iTerm2 3.5.0 | Hacker News Reader

iTerm2 3.5.0

iterm2.com

104 pointsakshaykumar90160 comments

Hi! I’m the author. I wrote my thoughts on the AI furor here (in two unlinked parts because I’m apparently bad at computers):

https://techhub.social/@gnachman/112481098349565431

https://techhub.social/@gnachman/112481098800427110

I’m happy to discuss the tradeoffs.

There’s a change coming in the next dot release so managed environments can disable all generative ai features. I’ll keep an eye out for what others do in this regard to support enterprise users.

I really just don’t want software to have these ai things in them. How long are they going to maintain it?

If they want to allow extensibility for the explicit purpose of Llm integration then why not just… make an API?

They use OpenAI's API with the possibility to set a custom URL, so... done. This makes iTerm compatible with any LLM as long as they implement the same API.

OpenAI's API is the de facto standard for now, it's not up to iTerm to define a standard.

It doesn't look like there's the ability to change the URL. The only options are to change the API key, model name (from a predefined list), the prompt, and the token limit.

search ai in the settings. It's in advanced settings.

So it makes an RPC to an unaudited external server for which they have a reputation for notoriety and stealing Scarlett's voice?

It doesn't, it CAN do it. In the same way you can use curl in iTerm to call OpenAI servers. But if you don't do it, it won't do it on its own.

I hate "AI integration" rubbish as much as everybody else. But in this case the author did it well - it's disabled by default, it won't work unless you decide to paste your key and so on.

The comments in this thread are depressing, I expected much better from HN.

The AI features are but 1 minor aspect of this release, they are optional, you can change the URL to point to a local LLM, yet people are pretending like all your data is going to be sent to OpenAI if you update.

I’m not sure if people are being intentionally daft or are just not reading anything past the word “AI” (which, again, isn’t even listed as the top feature of this release).

If you don’t want to use it, don’t put in an API key. It’s not like you are going to accidentally enable it.

iTerm2 is one of the most solid pieces of software in use on a daily basis. To the point that I often forget it’s not a default/included app. It has a million configuration options and it makes complete sense for them to /offer/ /optional/ AI/LLM features.

Depends on the vantage point. Have you worked in any regulated industries? I can see iTerm joining internal software ban lists because of its AI integration (even if it's off by default).

Security departments of these corps are constantly pleading with their staff to "please stop sharing corp data with LLMs, you're not allowed to do that", all the while staff feel under pressure to deliver faster, and reaching for whatever tools are available.

The temptation to use it will be irresistible to many, especially juniors/temps competing for limited positions and promotions.

From a regulated corp point of view, why would they risk it, and rely on individual staff conscience, knowledge, and ability to estimate risk? Better to neutralise the risk from the outset by banning use of the software. Plenty of other terminals where this can't be enabled at all by any over-excited staff.

It’s a terminal emulator and it has access to a local shell. Your scenario trusts the junior/temp with a shell.

If someone wants to use ChatGPT with their terminal it is not really much of a roadblock to use the LLM's web interface and copy/paste between that and the terminal.

I'd expect then that if the security department is worried about people obeying a "don't use unauthorized LLMs" policy to be blocking access at the network level.

If you work in one of those places, quit.

Following that logic, regulated industries would be going after anything resembling Microsoft Office with a flamethrower. It would be product suicide for any piece of software, like e.g. Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows, to offer even optional AI capabilities.

Yes, and the Fortune 500 et al. are all telling Microsoft that they will be forced to do anything required to protect their businesses, including ceasing all business with Microsoft.

Microsoft needs to tell their shareholders to fuck off and quit backseat driving, but Satya Nadella is just yet another CEO who trades profits today for the end of the company tomorrow.

The mistake you're making is assuming that large companies make logical decisions.

> I’m not sure if people are being intentionally daft or are just not reading anything past the word “AI”

I think this demonstrates the risks of jumping on a bandwagon. When software companies (in general, not iTerm2 specifically) overuse a term, including outright lying to attach a buzzword to basic features that are nothing to do with it, many people respond with an equal and opposite reaction: distrusting use of the term altogether.

We trusted google at one point with a lot of our info, then they started to screw us.

Are people overreacting for something not enabled by default? Quite possibly, but literally today open ai is getting in trouble for almost certainly using Scarlett Johansson's voice, even after she specifically told them "no". They're already giving all the indications they don't care about consequences to abuse.

And the URL for the AI API shouldn't be buried in the advanced settings.

