iTerm2
The terminal emulator most of the rest of this category runs inside.
What it does
iTerm2 replaces Apple’s Terminal with the features a heavy terminal user eventually wants: split panes, a searchable scrollback, per-profile colour schemes and fonts, triggers that act on matched output, shell integration that marks command boundaries, and tmux control mode that renders tmux panes as native iTerm panes.
Worth configuring first
- Profiles → Keys → Presets → Natural Text Editing — makes word-wise movement behave like every other macOS app.
- Appearance → Panes — dim inactive splits, which makes a four-pane layout readable.
- A Nerd Font (see the Fonts section) so Starship and
lsdglyphs render.
A profile to start from
A ready-made profile, if you would rather not set the font and colours by hand: JetBrains Mono Nerd Font Mono at 14pt with a Symbols Nerd Font fallback, powerline glyphs drawn by iTerm2 rather than the font, separate colour sets for light and dark mode, a 125×35 window and ligatures off.
Install the fonts first
brew install --cask font-jetbrains-mono-nerd-font font-symbols-only-nerd-fontA profile referencing a font that is not installed falls back silently, and the glyphs come out as boxes.
Import it
Settings → Profiles → Other Actions… → Import JSON Profiles, then pick the downloaded file.
Make it the default
Select JetBrains Mono NF in the profile list and Other Actions… → Set as Default.
Ligatures are off deliberately — Nerd Font Mono forces every glyph to one cell, and that is what keeps a prompt and a lsd listing aligned. Turn them on under Profiles → Text if you want them.
Notes
The app updates itself; Homebrew’s version will lag.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | Open source | New, native, GPU-accelerated, and the current favourite of people leaving iTerm2 |
| WezTerm | Open source | Cross-platform, Lua-configured, excellent multiplexing built in |
| Alacritty and kitty | Open source | Minimal and fast; kitty has more features, Alacritty fewer |
| Warp | Freemium | AI-first, account-gated, a very different model of what a terminal is |
| Terminal.app | Built in | Genuinely fine for occasional use |
Install
brew install --cask iterm2