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.

Feedback

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