I can see the perception/concern being different than the technical reality. I just did the update myself and briefly saw something about "AI Term" or other and finished the update. Afterward I was wondering how to get details on what that meant--searching "AI" in iTerm2 Help menu shows no results. If I hadn't read this post/comments already I would be concerned as should anyone who installed without detailed understanding.

Agree, people are complaining about a new OPTIONAL feature on a open source project?

It's like the Facebook integration and Twitter integration that Apple did to Mac OS X Lion. It's basically "don't do that".

Totally.

There are clear explanations in the release notes and the wiki entry linked from the relevant place in the preference pane [1]. The full release note is displayed before updating. There are numerous comments here explaining how it's impossible to accidentally enable the feature. It's opt-in, you have to input a paid API key, you can use a offline model instead, and the data it sends are totally customizable and by default limited to the output of "uname" and the prompt that you explicitly enter.

Yet people are ignoring all of that and writing all sorts of misinformation.

iTerm2 is featureful yet solid, constantly improved on, doesn't work against the user, and is free. I've submitted patches before and the author was nice and responsive. The AI feature is minimal, non-intrusive, and doesn't advertise its existence once you decided not to opt in unlike commercial products hyped up about AI. It's thankless work even without HN piling on and the author deserves much better.

[1]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/wikis/AI-Prompt

These aren't mutually exclusive—it's perfectly possible to be fully aware that this version of iTerm introduces optional AI and be concerned about it. Dismissing these concerns as people "ignoring [the optional aspect] and writing all sorts of misinformation" is disingenuous and unfair.

The most obvious concern is that it becomes non-optional in future, but there are plenty of related concerns ranging all the way up to the general principle of the use of AI technology.

Have you used iTerm2? Saw the amount of work that's put into it? Checked how long it has been cared for, maintained, and continuously improved on by basically one person for more than a decade? All for free and no ads? The iTerm2 developer is a person you can actually trust.

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/graphs/contributors

But all of a sudden you now have people up in arms about how a spyware of a feature was sneakily forced upon them, and be righteous about it. This is sad.

Also, what does it even mean for this feature to become non-optional? It doesn't work without the user typing in a question. Do you seriously think that iTerm2 is the kind of software that's scheming to force users to use AI?

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/wikis/AI-Prompt

I haven't seen any of that pressing the update button on the updater dialog box that automatically pops up (as I usually do, since typically iTerm2 updates don't have such sneaky surprises). Only after the update there was a little slideshow where the AI stuff was hidden somewhere on the 3rd or 4th slide.

You should have. iTerm2 uses Sparkle update and it shows release notes. It was there.

There's a screenshot of how it should look like in Sparkle's project page.

https://sparkle-project.org

Care to explain what's so "sneaky" about it? What did the iTerm2 dev do to you?

You saw the dialog. It's not so hard to verify again. Yet you so quickly accused me of lying. Shame on you.

Sneaky? Hidden?

It is _opt in_ and it’s not the main feature of this release. If it was the first slide you people would be complaining about that too. Maybe it’s best you just uninstall iTerm2 and use the default terminal if you can’t be sure you won’t trip one day, accidentally open the preferences, and enter in an OpenAI key by accident. Don’t forget to get a refund, oh wait…

Yeah, this state of discussion saddens me. There's so many other features I've yet to digest in the release notes. This release has been a long time in coming. Yet, as a daily iTerm user, I haven't thought I have really missed anything. It works and it works well. But, I'm certain there's few things here I'll be using soon. I have been donating a long time, and shall continue to so.

A lot of the comments mention the AI inclusion from an LLM-is-everywhere point of view. I'm also a little confused about why behaviour like that is in a terminal rather than a shell?

To my mind I just want the terminal to render text and handle input, and then it's my shell's job to define behaviour of commands etc.

I find that a super helpful distinction- what if you like iterm but want a different shell like fish or xonsh? How does the LLM integrate there? Is it still gonna spit out zsh commands?

I'm not an apple user, so maybe I'm missing something abouf iterm?

iTerm2 does a bunch of things with native controls that would not be the same in the shell. E.g. tmux integration allows the windows/panes etc. of a tmux session to show up as actual panes in tmux.

The composer is a small native popup that allows you to edit a command using a native textbox instead of interacting with the terminal, and then send it all at once. The AI stuff hooks into this.

iTerm is a feature-packed terminal emulator that's had shell-integration and various smart features to automatically trigger actions based on the terminal text content for a long time, long before the current AI wave.

