BetterTerminal
A real macOS terminal — with a plain-English bar, so people who have never used a terminal can still get things done.
Not a terminal person? That's the point.
Type what you want in the ✨ bar and it writes the real command for you — showing it first, so you learn it as you go.
What it does
Say it in English“locate to desktop”, “what is in this folder?”, “make a folder called homework” — 48 phrases.
Real terminal underneathAn actual shell with tabs, split panes, search, 7 themes and command history with exit codes.
Asks before deletingAnything destructive shows the exact command and waits for you.
Works offlineNo account, no API key, nothing to configure. The English layer is built in.
Install
- Click Download installer above (it saves
BetterTerminal-1.1.0.pkg). - Double-click the downloaded file. The Installer opens — click Continue, Install.
- Open BetterTerminal from your Applications folder.
First launch: this app isn't signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, so macOS will
warn you once. To get past it: right-click BetterTerminal in Applications →
Open → Open again. (Or System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.)
You only do this once.
Prefer the terminal?
Terminal-downloaded files don't get the warning at all:
# download and install in one line
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/testisaac1804-byte/portfolio-files/main/installers/BetterTerminal-1.1.0.pkg -o /tmp/BetterTerminal.pkg
sudo installer -pkg /tmp/BetterTerminal.pkg -target /
Try this first
| Type this | It runs |
|---|---|
| go to my desktop | cd ~/Desktop |
| what is in this folder? | ls -la |
| make a folder called homework | mkdir -p homework |
| how much disk space is left? | df -h |
| find files named report | find . -iname '*report*' |
Shortcuts
| ⌘ / | jump to the plain-English bar |
| ⌘ E | show or hide the bar |
| ⌘ T · ⌘ D | new tab · split the window |
| ⌘ F | search everything you have scrolled past |
| ⌘ ⇧ P | command palette — themes, settings, everything |
| ⌘ ↑ / ⌘ ↓ | jump between prompts |
Uninstall
Drag BetterTerminal out of Applications, then remove its settings:
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/BetterTerminal
Built by Isaac Chan · MIT licensed · Real PTY shells (vim, htop and ssh all work normally) ·
Installer SHA-256:
Share the installer with a short link: da.gd/betterterm
634c1be005ce7729adf5a5065d4461b7465a8e2a0b67c72217da7dc0b0b7d801Share the installer with a short link: da.gd/betterterm