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gnachman
iTerm2
Swift2011–2026
gnachman / iTerm2

iTerm2

iTerm2 is a terminal emulator for Mac OS X that does amazing things.

Command LineGames & EmulationMobile & Desktop
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
32Distinct people
44Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
18.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

iTerm2 is a terminal emulator for Mac OS X that does amazing things.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year44 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2011-12-20 18:48:52 UTC to 2026-09-05 15:55:18 UTC.

0369122011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20112012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 0 submissions, 11 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11011
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505

What Hacker News says

44 sources
hombre_fatal·Sep 5, 2026
Good questions. > why did it write so much to begin with? It's an incremental project covering a complex domain. At any time, the code has to stay balanced in a spot that addresses correctness and performance across things like pty parsing, a terminal grid, stateful pty behavior, rendering, scrollback history, font glyphs, and like all software there is a fractal of idiosyncrasies that sprout up. And that's just the terminal side. Unless you can see the future, like most software, so much of the project is trying things and seeing what happens at the periphery, like how to represent "row damage" and apply it in a way that works with macOS Core Graphics and 1000 other things. e.g. Can you tell me off the top of your head what the trade-offs are of representing the terminal contents/scrollback as a pre-wrapped grid vs. a list of logical lin
Read the rest
es that are soft-wrapped on the fly? Did you enumerate them all and correctly weigh them such that you can pick the ideal solution ahead of time? No. You just kinda make educated decisions and find out in practice what the exact weight of the trade-offs are. You should see the amount of iterations a human needs on these kinds of projects. https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty has almost 18,000 commits. So does https://github.com/gnachman/iterm2. So does https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty. > why do you assume that now there's no more debt? I don't. Like all software, you try to ratchet into better and better positions, and you try to come up with metrics that can tell you "You are here" with regard to rather fuzzy goals like "it should be correct and performant and nice to use". But I can look at individual findings and their solution to go "yes, this improves the code." And on principle I think that, e.g. correct/DRY/simple by-construction is superior to by-convention, and I assume it helps future agents reason about the system and make future edits, and it gives them singular places to make changes that impact multiple components just like it would a human. But how much did it actually matter?
In There's No Limit to How Bad Code Can Get
cryptbe·Apr 18, 2026
Disclosure: I didn't discover the vulnerability. I wrote the blog post. Thanks for releasing a fix! It was surprising that there wasn't an official release, even though the bug impacts otherwise routine, harmless workflows. The patch itself [1] framed the issue as "hypothetical," so the goal of the blog post was to demonstrate that it is not. I'm glad that you've agreed to release a fix. [1] https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/a9e745993c2e2cbb30...
In "cat readme.txt" is not safe if you use iTerm2
KerrickStaley·Apr 17, 2026
> At the time of writing, the fix has not yet reached stable releases. Why was this disclosed before the hole was patched in the stable release? It's only been 18 days since the bug was reported to upstream, which is much shorter than typical vulnerability disclosure deadlines. The upstream commit (https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/a9e745993c2e2cbb30...) has way less information than this blog post, so I think releasing this blog post now materially increases the chance that this will be exploited in the wild. Update: The author was able to develop an exploit by prompting an LLM with just the upstream commit, but I still think this blog post raises the visibility of the vulnerability.
In "cat readme.txt" is not safe if you use iTerm2
soraminazuki·Jan 3, 2025
What did George ever do to you that warrants this level of contempt and condescension? Am I missing something, because there are so many activists like you having an inexplicable vendetta against iTerm2 all over this thread. This is sad because iTerm2 is one of the best terminal emulators out there. It's the first terminal emulator that popularized shell integration. Newer terminal emulators are still catching up, a decade later. tmux integration is another popular feature that's still unique to iTerm2. George has been working tirelessly on iTerm2 pretty much solo for 15 years [1]. To this day, he continuously brings new improvements to the terminal experience that keeps being copied by other terminal emulators. Developers benefit from his work, iTerm2 users and non-users alike. We should be expressing our gratitude instead of doing whate
