DEV Community: Tom Dringer

Mado vs iTerm2 vs Kitty vs Warp vs Ghostty: Which macOS Terminal Is Right for You?

Tom Dringer — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:20:19 +0000

If you've spent any time in the macOS terminal community recently, you know the space is more competitive than it's ever been. For years iTerm2 was the default answer. Now there's a new wave of terminals each taking a different bet on what developers actually need. This article compares the main options honestly - including Mado, the terminal I built.

iTerm2

iTerm2 is the veteran. It's been around since 2011, it's free, it's open source, and it has basically every feature you could ask for accumulated over a decade. Split panes, profiles, triggers, smart selection, shell integration - it's all there. If you're already using it and happy, there's no compelling reason to switch. The downside is that it shows its age. The UI feels heavy, the settings panel is overwhelming, and there's no integrated workflow layer - it's purely a terminal emulator. You manage your own multiplexer (usually tmux), your own task tracking, your own everything. It does one thing well and delegates the rest.

🔗 https://iterm2.com

Kitty

Kitty is the performance terminal. GPU-accelerated, cross-platform (macOS, Linux, BSD), and genuinely fast. It pioneered the terminal graphics protocol that lets applications render images directly in the terminal, and its "kittens" extension system lets you add Python-based plugins. It's highly configurable but requires that configuration - there's no hand-holding. If you're comfortable writing config files and want maximum control and performance, Kitty is excellent. If you want something that works well out of the box, the learning curve is steep.

🔗 https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty

Warp

Warp took a bold swing: reimagine the terminal from scratch around AI and team collaboration. Commands are "blocks" you can share, search, and reference. The AI integration is deep - it's not bolted on, it's the core product direction. It's impressive and it's free. The trade-off is that Warp is built on a custom GPU renderer (not native AppKit), and its pivot toward agentic coding workflows means if you just want a fast, clean terminal it can feel like more than you need. It's also cross-platform now, which means some of the macOS-native feel is lost.

🔗 https://warp.dev

Ghostty

Ghostty is the new entrant from Mitchell Hashimoto (founder of HashiCorp). It's native, GPU-accelerated, cross-platform, and fast. The philosophy is to be an excellent terminal emulator and nothing more - no opinions on your workflow, no AI layer, just a great foundation. It's open source and free. If you want the cleanest, most native-feeling terminal without any extras, Ghostty is a strong choice. The community is growing quickly. The trade-off is that it's deliberately minimal - you're still assembling your own workflow around it.

🔗 https://ghostty.org

Mado

Mado is built for developers who want everything in one window. It's a native macOS terminal multiplexer - split panes, keyboard-driven navigation, workspace switching - but with a sidebar plugin system that lets you run fully custom panels alongside your terminal. Clock, Pomodoro, world time, clipboard history, an RSS feed reader, a Tasku stats dashboard - all rendered as native pixel frames, no web views. The tight integration with https://github.com/tomdringer/tasku is the thing that makes it different: your tasks, projects, and priorities live in the sidebar, scoped to whichever workspace you're in. Switch workspace, the task list switches with you. It's free, open source, macOS only, and built in Rust with a Slint UI layer - no Electron, no browser engine.

🔗https://nerimasoft.co.uk/mado.html

Honourable mention: Supacode

Supacode is worth knowing about if your workflow is heavily AI-agent-driven. It's built specifically for running multiple coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, etc.) in parallel, each in isolated git worktrees. Not a general-purpose terminal, but if you're managing several agents simultaneously it's a clever tool.
🔗 https://supacode.sh

Summary

The right choice depends on your priorities. If you want raw performance and cross-platform, Kitty. If you want AI-first collaboration, Warp. If you want a minimal native foundation, Ghostty. If you want a complete, keyboard-driven workflow with task management baked in, Mado.

Have we missed anything on the list? Let us know.

I Love tmux. But I Switched to Something with Themes, Plugins, and a Config That Doesn't Fight Back.

Tom Dringer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:35:10 +0000

This story originally appeared on Medium

Update: Mado is now available!

Install it with Homebrew:
brew tap tomdringer/tap
brew install --cask tomdringer/tap/mado
Source on Github

If you've spent any real time in the terminal, you've probably settled into a multiplexer. tmux is the obvious choice — it's
battle-tested, endlessly configurable, and runs everywhere. GNU Screen is still kicking for people who learned it a decade ago.
Zellij has earned a following with its friendlier defaults. These are all good tools. I'm not here to argue otherwise.

But there's a ceiling you hit with all of them. Not in functionality — they can all split panes, manage sessions, and keep your
work alive through a disconnected SSH session. The ceiling is comfort. The feeling that your terminal workspace is yours, rather
than a configuration file you're constantly losing the thread of.

That's the gap Mado is trying to fill.