That makes sense then! I hadn't realises this about iterm since I've never used it- it seems like a blurring of the lines between shell and terminal that I wouldn't want, but maybe I'm not the target user.

So what are the good Mac-centric alternatives for folks who don't want OpenAI snooping around their terminal? Warp already went all-in on AI and cloud, now iTerm headed down that same path.

Alacritty? Kitty? Hyper?

Don’t be like that. Even as it is, iTerm is the furthest thing from Warp. The ai api is upto you to hook up using your own provider key, you don’t have to use to and everything else remains the same. And it’s reasonable to assume they chose the OpenAI rn because it has become the unofficial defacto standard, should a universal one emerge I’m fairly confident iTerm would use that. iTerm’s been around long enough and deserves some good will no?

Outrage culture encourages us to get into a big flap and announce our departure.

You can just not turn it on. This is the most mild AI integration of any recent terminal I’ve seen. Also you can set the url from what other commenters are saying so you can use a local LLM if you want.

This manufactured outrage is absurd. iTerm2 has been the most solid and conservative terminal I’ve ever used and people are pretending they jumped the shark with this feature.

Much like with the whole "web3" crypto craze before it, I think it behooves us to push back pretty loudly on everyone who buys into the grift-of-the-week.

Nobody actually believes OpenAI is giving away billions of dollars in free compute just so we don't have to memorize awk syntax...

Well, it's not free. You have to provide an API key to iTerm.

Calling LLMs a “grift of the week” takes a certain level of obtuseness. LLMs provide value _today_, even if they never got better than what we currently have, or even the open source/weights models we have, they would still be useful. Period.

To compare it to crypto is just silly. Yes they both are over hyped and use GPUs/power but that’s about where the similarities end. Real people (not just techbros speed-running why we have regulations in finance) get value from LLMs today, not some mythical “one day we will all use bitcoin”-bullshit.

> good Mac-centric alternatives for folks who don't want OpenAI snooping around their terminal

iTerm, since they don't do that. Just keep it disabled.

Unless you consider any terminal that lets you make network calls to OpenAI = OpenAI snooping around.

I don't think "it's fine, I unchecked the OpenAI checkbox" is going to make my HIPAA/SOC2 auditor very happy

You don't "uncheck the OpenAI checkbox". You check the box if you want to use it, and you provide an API key. Hooking genAI up to your terminal is sort of one of the obvious use cases for this tech, and they're just providing you with the hooks to use it if you like.

As much as I dislike the current trend of "AI ALL THE THINGS", I don't think supporting it as a completely optional feature is in any way problematic.

> You don't "uncheck the OpenAI checkbox". You check the box if you want to use it

There is no checkbox for that, at least I can't find any and I've been looking quite hard.

There is:

- a text input field for the OpenAI API key (by default empty)

- a text input field named "AI Prompt"

- a "Model" dropdown (which doesn't have a "None" option)

- ...and a Token Limit number input field

...that's it. It also doesn't say anywhere that the key field being empty means that the feature is disabled.

A better UI design would have been a checkbox at the top that's disabled by default, and all the detailed UI fields being greyed out and disabled until that checkbox is enabled.

Checking the box is not enough. You also need to provide an API key for iTerm do be able to do any kind of uploads to OpenAI.

If your auditor does not believe that with the checkbox unchecked and no API key provided, iTerm will not talk to OpenAI, how do they believe any other software you run does not secretly upload stuff to OpenAI?

What's different between a piece of software claiming to not support OpenAI at all vs. one that claims to support OpenAI if the user provides an API key in light of the possibility that both might be lying (if that's an auditors concern)

With iTerm your auditors at least get to check the source code...

It is opt-in, not opt-out. You do not have to uncheck anything. If you do not put the effort to activate it and provide an api key, it will not do anything.

This is a firewall issue, not a software issue. If your auditor think you shouldn't call OpenAI servers, they should ask the network team to set firewall rules in place.

Get a better auditor then.

Oh no, you just "snooped" on GP by reading and answering their question.

I probably hate "AI" more than you, but let's be fair: the author did well in this case - it's disabled and you need to actively enable it (for the 2 folks who actually want it). We should commend people for doing it this way rather than using grey patterns, calling home without consent (or without giving you any other option), forcing local apps to the cloud etc.

The feature requires an OpenAI API so it's not even on by default, you will have to configure it to be able to use it. Not to mention that you just have to not use it and boom, no communication will ever be made with OpenAI even if configured. That is a terrible use of the word "snooping".

