macOS Terminal
Hacker ApprovedRanked 9 of 40 terminal emulators by recommenders
Recommended as a fast, capable default that comes with macOS and covers most needs, though critics say it lacks features like truecolor support.
Recommended as a fast, capable default that comes with macOS and covers most needs, though critics say it lacks features like truecolor support.
63 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 44
- criticize it
- 19
- approval share
- 70%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 15 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 44 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 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
Good enough for most needs
“I don't believe I've ever needed anything more than what the macOS Terminal app is capable of”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” “Terminal in OS X is a close enough approximation out of the box”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Apple rejected my dictation app for using the accessibility API” “It's what I've used for years and it's entirely fine for me.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” - Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
- Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Berthd”
- Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones”
Fast and low latency
“I've been living in Terminal.app / zsh / tmux / vim for 15 years and have never once thought "this is slower than I want."”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Shitty – fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours” “terminal.app is your best bet for most cases if you care about latency”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Terminal Latency on Windows (2024)” “It is fast and that is basically all i need from a terminal emulator”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” - Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit”
Already installed on macOS
“There's a perfectly good terminal emulator called Terminal.app, it's usually the first thing I put on my dock after a fresh install of MacOS.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Xcode 26.3 unlocks the power of agentic coding” “I'll take the default mac stuff over that any day of the week”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “"This Is Not the Computer for You"” “On Mac the default terminal works for me”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator” - Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs”
- Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “MacBook Neo”
Solid standards and rendering support
“These are quite capable applications able to render good, complex text-based interfaces.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” “Since tahoe it supports 24bit colour and has key combos for the most common features.”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Even "cat readme.txt" is not safe” “one of the very few that respect double-wide and double-height DEC modes”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “macOS 15.8.2 Breaks OpenGL”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Apple has neglected development
“Apple hasn't done much with Terminal.app since they inherited it from NeXT”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” “The worst by far is Apple Terminal, truly the IE6 of terminal emulators.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” Problems with TUI apps
“would simply dump APC to the screen, ignore the framing, and treat the APC data as normal pty data”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “A Terminal Protocol for Program Status (OSC 7501)” “the default terminal app which has some problems with TUI apps”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” “pretty painful if you're trying to make nice interactive TUIs”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” Lacks features like truecolor
“Terminal app has no truecolor support, no highres mouse support, no kitty graphics protocol”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Terminal Latency on Windows (2024)” “drastically featureless in comparison to a lot of third party terminals”
Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Terminals should generate the 256-color palette”
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 | — |
| macOS TerminalThis page | 44 | 19 | 70% | 11 | 15 yrs3 owners | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 68 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“as good to my eye as the built in Terminal and iTerm”
“I think the default Terminal.app is good enough.”
“pretty painful if you're trying to make nice interactive TUIs”
“the default terminal app which has some problems with TUI apps”
“The worst by far is Apple Terminal, truly the IE6 of terminal emulators.”
“one of the very few that respect double-wide and double-height DEC modes”
“would simply dump APC to the screen, ignore the framing, and treat the APC data as normal pty data”
“I find the default MacOS terminal to be plenty.”
“if your backup software is a CLI, you have to give Full Disk Access permissions to your Terminal”
“terminal and iterm on mac just work”
“A lot of these guys have marketshare already and are weaving AI surgically through the stack”
“Terminal.app is amongst the best, if these old danluu benchmarks still hold”
“I've been living in Terminal.app / zsh / tmux / vim for 15 years and have never once thought "this is slower than I want."”
“Terminal in OS X is a close enough approximation out of the box”
“Terminal.app (which admittedly do it better than me”
“These are quite capable applications able to render good, complex text-based interfaces.”
“when Tahoe added it to Terminal.app- I switched back.”
“Since tahoe it supports 24bit colour and has key combos for the most common features.”
“what's wrong with Terminal.app indicating when it's suppressing output?”
“Terminal has done a nice thing of making it so if you highlight text, Ctrl-C copies the first time you press it”
“I'll take the default mac stuff over that any day of the week”
“It's not very bad, it even has big font support from the VT100 series. And a lot of style settings in the menu bar.”
“It's UNIX, just open Terminal.app”
“The configuration system is arse and is kind of a lock-in as it is in all plist form”
“On Mac the default terminal works for me”
“drastically featureless in comparison to a lot of third party terminals”
“There's a perfectly good terminal emulator called Terminal.app, it's usually the first thing I put on my dock after a fresh install of MacOS.”
“Good option for Pixel owners or phones with MediaTek chips though.”
“from Mac Terminal, because I'm tired of gemini-cli not getting my shift-return for newlines”
“The main problem was that the VM crashed on my pixel fairly frequently.”
“you then have a pocketable Linux machine to develop code on”
“it’s way faster than both iTerm and terminal.app”
“Even Terminal.app isn't too bad anymore.”
“Terminal app has no truecolor support, no highres mouse support, no kitty graphics protocol”
“terminal.app is your best bet for most cases if you care about latency”
“It's what I've used for years and it's entirely fine for me.”
“It is fast and that is basically all i need from a terminal emulator”
“I don't believe I've ever needed anything more than what the macOS Terminal app is capable of”
“it drastically reduces my stress level when working on other people's devices”
“Apple hasn't done much with Terminal.app since they inherited it from NeXT”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.