9 Free and Open-source Terminal Apps for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon)

1- Alacritty

Modern OpenGL terminal emulator

Alacritty is a modern terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults, but allows for extensive configuration. By integrating with other applications, rather than reimplementing their functionality, it manages to provide a flexible set of features with high performance. The supported platforms currently consist of BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.

The software is considered to be at a beta level of readiness; there are a few missing features and bugs to be fixed, but it is already used by many as a daily driver.

Read about Alacritty 's features, license, platforms, and more.

2- cool-retro-term

terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens. It has been designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight.

This terminal emulator works under Linux and macOS and requires Qt5. It's suggested that you stick to the latest LTS version.

Settings such as colors, fonts, and effects can be accessed via context menu.

Read about cool-retro-term 's features, license, platforms, and more.

3- slap

Sublime-like terminal-based text editor

slap is a Sublime-like terminal-based text editor that strives to make editing from the terminal easier. It has:

Read about slap 's features, license, platforms, and more.

4- Hyper

A terminal built on web technologies

Read about Hyper 's features, license, platforms, and more.

5- iTerm

macOS Terminal app replacment

iTerm2 is a replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. It works on Macs with macOS 10.14 or newer. iTerm2 brings the terminal into the modern age with features you never knew you always wanted.

Read about iTerm 's features, license, platforms, and more.

6- MacTerm

Terminal emulator for macOS with 24-bit color, bitmap and vector graphics.

Powerful replacement for macOS / OS X Terminal.

Read about MacTerm 's features, license, platforms, and more.

7- Tabby

highly configurable terminal emulator, SSH and serial client

Tabby is an infinitely customizable cross-platform terminal app for local shells, serial, SSH and Telnet connections.

Read about Tabby 's features, license, platforms, and more.

8- kitty

fast, feature-rich, GPU based terminal

Read about kitty 's features, license, platforms, and more.

9- Termscp

Terminal with SCP/SFTP/FTP/S3/SMB Support

Termscp is a feature rich terminal file transfer and explorer, with support for SCP/SFTP/FTP/S3. So basically is a terminal utility with an TUI to connect to a remote server to retrieve and upload files and to interact with the local file system. It is Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Windows compatible.

Read about Termscp 's features, license, platforms, and more.