i tried that until i ran into a situation where i wanted one of the terminals to be next to a different app (so i could copy paste something) but i couldn't because the whole terminal app would obviously come to the top once i clicked into it. so i really prefer it to be separate windows

i should have mentioned that i am running different tmux sessions in each of those terminals already. i am not looking for tmux integration to the terminal, as some of my tmux sessions are remote, so there is no real benefit.

i could run a tmux session to lay out all my other tmux sessions, but then that would add another nesting layer, when my tmux sessions are already two levels deep. i also would like each terminal to be in a separate window.