Terminal emulators

A terminal emulator is the window where your shell runs. macOS ships with Terminal, and the apps below replace it with features such as split panes, GPU-accelerated rendering, multiplexed sessions, SSH profiles and text-based configuration.

When choosing one, check how it is configured (a settings window, a config file or a scripting language), whether it keeps native Mac behaviour like standard shortcuts and tabs, and how it handles fonts, ligatures and colour themes. Some of these terminals also add tools for running AI coding agents, which you may or may not want.