Hyper

Hyper is a terminal built on web technologies by Vercel. It is an Electron app that uses xterm.js for terminal emulation and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, with downloads for .app, .exe, .deb, .rpm and AppImage. Its stated goal is a good-looking, extensible terminal built on open web standards, and it appeals mostly to developers who want to customize the terminal with JavaScript, CSS and npm packages.

Everything is configured in .hyper.js, a JavaScript module stored in the application data directory: ~/Library/Application Support/Hyper/ on macOS, $Env:AppData/Hyper/ on Windows and ~/.config/Hyper/ on Linux. Its config object covers fonts, cursor shape and color, the ANSI palette, padding, custom CSS, the shell and its arguments, environment variables, scrollback size and copy-on-select. A keymaps section can rebind any command. The app has tabs and split panes, for example command+d and command+shift+d on macOS to split right or down.

Extensibility is the main draw. Plugins and themes are ordinary npm packages, found with npm search hyper and enabled by listing them in the plugins array of .hyper.js. Hyper installs them into .hyper_plugins and shows a notification. Extensions are Node.js modules loaded by both the Electron main process and the renderer. Instead of a fixed plugin API, they hook into the React components and Redux actions that make up the app, with methods such as onApp and decorateConfig, so a plugin can change almost any part of the UI or behavior.

The trade-offs follow from the architecture. An Electron app carries a full browser runtime, and the README lists speed and stability as the project's initial focus. In the repository's default config, ligatures are disabled (disableLigatures) and the WebGL renderer is off (webGLRenderer). The latest stable release, v3.4.1, came out in January 2023, though the repository is still updated.

Installation

# via Homebrew (macOS)
brew install --cask hyper

# via Chocolatey (Windows)
choco install hyper