A sidebar that actually does something

Most multiplexers give you panes. Mado gives you panes and a sidebar — but not the kind that just shows a file tree and calls it done. The sidebar runs independent plugins: small executables that draw their own UI and respond to keyboard and mouse input.

Out of the box you get a clock, a Pomodoro timer, a clipboard history manager, a Tasku stats monitor, Tasku workspaces, Tasku priorities, World time, task timer and an AI assistant panel. Each one lives in the sidebar while your terminal work carries on uninterrupted.

The plugin protocol is straightforward enough that you can write your own in whatever language you're comfortable with. Plugins receive events as JSON on stdin and render by writing pixel frames to stdout. That's the whole contract. There's no SDK to install, no framework to learn.

Your work, exactly where you left it

Switch projects in the Mado sidebar and your current layout is parked — all panes, their working directories, and scroll

positions saved automatically. Switch back later and everything is restored exactly as you left it. No manual session saving, no tmux-resurrect, no lost context. If you've ever come back to a terminal session and spent five minutes reconstructing which directory was open in which pane, you'll know immediately why this matters.

Configuration without the archaeology

Anyone who's spent an afternoon tracking down where tmux actually reads its config on a new machine knows the feeling. Mado

takes the opposite approach: one command, mado config, opens your configuration in $EDITOR. It's a single TOML file. Theme,
font, shell, plugins — all in one place, all in a format you can read without consulting a man page.

Custom themes work the same way. Drop a .toml file into ~/.config/mado/themes/, update your config file and it appears automatically. No restart, no rebuild.

Twenty-two themes, because comfort is visual too

This is the part that might sound frivolous until you've spent eight hours staring at a terminal that feels slightly wrong. Mado ships with twenty-two themes built on Tailwind's colour palettes — Slate, Indigo, Emerald, Rose, and nineteen others. Each theme coordinates the terminal colours, sidebar chrome, focus indicators, and toolbar into something that feels deliberate rather than assembled. One line in your config to change everything.

The point

tmux isn't going anywhere, and it shouldn't. It's the right tool for a lot of situations — servers, remote sessions, scripted

environments. Mado isn't trying to replace it. It's trying to answer a different question: what does a multiplexer look like when it's built for the machine you actually work on every day?

Mado is open source, macOS-only, and launches in public beta on October 1st. Linux and Windows support is on the roadmap.

Your Terminal Tasks, Everywhere: Introducing Tasku Cloud

Tom Dringer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:08:26 +0000

Note: This story originally appeared on Medium.

If you've been using Tasku — the open-source CLI task manager — you already know the appeal. No dashboards, no browser tabs, no bloated SaaS. Just a clean terminal interface, SQLite under the hood, and your tasks exactly where you're already working.

But there's always been one catch: your tasks live on one machine.

Switch to your laptop, your tasks aren't there. Work with a team, and everyone's working in isolation. That's what Tasku Cloud fixes.

What is Tasku Cloud?

Tasku Cloud is the companion web app for Tasku. It backs up your tasks to the cloud, keeps them in sync across every device you work on, and — for teams — gives everyone a shared view of what's being worked on.

It's not a replacement for the CLI. It's a layer on top. Your local SQLite database is still the source of truth. Tasku Cloud is opt-in, and if you ever stop using it, your data is exactly where you left it.

Why you need it

Your tasks should follow you

You're on your desktop, you add a task. You pick up your laptop on the sofa, it's there. You open a browser at work, it's there. That's cloud sync — and it should just work.

Backups matter

SQLite is rock solid, but it lives in ~/.tasku/tasks.db. One bad rm -rf, one failed disk, and it's gone. Tasku Cloud backs everything up automatically so you never have to think about it.

Teams need a shared view

The Tasku CLI is brilliant for solo work, but the moment you're working with other people, you need more. Who's working on what? What's blocked? What's overdue? Tasku Cloud's Teams plan brings shared projects, task assignment, and an activity feed — without turning into Jira.

The same Tasku you know

One of the things that makes Tasku Cloud feel right is that it doesn't reinvent anything. The fields are the same ones you use in the CLI and in Mado: status, priority, due dates, projects, categories, tags. No mapping, no import/export dance. It just looks like Tasku — because it is.

Pricing

Tasku Cloud is free for individuals. Sign up, connect your tasks, and get cloud backup and sync with no credit card and no trial period.

The Teams plan (coming soon) adds everything you need for collaborative work:

Shared projects and tasks
Team member assignments
Activity feed

Simple per-seat pricing tiers, no feature gates on the things you actually need.

Get started

Head to tasku.cloud, create a free account, and have your tasks in the cloud in minutes. If you haven't tried the Tasku CLI yet, install it first:

gem install tasku

And if you're a macOS user, keep an eye on Mado — launching October 1st with Tasku built right into the sidebar.