eat (Emacs Terminal Emulator)
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 20 of 40 terminal emulators by recommenders
Recommended as a reasonably fast terminal emulator inside Emacs and Eshell with full terminal emulation, though full-screen TUIs like vim run slowly.
Recommended as a reasonably fast terminal emulator inside Emacs and Eshell with full terminal emulation, though full-screen TUIs like vim run slowly.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 12
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 12 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works inside Eshell buffers
“It's a reasonably fast terminal emulator that integrates with Eshell so that all commands run in Eshell have full terminal emulation”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014)” “My favorite part about EAT is the fact that it works in-buffer in Eshell”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt” “If you want to try eshell, try combining it with EAT (eat-eshell-mode).”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “How I am deeply integrating Emacs” Excellent, reliable terminal emulator
“there's eat as excellent terminal emulator for emacs”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Emacs is my new window manager (2015)” “I have eat installed and it's working great.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “The terminal of the future” “So far it’s been the best one.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt” Fast enough for quick TUIs
“It runs full-fledged TUIs like vim and ncmpcpp in Eshell slowly, but is good enough for quick fzf uses.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014)” “a dedicated eat buffer is fast enough for most common TUIs”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Full-screen TUIs run slowly
“It runs full-fledged TUIs like vim and ncmpcpp in Eshell slowly, but is good enough for quick fzf uses.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014)” Frustrating without reading documentation
“i think everyone should read its fantastic documentation 1st to avoid frustration”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014)”
Other terminal emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | 401 | 158 | 72% | 12 | 3 mo22 owners | Approved |
| Termux | 188 | 31 | 86% | 12 | 1 yr6 owners | Approved |
| iTerm2 | 95 | 69 | 58% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
| Warp terminal | 84 | 86 | 49% | 11 | 1 yr5 owners | — |
| eat (Emacs Terminal Emulator)This page | 12 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
13 of the 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“My favorite part about EAT is the fact that it works in-buffer in Eshell”
“So far it’s been the best one.”
“i think everyone should read its fantastic documentation 1st to avoid frustration”
“a dedicated eat buffer is fast enough for most common TUIs”
“It runs full-fledged TUIs like vim and ncmpcpp in Eshell slowly, but is good enough for quick fzf uses.”
“This is extremely helpful. I have never considered the possibility that there could be a better method”
“It's a reasonably fast terminal emulator that integrates with Eshell so that all commands run in Eshell have full terminal emulation”
“better handling of now common escape sequences”
“My solution was patching eat to allow buffer renames to the terminal title”
“Thanks for the recommendation!”
“there's eat as excellent terminal emulator for emacs”
“I have eat installed and it's working great.”
“If you want to try eshell, try combining it with EAT (eat-eshell-mode).”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.