I'm really happy with WezTerm https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/

Seconded wezterm is such a great terminal and the lua scripting possibilities including communication with neovim, are really powerful. Also it runs everywhere even BSD. Have switched on all my systems.

Wow. Doesn't appear to use Electron!

Terminal.app that is shipped with MacOS is very good.

Wezterm is pretty good. There's little to choose between the two, but I use wezterm because it's cross-platform and I like to have the same experience on Mac and Linux.

Stay with iterm < 3.5.0?

It has been a while since the last release… I don’t mind staying outdated for some more time.

Also, I’m not sure if the openai thingy is mandatory.

Then be careful that you're not accidentally clicking the Update button on the updater popup. There was no upfront warning about the AI integration there.

That's not true. In the infobox that opens before you click the update button the AI feature is explicitly mentioned in the summary of changes and with more details further down.

So far I'm happy with WezTerm for daily use. Sometimes still use iTerm, though.

Nothing in the changelog indicated that “OpenAI is now snooping around”. There is an optional feature that you need to set up yourself if you want to use it. Why do you feel like you need to deliberately misunderstand the post as soon as you read the term “AI” somewhere?

None of that is remotely clear when updating through the iTerm2 auto-update popup for a minor version update.

The Preferences panel doesn't have a single indicator which says whether the AI integration is activated or not. It's probably just bad UI design and not mischief, but I was instantly put off by what initially looked like a dark pattern.

PS: even the changelog doesn't explicitly state that the feature is disabled by default, only indirectly by stating that one needs an OpenAI key because requests cost money.

> PS: even the changelog doesn't explicitly state that the feature is disabled by default, only indirectly by stating that one needs an OpenAI key because requests cost money.

The changelog reads

> You will need to provide an OpenAI API key since GPT costs money to use.

One can only misinterpret that to mean the feature is auto-enabled accidentally on purpose. The fact that you cared to edit your comment with that excuse but didn't retract even a single falsehood you spread all over this thread is bad enough. But to continue to pretend that it doesn't require a paid API key even after you explicitly acknowledged that it does? Outright malicious.

> AFAIK using OpenAI through the webpage doesn't cost money, why should I assume that using it through the REST API is any different?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40426922

It's literally mentioned in the changelog:

> It requires you to supply an OpenAI API key.

I mean… you can literally just either not turn it on, or make your own build of this open-source project.

iTerm2 is open source. Stop clutching your pearls and make a fork, if you are compelled to.

iTerm is such an amazing piece of software. It's one of the first things I install. Glad the settings dialog had a "donate" button tucked into the corner; did that straight away. The value for money is absurd.

Thanks a lot I never noticed it. The button points to [1] and I just set up a $3/month donation via GitHub Sponsors[2].

[1] https://iterm2.com/donate.html

[2] https://github.com/sponsors/gnachman

Oh, nice! I've been sponsoring him on Patreon for years, but I'll switch over to to Github Sponsorship since that doesn't take a percentage.

I have a standing $1 per month donation for iTerm. It's not much, but if enough people did the same it could be a nice living for George.

What are the security implication of this? Can you really trust an external entity arbitrarily sending commands as responses. The attack surface is huge and I expect we'll see AI integration as shocking as telnet support at some point in the future.

The commands are not executed automatically.

> A new AI feature in the Toolbelt, "Codecierge", lets you set a goal and then walks you step-by-step to completing it by watching the terminal contents

What exactly is “watching the terminal contents”? Does this happen locally or is data sent to a third party?

If a third party is involved, what data is shared exactly?

Well, the very next sentence after your quote is "It requires you to supply an OpenAI API key" which should answer your question.

Here's the default prompt:

> Return commands suitable for copy/pasting into \(shell) on \(uname). Do NOT include commentary NOR Markdown triple-backtick code blocks as your whole response will be copied into my terminal automatically.

> The script should do this: \(ai.prompt)

This doesn’t answer my question about watching the terminal contents. If I ‘cat’ a file, is the file’s contents sent to openai?

When you open Codecierge in the toolbar sidebar, it warns you with this:

> Everything that happens in your terminal while Codecierge is running will be sent to OpenAI. Don't send them confidential information!

And when you check the box "Run commands automatically" it shows you this popup:

> This lets an AI completely control your computer. It could delete your files, do something stupid or dangerous, or lead to the downfall of humanity. Proceed with caution.

Though that's the Codecierge feature "Toolbelt -> Show Toolbelt" + Toggle "Codecierge" toolbelt window. "Run commands automatically" is hilarious.

