Terminal Emulators

I use a couple different terminal emulators across macOS, Debian, as well as (rarely) Windows, and they all have their pros and cons. I was often trying new terminals for a while, because nothing really fit all my use cases.

I was originally trying pretty hard to hit every feature I wanted
  • cross platform
  • splits
  • tabs
  • images
  • True color (meaning any HEX color)
  • background transparency
  • two different fonts/sizes for ascii/nonascii characters
  • GPU accelleration
  • an API
  • a nice community/maintainers 💙

Turns out that’s a tall order. I had to make some compromises here and there.

March 2023:

My ultimate choice is to use Wezterm on Linux and macOS full time for consistency.

Explanation of what and why it comes to Terminals

This will just go over what terminals I tested and why I liked them :)

Key:

Symbol Description
🪟 Windows
🍎 macOS
🐧 Linux
🗂️ Tabs
⿲ Splits
🖼️ images
🎥 recording
🫥 Transparency
🖥️ GPU acellerated
🧑‍💻 API
App Platforms Features Notable Downsides
wezterm 🍎🐧🪟 ⿲🗂️🫥 🖼️ Can’t blur transparent backgrounds, can’t make new window from doc in macOS
iTerm2 〿🍎〿 ⿲🗂️🫥 🎥🖼️🧑‍💻 Only on macOS :(
kitty 🍎🐧? ⿲🗂️🫥 🖼️ non-ascii font size unajustable, community unwelcoming
Terminator 〿🐧〿 ⿲🗂️🫥 community not as active anymore
hyper.js 🍎🐧🪟 ⿲🗂️🫥🧑‍💻 Slow on older machines with no GPU, written in javascript
cmder 〿〿🪟 ⿲🗂️🫥 kinda buggy, random crashes
tilix 〿🐧〿 ?🗂️??? small userbase

I want to say I didn’t give tilix a fair shot, because I ran out of funemployment funds, and had to get back to work, where I need my terminal to just work, and it needs to be able to work fast and effeciently.

Tips and Tricks

When you’re using nerdfonts, you want to set the font in the terminal config itself, and you want to set the encodeing to UTF-8.

For getting your colors to match another terminal, try out terminal.sexy.

other cool stuff you do in a terminal that I wasn’t sure where to put

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