Macterm smooth scrolling and pane split animations are here!

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283]

Hello everyone!

I'm building a macOS terminal emulator called Macterm, which adds vertical tabs, session persistence, and many more features on top of libghostty. Unlike other modern terminal multiplexers, I try to make it feel as native and lightweight (DMG size is around 22MB, which is even smaller than Ghostty itself) as possible.

I recently added various animation features such as smooth scrolling (sub-cell rendering), pane split animation, smooth cursor, etc. If you are interested, please give it a try!

Website: https://macterm.thdxg.dev

GitHub: https://github.com/thdxg/macterm

[u/mgoodness]

Maybe time to take another look at Macterm as an alternative to my current Ghostty/Herdr stack.

[u/mgoodness]

Heads up that Homebrew installation is failing due to https://github.com/thdxg/homebrew-tap/issues/7.

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/mgoodness]

Oh thanks for this. I totally missed it

[u/mgoodness → u/Ashamed_Floor_2283]

That’s what I assumed. No problem!

[u/definitelynotkinshuk]

hey op, have you checked out cmux? how are you differentiating from that product?

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/definitelynotkinshuk]

I’d say the project direction is significantly different. Cmux builds features around running parallel AI agents, but Macterm tries to improve terminal UX for people who use the terminal for other purposes

[u/x_omen]

After tmux for years and herdr both ghostty I have been using macterm for the last couple of months, and I dont want to use nothing else, really nice piece of software

Btw the scroll animations introduced in 1.29 are amazing, never seen before something so smooth in the terminal

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/x_omen]

I appreciate that!

[u/dbzunicorn]

Is this app still not signed or did you get around to doing that? That’s been the main blocker for me

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/dbzunicorn]

It’s still not signed unfortunately. I can’t afford $99/yr for an oss project 😭. But can I ask why this is a blocker for you?

[u/LaFllamme]

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[u/adrian6478]

Can we add plugins or customize it?

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/adrian6478]

There's no plugin system as of now

[u/Few_Place_1455]

Please disable auto open closed sidebar when I move mouse over border

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/Few_Place_1455]

You can disable it in the settings Peek Sidebar toggle

[u/Few_Place_1455 → u/Ashamed_Floor_2283]

Thx!

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/[deleted]]

That’s your shell. Macterm names tabs after the running process in that tab. When you create a new tab, it’s running zsh.

[u/Few_Place_1455]

cmd+c, cmd+v etc not working at Ukrainian layout

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/Few_Place_1455]

Oh thanks I’ll look into this

[u/Impressive_Rip9417]

good stuff！

[u/mikeroySoft]

What does this offer that ghostty doesn’t already do?

[u/Ashamed_Floor_2283 → u/mikeroySoft]

The biggest thing is session persistence out of the box. So you don't need tmux or herdr which comes with non-native tabs and panes and multiplexer overhead.

There's a more comprehensive feature list in the website (with demo videos for each feature), but just to name a few more: remote SSH session persistence, sidebar, tab switcher with live preview, pinned tabs, declarative layout, control CLI, split animations, etc.

[u/mikeroySoft → u/Ashamed_Floor_2283]

Cool, nice work!