The simpler Edit -> Engage AI (Cmd+Y) feature seems much more useful for day to day stuff and it doesn't send terminal contents to OpenAI. e.g. Cmd+Y -> "Extract foo.tar in verbose mode".

That renders the LLM's response command in a small pane and you have to Shift+Enter to go ahead and paste it into the terminal. That's really nice.

> Don't send them confidential information!

Most of what I do in a terminal is confidential. I find it scary and also funny that in the age of data laws, privacy policies, data leaks, etc, someone thought this is an acceptable workflow.

For someone working on their personal projects for which they can make decisions about visibility, why wouldn't it be an acceptable workflow?

Absolutely fine for that workflow.

Make sure to add a note to the project’s privacy policy that user data is sent to openai.

> "Run commands automatically" is hilarious.

Yeah they should make it so it mocks the user for attempting to set it to true and explain in select, direct, simple to understand words why that's a dumb idea and that obviously the user didn't read the disclaimer.

Yeah, it kinda seems like a feature a developer would implement for fun but I don't see much practical use for it off the top of my head.

In the sidebar Codecierge convo they do give you a "Copy code" button whenever it detects code blocks. I think it'd be more practical to also add a "Paste and run" shortcut to each code block. i.e. A little "Play" button.

Aside, Codecierge doesn't seem to read the terminal contents like it says it should. If you ask it any questions or reference anything in your terminal, like an error in response to a command it gave you, it doesn't seem to have that context.

You can set a custom URL to use Ollama which is OpenAI API compatible. Llama3 8b runs quite fast for me on a M1 Max. I'll be making use of this feature I think (haven't tried it yet).

No, unfortunately it's not possible to set a custom URL... OpenAI is either hard coded or using a configuration option that isn't exposed.

It is exposed from Advanced tab under "URL for AI API". You do have to change the model name from the preselected and offered OpenAI GPT model names. Otherwise this AI API URL isn't used. Haven't yet tested with local OAI compatible model yet, though, but did manage to break it using bad address :)

How do you change the model name from the preselected and offered OpenAI GPT model names? I don't see the option to do so.

click the name instead of the dropdown arrow

Note that to make use of ollama, you'll have to wait for the next release or upgrade to a beta release --- while you can change the API right now it's using a newer format for the payload, that's fixed in the beta/next release.

Advanced settings -> "URL for AI API"

If this is a local pattern matcher trained on some text pool it could be really useful.

"- Clipboard content reporting via control sequence OSC 52 is now supported, but requires user consent to enable."

This pairs well with the recently released neovim 0.10 support for OSC 52 to interact with the clipboard.

News headline from May 2025 -

"Junior developer at <big-corp/gov-org> exposed and then deleted all customer/citizen's data after enabling AI integration in popular IT tool 'iTerm', and allowing AI to 'Run commands automatically' on the <big-corp/gov-org> systems."

And we'll do it to ourselves with our race to the bottom - clueless middle managers pushing for "more performance" and creating zero sum competition environments. If I were a junior dev today, I'd feel like I need to enable AI everywhere to compete and survive.

I've been a big fan of iTerm for the last 10+ years. What do people think is the best alternative?

I used iTerm for a few years but i noticed I never actually use any of the features so i switched to Alacritty and never looked back.

I've been using wezterm for a long time now, feels very light but very powerful and great customizability.

I just installed wezterm and looking good so far.

I actually prefer the Lua config script instead of that messy iTerm2 preferences panel.

More reasonably wrapped (i.e. not 50 chars) version: https://gist.github.com/joshka/ac9a31c75824489097234bb0e0494...

(From the original)

- The password manager can now use LastPass or 1Password rather than the keychain. Use the (â‹¯) menu next to the search field to configure it.

I miss the text encoding menu in Firefox :)

No KeePass support, then?

On a related note it’s amazing just how much better the UX of 1Password is, compared to KeePass X, etc.

I used to not want to use 1Password or any other hosted password manager like that. But I had to start using it for work since a couple of years ago and they also gave me a free personal account for it and when I experienced how much better it was than everything else, I started using it and haven’t looked back since.

I wish an equally awesome, but completely local and completely open source password manager existed.

I’ve been a very happy user of Strongbox for many years. And if I’m not in the mac/iOS space, I can still use another Keepass client

https://github.com/strongbox-password-safe/Strongbox

I moved from LastPass to 1Password last year. The difference in experience is not insignificant. Login screen presentation and identification is orders of magnitude better on 1Password than with LastPass.

