# 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon) coined [satisficing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](https://ghostty.org/).

### 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 Trust me, I've tried going back to it, multiple times, but it just has too many rough edges and feels outdated.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.

![](https://bikinibottommall.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/SpongeBob-several-days-later-1024x768.webp align="center")

### 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***.