term-mac

Native macOS terminal with PuTTY-style copy & paste, dynamic SSH tab titles and configurable cursor blink.

~1.4 MB · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · GPL-2.0

What is term-mac?

A small, focused terminal for macOS. It runs your login shell (zsh by default) and adds the parts of PuTTY you probably miss on a Mac: selection is copied to the clipboard automatically when you release the mouse, and right-click pastes from the clipboard. No menus, no key combos.

On top of that: tabs that show where you actually are (your prompt's OSC title — so ssh user@host shows user@host:cwd in the tab), auto-scroll when your selection drag leaves the visible area, configurable cursor blink, and a folder you can pin as the default starting directory for new tabs.

Features

Copy on selectRelease the mouse → text is in the clipboard. No menu, no Cmd+C.
Right-click pastePuTTY-style paste. No detour through Edit → Paste.
Dynamic tab titlesTabs reflect the shell's OSC 0/1/2 title. SSH sessions show user@host:cwd automatically.
Auto-scroll on dragSelection extends across long output as you drag past the bottom/top edge.
Cursor blink: 4 modesOff / Slow / Medium / Fast — set in Settings.
Startup folderPin a default working directory for new tabs (Settings → Pornire).
ThemesDefault, Solarized Dark/Light, Dracula, Nord, macOS Light, more.
Adjustable fontCmd+= / Cmd+- to zoom. Slider in Settings.
Shell integrationOptional one-time hook in ~/.zshrc (with markers, removable) for the title + interactive tab completion.
Self-contained .dmg~1.4 MB. No dependencies beyond macOS itself.

Install

Download the latest .dmg from the releases page.
Open the .dmg, drag term-mac.app to Applications.
Because the bundle is ad-hoc signed (no paid Apple Developer ID yet), Gatekeeper will refuse to open it on first launch. Clear the quarantine flag once:
```
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/term-mac.app
```
Launch from /Applications. Open ⌘, for Settings, ⌘T for a new tab, ⌘? for the in-app help.

Not on the Mac App Store. term-mac is intentionally non-sandboxed — a real local terminal needs full disk access to your files (vim, less, grep across the system, etc.). For a sandbox-compatible version, see the separate (private) VTerm project.

What's not yet there

Apple Developer ID signing + notarization (so Gatekeeper opens it without the xattr step).
bash / fish equivalents of the zsh integration (only zsh today).
Search inside the buffer (Cmd+F).
Custom keybindings.

License & credits

term-mac is released under GPL-2.0-or-later. It uses SwiftTerm (MIT) as the terminal emulator.

Changelog

Mirrors the GitHub releases exactly. Newest first.

v0.1.4-alpha · 2026-05-27

Scrollback fix — the setting now actually works.

Settings > Buffer scrollback now takes effect. In v0.1.2 / v0.1.3 the buffer stayed at 500 lines regardless of the value you picked. Root cause: setting terminal.options.scrollback + calling resetNormalBuffer() in makeNSView was getting silently undone by SwiftTerm's setupOptions running later in the view layout pipeline, which re-assigned terminal.options to a fresh struct with default scrollback=500. Fix: use SwiftTerm's public Terminal.changeScrollback(_:) API, which mutates Buffer.scrollback and lines.maxLength in place without recreating the buffer.
Scrollback now applies to open tabs too. Change the setting in Settings and the tabs you have open immediately get the new buffer size — no need to close & reopen.

v0.1.3-alpha · 2026-05-26 — First scrollback attempt (didn't actually work)

Tried to fix the v0.1.2 scrollback bug by calling resetNormalBuffer() instead of setup(isReset:false). Closer, but still didn't survive SwiftTerm's later layout calls. Superseded by v0.1.4.

v0.1.2-alpha · 2026-05-26 — Buffer scrollback setting (added, but not effective)

Added the Settings > Buffer scrollback picker (1.000 / 5.000 / 10.000 / 25.000 / 50.000 / 100.000 lines) so common workflows like mdls Downloads/ + Tab with 1217 entries don't truncate. The UI shipped but the wiring was wrong — properly fixed in v0.1.4.

v0.1.1-alpha · 2026-05-25 — About panel + Help window

About panel — term-mac → About term-mac opens a real panel with author, email, repo link, version & build number. Replaces the empty auto-generated one.
Help menu — ⌘? opens an in-app window with: What is, Quick start, Selection & paste, SSH tab title, Tab completion, Limitations + links to GitHub / issues / email. Replaces "Help isn't available for term-mac".
Fix: Info.plist now reads version from $(MARKETING_VERSION) — previously hardcoded to "1.0" so version bumps didn't show up in About or Finder Get Info.

v0.1.0-alpha · 2026-05-25 — First public release

First public alpha of a native macOS terminal with PuTTY-style copy/paste.

Local login shell (zsh / bash from $SHELL), tabs (⌘T / ⌘W).
Dynamic tab titles via OSC 0/1/2 — SSH sessions show user@host:cwd automatically.
Copy on select + right-click paste (PuTTY-style).
Auto-scroll while drag-selecting — workaround for an upstream SwiftTerm bug where autoScrollDelta is set but never consumed.
Configurable cursor blink: Off / Slow / Medium / Fast. Uses DECSCUSR + reflection-based access to caretView for the custom animation duration (SwiftTerm hardcodes 0.7s).
Default startup folder in Settings (empty = HOME).
Themes (Default, Solarized, Dracula, Nord, macOS Light, more), adjustable font (⌘= / ⌘-).
Shell integration auto-install in ~/.zshrc (with markers, toggle in Settings): adds the precmd title hook + AUTO_MENU / menu select for interactive tab completion.

Feedback

Bugs and feature requests: issue tracker.
Direct contact: razvan@cremenescu.ro.