iTerm2

Raised as a usability problem by 78 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 57 threads.

People raised many different problems with iTerm2, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 50 complaints

Settings are hard to find across confusing, convoluted menus2026-10-28
Became bloated with useless features and AI, hard to keep a shareable config2026-10-27
Moving settings to a new system means clumsy exporting and importing that is easy to forget2026-10-27
Overlay mode is finicky to set up and hidden in settings2026-08-29
Configuration stored in an awkward location that is hard to manage with dotfile tools2026-07-30
Terminal links open a browser on accidental clicks, showing unexpected content2026-03-13
Confusing and overwhelming to use, bloated for people who just want a working terminal2026-03-02
Visual mode's neon yellow text on pink background is hard on the eyes2026-02-18
Can't select text with the mouse and delete it in the shell2026-02-14
Many useful features are buried in the interface and hard to find2025-11-03
App-specific keybindings are hidden from keyboard settings and hard to see or disable2025-08-16
Key presses feel laggy; delay before the character moves on screen2025-01-27
Scrolling in neovim is noticeably slower, making the terminal cumbersome to use2025-01-03
Gets a new beta update prompt practically every time it launches, which is annoying2025-01-03
Typing in terminals other than kitty feels laggy, with about 150ms delays2025-01-03
Takes multiple seconds to resize, beachballing while the user waits2024-12-27
Settings can only be changed through the UI; plain text config import is impractical2024-10-23
Running an AI command needs a mouse click; no keyboard shortcut to confirm, so it is slower than typing2024-06-13
Pasting now adds stray characters and shows a warning alert the user doesn't understand2024-05-26
Rendering latency too high when used with neovim2024-05-22
Unclear how to move the AI-proposed command from the prompt window into the terminal2024-05-21
Can't find a checkbox to enable AI; unclear that empty API key disables the feature2024-05-21
No clear indicator showing whether AI integration is enabled or disabled2024-05-21
Commenter found the tmux integration feature very confusing and turned it off2024-05-21
Terminal feels too slow to interact with2023-12-19
Config stored in Apple plist; dynamic JSON profiles are hard to use correctly2023-10-08
Feels noticeably slow compared to other terminal emulators2023-10-08
After years of use, can't remember the key combination to split panes2023-04-04
Paste bracketing left on after ssh session ends, causing annoying consequences2023-03-20
Scrolling one vim split makes redraws slow and laggy on high-resolution screens2023-03-13
Its quirks are more annoying than its perks2022-12-08
Basic word-by-word cursor movement doesn't work by default; users must find a non-default keybinding preset2022-11-17
Tmux integrations break and ignore user keybinds, and don't work with normal tmux setups2022-06-12
Swapping command and option keys breaks command-tabbing out of the app and other keybinds2021-11-03
Terminal feels laggy and slow to render compared to Linux terminals2021-10-26
Too many features, and it is slow with high input latency2021-09-11
Terminal app feels unusable to the commenter, with input lag that makes it hard to work in2020-12-03
Terminal fails to open the first time under a work account, needs a second click2020-04-18
With stacked multiple screens, visor slides in from offscreen and appears on the wrong display2020-03-03
Scrolling in large vim buffers is slow, around 40fps at 5k resolution2019-12-16
Vim runs slowly in iTerm2 and the user can't find a fix despite trying many suggestions2019-12-16
User struggled to find how to move the window to the bottom2019-08-02
Settings via JSON file are confusing and esoteric at times2019-08-02
Saved window arrangements can't be tied to a project; AppleScript layouts are hard to build2019-08-01
Typing feels sluggish, like typing through molasses, compared to Terminal2019-08-01
Tab titles show profile name instead of running process, making tabs hard to tell apart2019-08-01
Option-click cursor navigation doesn't work reliably, unlike in Terminal.app2019-05-27
Status bar can't be turned off and clutters the screen2019-03-25
Clicked through status bar setup and can't figure out how to revert it2019-03-24
Typing lags so much the commenter switched back to Terminal.app2019-03-20