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  1. Stackups
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  4. Terminal Emulators
  5. Fish Shell vs iTerm2

Fish Shell vs iTerm2

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

iTerm2
iTerm2
Stacks422
Followers288
Votes7
GitHub Stars16.5K
Forks1.3K
Fish Shell
Fish Shell
Stacks86
Followers100
Votes0
GitHub Stars31.4K
Forks2.2K

Fish Shell vs iTerm2: What are the differences?

Fish Shell and iTerm2 are commonly used tools for developers. Fish Shell is a command-line shell that provides a simple and user-friendly interface, while iTerm2 is a terminal emulator for macOS that offers advanced features and customization options. Despite serving similar purposes, there are key differences between Fish Shell and iTerm2 that set them apart.
  1. Shell Language: One major difference between Fish Shell and iTerm2 is the shell language they use. Fish Shell utilizes its own scripting language, which is designed to be more intuitive and provide helpful suggestions as you type commands. On the other hand, iTerm2 supports various shell languages such as Bash, Zsh, and Fish, allowing users to choose their preferred scripting language.

  2. Auto-Completion: Fish Shell is known for its powerful auto-completion feature. It not only completes commands but also suggests options, file paths, and relevant flags. Moreover, Fish Shell's auto-completion works dynamically by analyzing the available data, making it highly efficient and accurate. While iTerm2 also offers auto-completion, it relies on the underlying shell language's capabilities and may not be as extensive as Fish Shell's auto-completion.

  3. Customization: When it comes to customization, iTerm2 provides a wide range of options to personalize the terminal appearance and behavior. Users can change colors, fonts, and even create multiple profiles with different settings. Additionally, iTerm2 supports extensive configuration through preferences, making it easier to tailor the terminal to individual preferences. In contrast, Fish Shell has limited customization options and focuses more on providing a user-friendly default configuration.

  4. Shell Prompt: The shell prompt, which displays information and allows for command input, is another differentiating factor between Fish Shell and iTerm2. Fish Shell has a default prompt that includes relevant information, such as the current directory and Git branch status. It also uses colors and icons to enhance visual representation. On the other hand, iTerm2 does not have its own default prompt and relies on the shell language's prompt customization options.

  5. Syntax Highlighting: Fish Shell excels in syntax highlighting, making it easier to read and understand commands. It colorizes different parts of a command to distinguish between commands, arguments, variables, and options. This visual aid improves readability and helps prevent syntax errors. While iTerm2 supports basic syntax highlighting, its capabilities may be limited compared to Fish Shell.

  6. Plugin Ecosystem: Fish Shell has an active and growing plugin ecosystem that allows users to extend its functionality further. These plugins can enhance auto-completion, add new commands, or integrate with other tools. iTerm2, on the other hand, does not have its own plugin system, but it can leverage plugins available for the supported shell languages.

In Summary, Fish Shell stands out with its intuitive scripting language, dynamic auto-completion, and strong focus on user-friendliness, while iTerm2 offers extensive customization options, support for multiple shell languages, and a versatile terminal emulator. The choice between the two depends on individual preferences and requirements.

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Detailed Comparison

iTerm2
iTerm2
Fish Shell
Fish Shell

A replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. It works on Macs with macOS 10.12 or newer. iTerm2 brings the terminal into the modern age with features you never knew you always wanted.

It is a useful utility filled shell which makes command line operations quicker with customized functions, easy to append path variable command, command history and more right out of the box.

Split Panes; Hotkey Window; Search; Autocomplete; Mouseless Copy; Paste History; Instant Replay; Configurability; 256 Colors (or more!); Readability; Mouse Reporting; Growl Support; Exposé Tab; Tagged Profiles; Multi-Lingual; Triggers; Shell Integration; Automatic Profile Switching; Inline Images; Password Manager
Autosuggestions; Scripting;VGA Color; Web Based configuration
Statistics
GitHub Stars
16.5K
GitHub Stars
31.4K
GitHub Forks
1.3K
GitHub Forks
2.2K
Stacks
422
Stacks
86
Followers
288
Followers
100
Votes
7
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 5
    Themes
  • 2
    Tabs
No community feedback yet
Integrations
GNU Bash
GNU Bash
Linux
Linux
macOS
macOS
FreeBSD
FreeBSD
Windows
Windows
OpenBSD
OpenBSD

What are some alternatives to iTerm2, Fish Shell?

GNU Bash

GNU Bash

The Bourne Again SHell is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell and Tools standard.

Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal

A new, modern, feature-rich, productive terminal application for command-line users. It includes many of the features most frequently requested by the Windows command-line community.

IPython

IPython

It provides a rich architecture for interactive computing with a powerful interactive shell, a kernel for Jupyter. It has a support for interactive data visualization and use of GUI toolkits. Flexible, embeddable interpreters to load into your own projects. Easy to use, high performance tools for parallel computing.

Putty

Putty

It is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. It is open source software that is available with source code and is developed and supported by a group of volunteers.

Alacritty

Alacritty

It is the fastest terminal emulator in existence. Using the GPU for rendering enables optimizations that simply aren't possible without it. It currently supports macOS, Linux, BSD, and Windows.

Shell

Shell

A shell is a text-based terminal, used for manipulating programs and files. Shell scripts typically manage program execution.

PowerShell

PowerShell

A command-line shell and scripting language built on .NET. Helps system administrators and power-users rapidly automate tasks that manage operating systems (Linux, macOS, and Windows) and processes.

Zsh (Z shell)

Zsh (Z shell)

An interactive login shell, command interpreter and scripting language.

Hyper Terminal

Hyper Terminal

The goal of the project is to create a beautiful and extensible experience for command-line interface users, built on open web standards. Focus will be primarily around speed and stability.

Cmder

Cmder

It is a software package created out of pure frustration over the absence of nice console emulators on Windows. It is based on amazing software, and spiced up with the Monokai color scheme and a custom prompt layout.

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