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ver people are doing in this thread. George found this security issue the day after New Year's day and immediately released a fix [2]. That's commitment. And while the effects of this bug can be severe, most people wouldn't have triggered the bug. > 1. Either: > a) You used the it2ssh command, or > b) In Settings > Profiles > General, the > Command popup menu was set to "SSH" (not > "Login Shell", "Command", or "Custom > Command") AND "SSH Integration" was checked > in the SSH configuration dialog. That dialog > is shown when you click the Configure button > next to the ssh arguments field in Settings. It's almost as if some people are jumping at any chance of retribution, justified or not. This all sure intensified after iTerm2 at one point introduced an AI-related feature into the default build that one can just safely forget exists by not actively enabling and engaging with it. Some in the Mastodon community even went as far as openly fantasizing about inflicting violence on the poor dev [3]. I just can't understand the morality of some of the people you see online. [1]: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/graphs/contributors [2]: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commits/master/?since=202... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240613170001/https://archive.i...
In iTerm2 critical security release
mort96·Jan 3, 2025
That's not unreasonable code in itself, it's writing to the file only if verbose mode is enabled. This is the commit which disabled verbose mode, just before the code which removed verbose framer logging entirely: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/014ba7ec40fc790f65... This is the commit which enabled VERBOSE mode: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/5db0f74bf647f6d53e... (from Jul 3, 2024) That is probably just from having set VERBOSE=1 while implementing or debugging something and forgetting to revert it to VERBOSE=0 before committing.
In iTerm2 critical security release
soraminazuki·Jun 13, 2024
The correct response to false allegations followed by insults and threats is anything but to admit it. The software in question is a popular free and open source software that has more than a decade of trust. The AI feature fundamentally requires the user to actively engage with in order to use it [1], with no nagging or coercion whatsoever. In fact, the only people reminding us of its existence are the Mastodon mobs, not iTerm. The feature wasn't added out of pure hype either. It was likely inspired by user feedback [2], and the dev ultimately added it because it was useful for him personally [3]. Despite all of this, people are raging about unprovable nefarious motives and making claims about spyware, as if it's Windows we're talking about. They pretend as if it's maintained by some faceless for-profit entity trying to screw us over ins
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tead of a sole developer trying to create good software in his spare time. Some are even openly fantasizing about inflicting physical violence [4]. This kind of behavior should be condemned, not praised. [1]: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/a3122c0100d8900a15cb... [2]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/6955 [3]: https://techhub.social/@gnachman/109542492387391561 [4]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240613165712/https://archive.i...
In iTerm2 v3.5.1 moves AI features into external plugin
mdaniel·Jun 13, 2024
Don't overlook the awesome "automatically bury session" option, which hides the "actual" iTerm2 window running the tmux control plane: https://iterm2.com/documentation-buried-sessions.html and this is the preference I mean: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/v3.5.2/Interfaces/Pr... I also have dedicated .ssh/config entries for ensuring that ssh connects directly to tmux: Host whatever-mux Hostname whatever RequestTTY yes RemoteCommand /usr/bin/tmux -u -CC att
In Show HN: Shpool, a Lightweight Tmux Alternative
soraminazuki·Jun 13, 2024
Entering an API key doesn't immediately cause iTerm to start send data to OpenAI. That's a straight up lie started by people who actually tested the feature and posted their findings on the GitLab thread [1][2] about it. OpenAI integration is activated after you write a question to be sent to the AI [3]. It takes many clicking and typing to get to that point and can't possibly happen by accident. It's one thing to not like a feature. But to behave in the way people behaved is not merely ridiculous, it's wrong and horrifying. People came to the issue tracker from Mastodon looking to start a fight that was uncalled for, threw insults and lies, and fantasized about physically harming the dev [4]. When all they could've done to avoid the feature was to simply do nothing. [1]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11475 [2]: https://gitl
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ab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11470 [3]: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/a3122c0100d8900a15cb... [4]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240613165712/https://archive.i...
In iTerm2 v3.5.1 moves AI features into external plugin

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