Terminal.app characteristics

This is a cheat sheet documenting Terminal.app capabilities and quirks.

TERM here isn't guaranteed - a dozen different values can be selected from in the preferences dialog by the user.

One of the selectable TERM values (there is no free-form entry) is nsterm (as in NeXTSTEP), which some users will intentionally select because modern ncurses ships a terminfo database with a thorough nsterm entry describing Terminal.app's actual features and keys.

Version column refers to version shown in About dialog and set in TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION. It will change as Terminal.app is tweaked in minor OS updates, and can be a float. e.g. 10.14.0 was 421, 10.14.2 has version 421.1. I try to list the numbers I've run into or a range.

macOS Release	Release Date	Version	default TERM	Notes
10.6 Snow Leopard	August 2009	272 - 273.1	xterm-color	Has dim, OSC 1,2 for tab/window title
10.7 Lion	July 2011	299, 303	xterm-color	256 color support added
10.8 Mountain Lion	July 2012	309	xterm-256color	TERM_SESSION_ID generated xterm-color option gone xterm-16color option added OSC 6 and 7 for file://host/file, file://host/cwd
10.9 Mavericks	October 2013	326	xterm-256color
10.10 Yosemite	October 2014	343, 343.6	xterm-256color
10.11 El Capitan	September 2015	361	xterm-256color	Mouse reporting added
10.12 Sierra	September 2016	370	xterm-256color	Italics added
10.13 High Sierra	September 2017	400	xterm-256color
10.14 Mojave	September 2018	421, 421.1	xterm-256color