Gone Ghostty and Never Goin' Back

In a quest to simplify all aspects of my life, I've been trying to make decisions according to what the brilliant Herbert Simon coined satisficing — choosing the option that's "good enough" rather than endlessly optimizing for the best.

My latest win? I switched my main terminal from iTerm2 to Ghostty.

I've Been Ready to Move On

iTerm2 has always been my default — a worthy upgrade over the stock macOS Terminal. But I've always longed for the simplicity and speed of the built-in terminal. Trust me, I've tried going back to it, multiple times, but it just has too many rough edges and feels outdated.

iTerm was a great way to modernize the terminal experience, especially if you want split panes without reaching for screen or tmux. But like many beloved apps, as they age, they get more bloated (looking at you, Evernote); so did iTerm with a bunch of features that I didn't and would never use. I don't need a browser or AI plugin, thanks. I'll do just fine with good 'ol Bash.

The Breaking Point

I have a decent dotfiles setup with various conveniences that loads before each prompt, so it sometimes took over a second to get to a prompt. I'd gotten used to it — that is, until I came across Mitchell Hashimoto somewhere discussing how he was able to make this terminal I'd never heard of so performant.

I thought, why not give it a shot? Wouldn't be the first time I'd tried a new terminal and gone back to iTerm2, so no harm, no foul. Nope, warp and alacritty didn't make the cut. But, then I saw some new benchmarks comparing different terminals. It was even more of a no-brainer.

Ghostty FTW 👻️

It's so good iTerm2 got kicked off my Brewfile, and I don't plan on going back. I love that Ghostty is not only fast, but has enough well-thought-out defaults that I could just go.