Why hackers moved from iTerm2 to Ghostty
4 hackers described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“I switched due some iTerm2 bugs and performance reasons”ritzaco, 2026-10-28original comment ↗
“I switched from iTerm 2 and while Ghostty is a lot faster and lighter”toxik, 2026-10-28original comment ↗
“I now use ghostty it’s faster definitely.”merb, 2026-10-27original comment ↗
“I prefer ghostty to iTerm2 now.”_joel, 2026-03-12original comment ↗
Use iTerm2? Get alerted when hackers criticize it.
Tell us the tools in your stack. When hackers start criticizing one of them, or moving to an alternative, you will hear about it first.
iTerm2 vs Ghostty
| iTerm2 | Ghostty | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 1 | 7 |
| Hackers who criticize | 5 | 1 |
| Moved away from it | 5 | 1 |
| Moved to it | 1 | 7 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of iTerm2
“i switched from iTerm 2 on macOS because it would get bogged down sometimes or occasionally lag.”hack1312, 2026-06-22original comment ↗
“I switched from iTerm2 because at the time (possibly still), iTerm2 had a performance bug where large amounts of underlined text would cause the terminal to slow down…”read full quote
“I switched from iTerm2 because at the time (possibly still), iTerm2 had a performance bug where large amounts of underlined text would cause the terminal to slow down noticeably.”
Praise for Ghostty
“It had nicer fonts by default, better tab switching that was consistent with the keyboard shortcut to switch to any tab on Mac”archiepeach, 2026-02-02original comment ↗
“and from iTerm to Ghostty, Claude Code essentially converted my configs in a matter of minutes”arnvald, 2026-01-10original comment ↗
“i switched from alacritty -> ghostty, and occasionally use zed.”dfee, 2025-12-01original comment ↗
Other moves from iTerm2
- iTerm2 → WezTerm (2)