Also, LastPass's Android app seems an afterthought.

I use KeePassium Pro, which is a _fully native app_, instead of the hideous mess 1Password has turned into.

Maybe more reasonable for desktop ;)

I write this as a top level to avoid targeting anyone specifically but also, my rage is so hot that I have to say it: I think this thread sucks and am appalled by most of the things people are saying.

AI is fine. iTerm2 is awesome. You are a bunch of ingrates complaining about living in an age of miracles and wonder.

Could things go badly some day, sure. Is it ok to have ethical concerns about where AI fits in, sure. Is it reasonable to whinge like this? Only if you are a dogmatic fool.

Up next: AI integration in /bin/ls

Seriously, though, iTerm is an absolute beast. I'm using it every minute of the day for the last like ten years or so, on beta channel.

Genuine question from iTerm users: which of its many, many features do you use most and find most valuable? I have always had it installed, but Terminal.app from macOS seems to have been enough for me. Maybe because I’m always using tmux anyway and that covers some of iTerm’s advantages. But I’m still curious about iTerm.

I installed it for more colors but now I want to uninstall it because of this silly openai feature

There's the tmux -CC control mode support that was mentioned, which combines best from both. Leader key support that arrived in this version might enable even greater Tmux integration.

I like how easy it has been to manage Unix terminal keys without giving up non-US keyboard altogether. Other Unix/Linux terminal stuff like middle click/tap paste. Search is good. Hotkey window ("Quake" mode") is a fun one, but never seem to remember to call it. Contrast adjustment to tweak themes for readability. Smart Selection for urls and the like.

But I've been an user for many years, so hard to look at the experience through features.

Split panes without using something like tmux for me. I like having long running processes like a bundler in watch mode visibile, but with a keyboard shortcut to "maximise" a single pane if I need more space (cmd+shift+Enter).

Tmux integration: tmux is running remotely in control mode and local iTerm2 is managing it. This way tmux panes and windows are mapped to native windows and iTerm2's split panes. Makes remote feel like a local machine

Ghostty - a modern cross-platform very fast terminal written in Zig by non other than Mitchell Hashimoto of Hashicorp fame - is currently in private beta. Public release date is not set but seems to be in few months. BTW, getting into private beta is not difficult. I am using it as my daily driver and love it!

How do you get to private beta?

You join the discord and either wait until a new batch of invites is given out or ask. I haven't done it myself but it doesn't seem too difficult.

> You join the discord

Pass.

Impressive release.

I absolutely love this:

> If you use shell integration and the output of a

> command goes past the top of the screen, the

> command will be shown at the top.

Is it just me, or allowing hallucinations into my terminal a line that I am not willing to cross?

Also, it would make a lot of sense to have an option to use a local ollama instance instead--otherwise this just feels like a cool feature that seemed like a good idea at the time, and not something thought through where it regards privacy and likelihood of damage.

There's advanced setting for "URL for AI API" which I guess you could use for local (OpenAI compatible) model services. Since I only have Azure based OAI I can't use the commercial service anyway...

I would like to use LLM as a helper directly. I wouldn't enable it on main profile and user account, but in a separate profile with restricted account it can be useful. I already do copy paste from LLM, which is far slower than this new feature (though of course more controlled).

> Is it just me, or allowing hallucinations into my terminal a line that I am not willing to cross?

Depends how you use it. For example, writing jq filters, or awk scripts, or some shell pipelines is always a bit of a pain. It's something where LLMs can really improve quality of life.

Or, you know, we could actually build approachable tools, instead of using AI to paper over the UX shortcomings of programs from the 80's...

All of the cli programs you use might have perfect, modern apis, but the issue is that the breadth of your workloads means that you can't memorize every cli program api across every case that pops up.

Consider any program or arguments you seldom use. Or come up with an api for ffmpeg that you think is optimally approachable and you'll see that it's so full-featured that you aren't going to keep it all fresh in your head when you use it every few months.

I'd rather let the computer do grunt work for me.

Not everything is a UI issue though. Some software just is complex. There's nothing wrong with asking for help, be it with an AI or with a colleague.

iTerm is a great program and I love it.

If there is one thing I could add to it, I really would like "IDE style autocomplete", like fig promised, and I guess that warp terminal or whatever it's called.

Right now when I press "CMD+;" it pops up an autocomplete style box, I would just like to have pretty much that but always on, and filled with suggestions for the command being typed, like an IDE or code editor with a language server.

