A lot of people swear by stuff like iTerm2, but I'm almost a little ashamed to admit that even though I have iTerm configured to my taste, I often still reach for macOS' native terminal. It's not gloriously beautiful or anything (basic Zsh with powerline for the shell), but it just seems to work great without the frills.
Little shortcuts that think of stuff like this without any configuration (iTerms is impressively extensive) are just a cherry on top. It kind of bums me out that's not linux native. Do you know of any other useful shortcuts specific to macOS? I've been using ctrl+L for the longest time. Thank you for sharing!
Actually, I've been using Terminal for years. I usually try to use default apps as much as possible (Safari, Mail, Notes, Terminal) to reduce configuration overhead. I switched to iTerm2 a few days ago after reading an article on HN... not sure if it worth the change, but haven't tried anything fancy yet. What would be the killer feature of iTerm2?
I use profile triggers to change the color scheme of the shell when I SSH to a production server. The color I chose is different from my regular scheme so that it reminds me I am in production and things can break if I'm not careful.
I'm sort of in the opposite camp — I remember there being a non-trivial reason for moving over to iTerm several years ago, but now it's just become a habit and I can't for the life of me remember why I'm using it still.
As for shortcuts — ctrl-K (kill line), ctrl-A (go to start of line), ctrl-E (end of line) are my bread and butter, and work with most shells.
One thing I loved about Macs, even though I haven't used one in years, was that you could use Emacs keybindings with the control key and "standard" keybindings with the command key. Being able to type both C-c and ⌘-c was nice.
Since cmd+<number> now switches tab in Terminal.app, and the other few things I like, such as remembering the scrollbacks, number of tabs and cwd's, I find I have no use of iTerm2 any longer.
Plus, Terminal.app feels much faster. Using terminal Emacs feels very different in the two terminals.
Plus, Terminal.app feels much faster. Using terminal Emacs feels very different in the two terminals.
I recently switched back to Terminal from iTerm, and was amazed by the speed increase.
When entering commands, it is visibly a little "snappier." But where it really shines is in the output.
I have a few of batch processes that I have to run once a week, and they're all pretty heavy on the debug output, with lots of VT100 eye candy. One process that used to take close to six hours in iTerm got significantly shaved when I switched to Terminal.
Since I only run this once a week, I haven't had a chance to benchmark it, but my guess is that Terminal shaved 40 minutes off the job.
The only thing I miss from iTerm is having two sessions open in a single window. I suspect this is possible in Terminal, but I haven't figured it out yet. When I click the "Split Pane" button, I get two panes of the same session, instead of a new session in the new pane.
The fact that Ternimal.app and iTerm2 use different keyboard shortcuts for clearing scrollback buffer (⌥⌘K vs ⇧⌘K) is a constant frustration of my spotty use of Terminal.app. I would instinctively hit the iTerm2 shortcut, which brings up a connect to server panel or something.
You can use System Preferences (Keyboard -> Shortcuts, “App Shortcuts” in the list) to change any binding in any menu item in any app. In this case you could force both apps to use the same keys for those commands.
I don’t even install any other terminal. I just update bash to latest and stick to stock terminal. I have come to believe that often tool overload adds to the clutter and complexity and problems that didn’t need solving in the first place.
Little shortcuts that think of stuff like this without any configuration (iTerms is impressively extensive) are just a cherry on top. It kind of bums me out that's not linux native. Do you know of any other useful shortcuts specific to macOS? I've been using ctrl+L for the longest time. Thank you for sharing!