Macterm
A lightweight macOS terminal with vertical tabs, session persistence, and native UI. Built on libghostty and open-source.
brew install --cask thdxg/tap/macterm
Splits and navigation
Split a pane in any direction and move between panes by keybind. Drag a pane onto another to join them, or pull one out into its own tab.
Sidebar and tabs
Projects and their tabs live in a native macOS sidebar, stacked vertically where there's actually room to read them. The window picks up the background color the running program paints.
Tab switcher
Switch tabs from a live preview of each one, so you pick the pane you meant by looking at it rather than by name.
Command palette and layouts
Press ⌘P to split panes, switch projects, or open a directory. Declare a project's tabs, splits, and per-pane commands in ~/.config/macterm/projects/ and the workspace builds itself.
Quick terminal
A global terminal that drops down from anywhere with a hotkey, then gets out of your way when you're done.
Remote projects
Open a directory on another machine over SSH. Panes persist on the host, surviving quits, dropped connections, even a local reboot.
Session persistence
Quitting detaches your shells instead of killing them. Relaunch; they come back — scrollback and running processes intact.
Control CLI
A bundled macterm command drives the running app over a socket — so scripts and AI agents can spawn panes and run commands.
Pinned tabs
Pin a tab above your projects to keep it running — it starts on every launch, and restores itself with its command if the session dies.
Ghostty compatibility
Reads your existing ghostty/config. Theme, font, keybinds — all of it just works.