I know I'd get a lot more use out of that than any kind of AI feature – but in the end it's a free tool and has served me well, I don't want to complain about it, I would recommend it to anyone.

I'm using the zsh-autosuggestion plugin (so not a feature of the terminal but of the shell):

https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions

Me too! It's alright, but as I said I really would like it to be IDE-style, with multiple suggestions in a box that I can see all at once and flip through.

There is this: https://github.com/microsoft/inshellisense?tab=readme-ov-fil...

But it doesn't look really "seamless" to me yet, though admittedly I did not give it a proper try.

Are we past the point of no return? Does all software need to have AI features now? I know it's opt-in, but just knowing it's there makes me not want to use this any more.

> Does all software need to have AI features now

All software where it makes sense, yes. AI/LLM are a tool, especially efficient with text, so having terminal integration will be useful to some.

Honestly if an AI can annotate some obscure command line errors with an explanation and a possible fix, I'm all for it. If an AI can help me generate jq filters, I'm all for it. If an AI can help me in any (non intrusive/obnoxious) way, I'm all for it.

It's ok to not like and not use AI features, but completely rejecting them altogether is a mistake.

Appreciate your response. In my opinion, I don't want my terminal to have AI integration. I don't like the idea of AI-generated code being a single key-press away from being sent to a remote server. Others may disagree with that opinion, which is fine too.

On the other hand, I like AI integration.

In iTerm's case, I like this ability to cmd+Y -> "start a static http server here" -> it responds "python3 -m http.server 8000" and I easily shift+enter to run it.

As opposed to alt-tabbing to my browser, opening an LLM (or google, yuck), asking it a question, and the copy and pasting stuff back into my terminal. That might be the familiar / old way of doing everything but it's not the pinnacle of workflows.

I know that was just an example, but if you're doing it that often, why not create a `start-static-server` script/alias? And if you're not doing it often enough to justify that, is the difference in workflow really significant?

Because that question can be swapped for 1000s of other one-off questions I might have over time, like "use find to delete all node_modules folders below this directory" or "use jq to extract the username key from each obj in a top level array".

There are so many AI critics in the comments. It's a pity they ignore all the good features in version 3.5.0 and focus only on a small, completely optional feature.

How does iTerm compare to Prompt from Panic for people who used both a lot?

I just use the default terminal that comes with macOS but was considering trying one of these ones.

I switched back from Prompt to iTerm. Prompt is awfully nice but has enough bugs and rough edges (which I've reported to Panic so they can fix them) that I'm not yet comfortable with it as my daily driver.

Massively more configurable, and generally more features. Use iTerm if you'll enjoy trawling through all the Preference panes and menus to tweak and find neat stuff.

iTerm2 is still the best terminal emulator on macOS, thanks to the hard work by @gnachman. I've tried to switch to alternatives like Kitty and WezTerm several times in the past decade, but none of them beat iTerm2 in terms of stability, feature richness, and ease of configuration. While iTerm2 may fall short in rendering efficiency, compared to how well it performs in other aspects, that's a minor concern.

I'm waiting for the FBI to infiltrate OpenAI and force them to report everything under secret NDA. AI services are a tool to track and convict hackers.

It's a shame their "OpenAI" integration doesn't let you specify the Base URL and model. Then it could have worked locally with ollama (or with any other OpenAI compatible API if that matters: mistral, groq, ...)

It's a bit of a shame to see an open source product makes an "OpenAI" only integration when they could have make it work with minimal effort with the free and open alternatives (ignorance maybe). Hopefully I can contribute that.

Settings > Advanced > Experimental Features > URL for AI API

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/blob/master/sources/iTe...

It literally does exactly that, what made you think it doesn't? Or did you just assume and type a comment based on nothing?

I actually searched advanced options for "openai" but nothing there, honestly it should be a primary options.

Anyway, it doesn't work with ollama's openai compatibility API.

it will work with the next release (and already works with the beta)

Any latency improvements in this release? I love iTerm, but I switched to Alacritty because the speed is so satisfying.

they really put ai in my iterm

I'm really disappointed that iTerm2 is adding AI gimmicks :/ Last place I want that crap integrated is in the terminal. Next disappointment is that there's no obvious checkbox for disabling it.

Are you joking? Just don’t put in an API key and it will never do anything AI related.

People getting all up in arms over an optional feature…

The Settings dialog is not at all clear about whether the AI features are enabled or disabled. The only indicator is an empty OpenAI Key text entry field and that also doesn't say that the feature isn't activated unless a key is provided (e.g. I would assume that the OpenAI REST API is free until some quota is exhausted?)

