donating again tonight.


Thank you for all the hard work of the iterm2 team.

I've used this application for years now and without it, I would be useless.

I do 99% of my development within it, so it really is a super important tool for me and I'm very very excited to see it's continued improvement.


A quick and dirty one-liner to pull the newest xkcd:

https://gist.github.com/jgworks/5c7bd0f731210133ebd4


Thank you so much for your hard work. It's default terminal for me.


One of my favorite new features has got to be true color support.


I just donated but do you ever consider charging? I think most here would pay. iTerm2 really is the best option and provides a lot of value to developers who make money using it.


Accepting donations is about as far as I'd go with trying to monetize free software. If I were looking for a lifestyle business I might take a try at selling support for it or selling some kind of related SaaS.


Can you atleast show-up a popup for donation? I've been using iTerm2 for couple of years, just realized and donated. A pop-up would remind many people like me I guess :)


Zsh shell via iTerm2, coupled with prezto or Oh my Zsh == Nirvana.


I'd add the tmux integration to that, which is an absolute life changer (even more now that iTerm2 is happy with multiple tmux sessions at a time).


I'm going to look like a huge noob but is Zsh what makes terminals look cool? I see Oh my Zsh on Github and it has a lot of stars, how do I get started with it on my Mac?


It does more than just look cool! For me, I personally prefer the completion abilities that zsh enables, but there is a whole suite of capabilities - that said, yes, it also can look really cool!

There's an installer script off github. Just follow those instructions and that's all you'll need (assuming you already installed zsh). If you haven't, you can install it with Homebrew using `brew install zsh`.


oh my zsh is pretty easy to install, the instructions are on http://ohmyz.sh/.

I've been using zsh for so long, I've forgotten what zsh can do that bash can't. But I love zsh for these reasons:

- Crazy good command completion. Even right in the middle of commands! Example with dd: http://i.imgur.com/UQBlTc9.png

- That completion extends to directories as well. Just keep pressing tab and you get a cool little menu thing, whereas bash just prints the choices again and again.

- Right prompt!

- Syntax colours! Just like fish!


It would be great having little video's of each new feature. For example with the automatic profile switching, or the marks/shell integration features.


Awesome - I've almost forgotten Terminal.app exists these days. Shell integration is super exciting, I can see myself using that a whole lot in the coming months.


There is already the need for standardization on inline images, as notty uses another approach than iTerm2, which uses another approach than Terminology.


xterm can do inline graphics too, in the form of Sixel for raster graphics and ReGIS for vector graphics. At least those are sort of standard, in that they were used by real terminals and there are real specs for them.

The annoying thing is, even if terminals standardized on one protocol, none of them set $TERM or use terminfo properly. So there's no good way for programs to actually use these features, because you don't know if you're running in a terminal that supports them, or which escape codes to send to make use of them.


> none of them set $TERM or use terminfo properly.

There's a reason for this, and it's because a lot of things assume certain values for $TERM and completely go to shit when it's something else. In addition, who actually sets $TERM is an open question depending on the architecture of the system you are talking to (and the manner in which you logged in).

Beyond that, the architecture of terminfo is a disincentive to creating new terminals, because you have to get terminfo right everywhere. Yes, one could package a terminfo supplement for iTerm2 and distribute it, but it's a serious bummer to have to apt-get/yum/dnf/emerge on every box you handle just because you like a different terminal emulator. But xterm is already there, so the easy path is to identify as xterm and handle xterm and lie occasionally (like with features like these). And that's how it's going to be. Forever. Because machines are now disposable, and now we're handling tens of thousands of them over our careers, and well-manicured terminfo databases on a few machines in the lab are a relic of the old sysadmin lifestyle.

This isn't old-vs-new NIH, to be clear, it's just that what we call a "server" has gradually evolved, and stateful databases like terminfo represent older ways of addressing systems that nobody really feels like maintaining anymore. Terminals are now much smarter than the average VT100, and it's high time for a terminal to identify its capabilities with a new protocol that doesn't require server-side state. But nobody is working on that, to my knowledge, because the "Unix way" creates an even stronger disincentive to evolve the manner in which we think about Unix lest we disrespect the past. (See systemd.)


> Terminals are now much smarter than the average VT100, and it's high time for a terminal to identify its capabilities with a new protocol that doesn't require server-side state. But nobody is working on that, to my knowledge, because the "Unix way" creates an even stronger disincentive to evolve the manner in which we think about Unix lest we disrespect the past.

How would you write a terminal protocol that could support `vim` with a stateless server?


> The annoying thing is, even if terminals standardized on one protocol, none of them set $TERM or use terminfo properly.

This is why notty _does_ set $TERM and has a terminfo sheet.


I started using Mac since September - Iterm2 saved from the horrible Mac Terminal.. But why is there no option to rename Tabs ?


iTerm2 is full of surprises. Double click the tab and you can rename the session.


I'm waiting for mutt and weechat to adopt a new iTerm2 inline images feature. That would be epic!


Kudos for the changelog starting with a very succinct summary + link, then expanding what changed :)


Issue: On mobile the hamburger menu isn't expanding

Android, Samsung S4, Chrome V. 48.0.2564.96


I've passed this on to our web folks. Thanks for letting me know!


Broken on Safari iOS as well, iOS 9.2.1


I freaking love it, especially tabs and fonts, thank you for the hard work man.


Why is it not called iTerm3?


great app, i've been using it for a while (i also use terminator on linux). together with homebrew and fish it makes the osx command line experience fantastic!


that is the one thing i miss from osx .. i had all kinds of triggers on screen , specially colouring ip addresses , and urls and guids .. hope it comes to linux one day.


Probably not the kind of customization most people are looking for, but you can do all that with urxvt extensions: http://jbl.web.cern.ch/jbl/doc/urxvt/

A lot more of a pain in the ass to write extensions from scratch instead of having a UI to configure, especially if you're not big on perl, but there's a good amount of extensions out there that are ready to use as well.


It's been >5y since I used KDE, but iirc the default terminal there had regexp you could set to trigger any action you wanted. And links were automatically clickable.

Can anyone running KDE confirm?


I doubt this is helpful, but I tried to find a Linux terminal that was as customizable as iterm2. Konsole was the closest thing I could find. It has a UI to configure many aspects of the terminal. Unfortunately, I'm drawing a blank on triggers at the moment. I still think iterm2 is way better but konsole is really really customizable.


For colorizing output check out grc

https://github.com/pengwynn/grc


cheers mate


iterm is the best terminal i have found. well done!

ps. people should run iterm, and then press cmd-/ to see something fun! ive seen them change a few times.


Loving it so far! Thanks for all your hard work.


Love iTerm2, upgraded and donated :)


the linked filename says v2.9?


The version also says Build 2.9.20160206 when you do About iTerm.




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