Tecolot

A high-performance native terminal for macOS, built with SwiftTerm, CoreText, and Metal.

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Tecolot combines a high-throughput terminal engine with native macOS behavior and modern terminal protocols. You get native windows, tabs, menus, panels, and automation. You also get Unicode text, modern keyboard input, inline graphics, and automatic shell integration.

The application uses SwiftUI and AppKit around the SwiftTerm terminal engine. It is designed for people who want a capable terminal that looks and works like a Mac application.

• Native macOS workflow. Use native tabs, split panes, Quick Look, Find, Print, the system font panel, Secure Keyboard Entry, AppleScript, and App Shortcuts.
• High-throughput terminal core. In local vtebench tests, Tecolot needed 15% less combined mean time than a released Ghostty build across 10 shared workloads. A newer Ghostty development build was 26% ahead of Tecolot.
• Visual configuration. Create profiles in Settings. Configure the shell, working directory, environment, font, colors, cursor, opacity, key mappings, scrollback, and window behavior without a configuration language.
• Theme exploration. Search 141 built-in themes. Browse them in a grid or on a visual color map, sort them by color and contrast, and preview them before you apply them.
• Modern terminal support. Use TrueColor, bidirectional text, the Kitty keyboard protocol, mouse reporting, semantic prompts, hyperlinks, and Sixel, iTerm2, or Kitty graphics.
• Restorable workspaces. Save terminal sessions as documents. Save named window groups with their positions, tabs, profiles, working directories, and theme overrides.
• Pane cards. Tabs with multiple panes have title bars with app icons and split, zoom, and close controls. Rounded panes sit above a theme gradient or a desktop blur. In Settings → General, turn off Show terminal cards to use the compact layout. This setting applies to all windows. When a window is too small for the title bars, its panes also use the compact layout.
• Tab icons. App icons appear before the native tab title in tilted rectangular cards. Tabs with multiple panes show up to three overlapping cards, with the focused pane in front.

Tecolot uses SwiftTerm's optimized terminal engine and a dedicated render loop that combines pending screen updates. Metal draws the terminal by default. This design keeps high-volume output fast without making the interface unresponsive.

The following results come from local vtebench tests that used the same Mac and workload set. Ghostty is a useful reference because it also targets the high-performance terminal class. It is a demanding baseline, not an average terminal.

Lower values are better. The Tecolot run had a lower mean time in 8 of the 10 workloads than the Ghostty release build. It processed the dense styled-cell workload at 145.6 MiB/s and the Unicode workload at 263.7 MiB/s. The newer Ghostty development build still leads the combined suite, but Tecolot is in the same performance range.

Each workload ran for three seconds and processed at least 1 MiB per sample. The total is the sum of the mean sample times for cell, Unicode, synchronized output, and scrolling workloads. Suite totals repeat to about 1%. Individual tests usually repeat to about 3%, and some repeat to about 7%. Treat small differences as ties.

These tests measure PTY write and terminal processing throughput. They do not measure application startup, complete frame latency, or power use.

• Open multiple native windows and tabs.
• Split a terminal vertically or horizontally.
• Move between panes by order or direction.
• Resize a split by one terminal cell, equalize panes, or zoom one pane.
• Restore window size and position after you restart the application.
• Save and reopen named groups of windows and tabs.

• Create, duplicate, rename, import, export, and apply profiles.
• Run the login shell or a custom command.
• Set profile-specific environment variables and terminal identity values.
• Configure fonts, cursors, opacity, window titles, scrollback, exit behavior, and key mappings.
• Import JSON themes and iTerm2 .itermcolors files.
• Edit a copy of any supplied theme.
• Use the built-in Nerd Font Symbols fallback when your selected font does not contain a required symbol.

• Emulate common VT100 and Xterm behavior, including ANSI and VT500 escape sequences.
• Render emoji, combining characters, grapheme clusters, and bidirectional Arabic and Hebrew text.
• Use Unicode 17 character-width data, 256 colors, and 24-bit color.
• Use the Kitty keyboard protocol and X10, SGR, UTF-8, or URxvt mouse reports.
• Display Sixel images and images that use the iTerm2 or Kitty graphics protocol.
• Use OSC 8 hyperlinks, OSC 52 clipboard access, OSC 133 prompt markers, bracketed paste, focus reports, and synchronized output.

• Load shell integration automatically for supported Zsh, Fish, Nushell, Elvish, and Bash sessions.
• Open a new tab in the current working directory.
• Move to the previous or next semantic shell prompt.
• Select and search terminal text with native macOS controls.
• Export the buffer or the current selection, and print terminal text.
• Receive terminal-bell attention and Dock badge notifications.
• Check for signed updates in the application.

• Use Metal to render the terminal, with a Core Graphics fallback.
• Keep the interface responsive while the terminal receives large amounts of output.
• Reduce graphics work for hidden, occluded, or minimized windows.
• Detect damaged settings data and restore an available backup.

See the complete feature list for more detail.

Tecolot requires macOS 15.5 or later.

1. Download the DMG from the latest GitHub release.
2. Open the DMG.
3. Drag Tecolot.app to the Applications folder.
4. Open Tecolot from Applications.

Release builds are signed and notarized. Tecolot can use Sparkle to check for and install later updates.

Tecolot opens your login shell when it starts. Open Tecolot > Settings to choose a default profile or create a profile for a specific task. New windows use the default profile. You can also select a profile when you open a window or tab.

Useful default shortcuts:

You can change terminal key mappings in each profile. For more setup details, see the getting-started guide.

The known build environment is Xcode 26.x. Continuous integration currently uses Xcode 26.6. The first build needs internet access to resolve Swift package dependencies.

Clone the repository and open the project:

git clone https://github.com/migueldeicaza/tecolot.git
cd tecolot
open Tecolot.xcodeproj

Select the Tecolot scheme in Xcode, then build and run the application.

You can also build an unsigned debug application from the command line:

xcodebuild -resolvePackageDependencies \
  -project Tecolot.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Tecolot

xcodebuild build \
  -project Tecolot.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Tecolot \
  -configuration Debug \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  -skipPackagePluginValidation \
  -derivedDataPath ./build \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

open ./build/Build/Products/Debug/Tecolot.app

Run the test suite with this command:

xcodebuild test \
  -project Tecolot.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Tecolot \
  -configuration Debug \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  -skipPackagePluginValidation \
  -derivedDataPath ./build \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

• Use GitHub Issues for bugs, feature requests, and terminal compatibility problems. For a compatibility problem, include the command, shell, and steps that reproduce it.
• Use Discord for questions and project discussion.
• Pull requests are welcome. Build the application and run the test suite before you submit a change.

Tecolot is available under the MIT License. See the bundled Nerd Font notices and shell-integration license for third-party attribution.