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xtermjs
xterm.js
TypeScript2016–2026
xtermjs / xterm.js

xterm.js

A terminal for the web

21Distinct people
35Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
21.4KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A terminal for the web

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 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:59:53 AM 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 year35 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-02-09 13:17:25 UTC to 2026-10-27 18:26:18 UTC.

0123452016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 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
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404

What Hacker News says

5 sources
I looked into this quite a bit when I was optimizing xterm.js. Based on my findings, ^C is highly related to the speed of the output because the process running in the shell may be way ahead of the terminal's parsing/rendering. Imagine you run `cat foo`, the shell could take around 1s to send the output over to the terminal, the terminal might then take 10 seconds to parse and render the output. So after 1 second a ^C will actually do nothing because the cat call has finished. This is the case with Hyper, it hangs due to slow parsing and too much DOM interaction (as hterm was not designed for this sort of thing). There's actually a mechanism for telling the process to pause and resume (sending XOFF/XON signals), which allows the terminal and shell to stay completely in sync (^C very responsive). However, these only really work well in bas
Read the rest
h as oh-my-zsh for example overrides the signal with a custom keybinding. Related links: Original PR: https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js/pull/447 Post-PR bug: https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js/issues/511
In Terminal and shell performance
I work on the VS Code terminal/xterm.js[1]. Hyper which currently uses a fork of hterm, is in the process of moving over to xterm.js due to the feature/performance improvements we've made over the past 12 months. Hyper's 100% CPU/crash issue[2] for example should be fixed through some clever management of the buffer and minimizing changing the DOM when the viewport will completely change on the next frame. I'd love to see the same set of tests on Hyper after they adopt xterm.js and/or on VS Code's terminal. Related: I'm currently in the process of reducing xterm.js' memory consumption[3] in order to support truecolor without a big memory hit. [1]: https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js [2]: https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/94 [3]: https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js/issues/791
In Terminal and shell performance

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