The iTerm release notes clearly spell out that you need a key to make this feature work.

I guess if you knew nothing about iTerm2, OpenAI, or the myriad of open source tools that use OpenAI and/or are compatible with its API structure (aka, can use something like ollama/LMStudio/etc) you could think that there was some free tier or iTerm2 was footing the bill for the first X requests. Having used iTerm2 for many years and knowing how these types of features work (and knowing OpenAI itself doesn’t have a free tier) it was immediately clear that this was a “bring your own key”-type feature and a “it’s not going to do anything unless you supply a key”.

That's a lot of assumptions about users that are ignorant about OpenAI or anything AI related in general.

I used iTerm2 for the last decade or so without any complaints, but seriously, sneaking in features like this into a minor version and without upfront communication is poor form (as would be something less sinister like a Google search engine or StackOverflow integration, stuff like this is entirely unexpected in a terminal application). It's fine though, I will simply go terminal shopping again.

Again, people using the word “sneaking”, are you sure you know what that word means? It makes absolutely 0 sense in this context.

To work in tech and not have a surface level understanding of LLMs and the biggest player in the field, OpenAI is borderline incompetence in my book. You don’t need to be using it, you don’t need to like it, but you should be aware of it.

All of that is off topic though, there are countless settings in iTerm2 that I don’t use or don’t need, I don’t go complaining online about them or call them “sneaky”. The level of entitlement in these comments astounds me.

> stuff like this is entirely unexpected in a terminal application

Why? Because you wouldn’t use it? Should we remove tmux support because not everyone uses it? And who are you to say what should or shouldn’t be in a terminal? I think a “Google this line/error” or “search SO for this error” would be completely valid ____optional____ features for a terminal to have.

> It's fine though, I will simply go terminal shopping again.

I’ll take “things you won’t actually do for 100”

> I’ll take “things you won’t actually do for 100”

...too late ;) I actually wasn't using any advanced iTerm2 features except installing color themes so no big loss. Right now I'm giving wezterm a try which looks pretty good so far. Next on the list is ghostty. All I actually need is a fast text renderer in a window which houses a shell (eg what a UI terminal usually is).

The tone, vascilating between condescension and brow beating, of your reply is atrocious. My take is that AI is the buzzword du jour much like fuzzy logic was. In any case:

  Should we remove tmux support because not everyone uses it?

tmux doesn't exfiltrate your data to third-party servers.

  I’ll take “things you won’t actually do for 100”

Wow.

These AI features aren't behind the scenes things. You either have to call "Codecierge" or "Engage Artificial Intelligence" explicitly. Unless I've missing something. As per release notes:

- Add AI-powered natural language command generation. Enter a prompt in the composer and select Edit > Engage Artificial Intelligence. You will need to provide an OpenAI API key since GPT costs money to use. - A new AI feature in the Toolbelt, "Codecierge", lets you set a goal and then walks you step-by-step to completing it by watching the terminal contents. It requires you to supply an OpenAI API key.

Because it’s not enabled by default?

One has to not only enable it but also provide an API key first.

I’m failing to see how “off by default” is a worse option here…

I haven't found a checkbox or anything similar to clearly enable/disable the feature.

There's an empty API key text field and a prepopulated OpenAI URL. It's not clear at all that an empty API key means that no requests will be made.

Given that OpenAI is not free why would you assume that anything would be sent?

If you distrust iTerm 2 over this then why would you assume a checkbox would make a difference?

> Given that OpenAI is not free why would you assume that anything would be sent?

AFAIK using OpenAI through the webpage doesn't cost money, why should I assume that using it through the REST API is any different?

There is a difference between the 2 OpenAI products.

One side allows access via prompts for a fixed monthly fee.

The other allows access via an API that you must purchase credits in advance for.

If you don’t have an API key then there’s nothing for it to do because it won’t even begin to connect.

Again I’m not understanding why you feel a Checkbox is fundamentally better here…

Which part of "you will need to provide an OpenAI API key since GPT costs money to use," that you pretend wasn't written in the updater dialog despite being told otherwise more than once, isn't clear to you?

My question is, why doesn't iTerm2 support ollama? It would allow me to run locally, without an internet connection, and keep my data on my computer.

It does.

Can all the Helen Lovejoys angry about this nonsensical feature please just stop using iTerm? iTerm would lose a single digit number of users and $0 of income.

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