
Hyper 3.0.0 - michaeljohansen
https://github.com/zeit/hyper/releases/tag/3.0.0
======
StevePerkins
I just don't understand the use case here. It's an Electron-based terminal...
that has a thousand pretty themes, but lacks basic functionality like being
able to expand your scroll buffer. It's just not usable as a daily driver.

I'm not trying to hate on Electron (VS Code is my main editor now, and I enjoy
it). But I just don't see the point here _other_ than, " _Look what they wrote
with Electron!_ ". Is it the "social" aspect of posting color themes and
seeing how many downloads you get, and I'm just old?

~~~
mikl
Ditto here. Given how performance- and security intensive a terminal emulator
is (who wants to add JavaScript injection to their list of server security
worries?), writing one in Electron seems a bit nuts to me.

~~~
malux85
well as long as it's not EVAL'ing the .... wait they wouldn't ... OH NO

------
nickjj
I gave up on Hyper about 8 months ago after only using it for a few weeks.

2.1 was close to unusable on Windows. Major prompt / cursor bugs (it would
disappear all the time), ~200ms input latency (but a terminal's only job is to
make typing feel awesome) and it took 5 seconds+ to open on an SSD. I reported
a number of those issues but the maintainers didn't even respond even though
people were commenting that it was a problem for them too.

Since then I've moved to wsltty for WSL and it's great when combined with
tmux. Lightning fast with all of the terminal features you could ever want
thanks to tmux (separate windows (ie. tabs), split panes, buffer searching and
session saving / restoring). Close to zero input latency too as of wsltty
3.0.0.

~~~
timdorr
Windows Terminal was just released yesterday, which might be a good option for
you. It's even open source:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal](https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal)

~~~
nickjj
Unfortunately that terminal requires an insider's version of Windows to run.

Enabling insiders means MS will track a bunch of data about you besides
anonymous metrics and you can't opt out of it because insiders requests that
info.

WSL v2 and / or that terminal sounds good but it may not be until Oct 2019 or
Apr 2020 before the stable Windows channel sees it. They tend to release 2
major updates a year and if WSL v2 is only being released in June 2019 for
insiders it's quite the push to have it ready by Oct 2019 for stable.

~~~
dmix
> Enabling insiders means MS will track a bunch of data about you besides
> anonymous metrics and you can't opt out of it because insiders requests that
> info.

As much as Microsoft tries to change it still remains the same...

So much for developers.

------
beardicus
In before the JavaScript gripes begin. How about we skip the Electron whinging
this time?

I haven't switched to Hyper because I have found it a bit pokey and that
doesn't work for me, but I'll still give this one a try. I'm curious to hear
about any interesting reasons other people _have_ chosen Hyper, or
particularly cool things it enables by being built on web technologies.
Anybody?

~~~
beardicus
Update: Hyper 3 feels super-fast. Startup and new tabs are somewhat sluggish
still but actual rendering responsiveness seems real nice.

~~~
HereBeBeasties
Sad commentary on the state of the world when you feel the need to comment on
the speed with which a computer can pain text to the screen.

If you read their changelog you'll see that Hyper 3.0 uses WebGL to achieve
this.

OpenGL. To draw text at a reasonable speed. It's not individually an insane
thing to do within the context of Electron, etc. but take five steps back and
talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut...

~~~
iaml
It's not insane. FYI the fastest terminal (alacritty) achieves its performance
by rendering via gpu, and it's written in rust. iTerm recently started doing
it too.

~~~
nickjj
But if you look at input latency benchmarks (there was one posted not too long
ago on HN, maybe a month or 6 weeks ago) alacritty isn't close to the fastest
terminal for pressing a key and being able to see the key on the screen.

IMO pressing a key and seeing it is the primary focus of a terminal.

~~~
Fnoord
Here is an output latency benchmark [1]

[1]
[https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty/issues/673#issuecomment-4...](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty/issues/673#issuecomment-459342135)

------
neilsimp1
I have been using Cmder on Windows for a while, but Hyper has also looked
really good.

With the announcement of the new Windows Terminal, I wonder if these projects
will become irrelevant. The only reason I use Cmder is for tabs, and once I
have Windows Terminal with that feature, I doubt I would ever use Cmder or
Hyper.

~~~
nickjj
If you adapt using tmux then you are free to pick whatever terminal you want
because tabs / split panes are done very well in tmux.

For example I tried nearly every terminal on Windows and ultimately use wsltty
because tmux offers nearly instant tabs and split panes, buffer searching and
everything else you could want in a terminal.

Here's a whole write up on the comparisons:
[https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/conemu-vs-hyper-vs-
terminus-v...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/conemu-vs-hyper-vs-terminus-vs-
mobaxterm-terminator-vs-ubuntu-wsl)

~~~
neilsimp1
Perhaps. I love tmux for multiple terminals in one SSH connection, but I'm a
big fan of tabbed browsing, tabbed file explorers, etc., so having tabs in my
terminal just makes sense. I could probably get used to tmux handling tabs and
split panes all the time.

~~~
deskamess
What do you use/recommend for tabbed file explorer?

~~~
neilsimp1
I mean I use Dolphin because I'm a KDE user, but I believe it's possible in
Windows with the Set UI [0]. There are third party Windows file explorers but
I don't have any experience with them.

[0] [https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/102362-turn-off-tabs-
app...](https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/102362-turn-off-tabs-apps-sets-
windows-10-a.html)

------
egwynn
Hyper certainly looks cool, but “looks cool” doesn’t cut it when it comes to
winning me over for what might be the #1 most important tool I use on a daily
basis. Is there a page telling me why I should use this over my current
terminal (iTerm2, FWIW)?

~~~
jacobwg
This is my personal experience, but for me, considering that the terminal is
so frequently used, the small improvements add up over time.

I found the font rendering more pleasant on the eyes. I'm not entirely sure
why this is, and I'd be interested to see what options could be tweaked in
iTerm2 to make it visually similar, but Hyper just "feels" nicer to look at
for me.

Second, I've found it useful to be able to customize my terminal with web
technologies. Previously I used a custom prompt with lots of different bits of
context (git status, node environment, python environment, Kubernetes context,
etc). With Hyper it's been fairly easy for me to create a local plugin that
renders a statusbar with those bits of context. It's built with React, CSS,
etc, so personally the ability to easily adjust and create is super nice.

Two things I miss from iTerm2 are infinite scrollback and the ability to
search output with Command-F. I would assume there's a plugin out there to
handle searching, I just haven't looked that far into it yet.

Performance of Hyper 2 was adequate enough for me to switch. I'm interested to
see how Hyper 3 compares.

I'm also interested in iTerm2 3.3, which overhauls the iTerm2 UI.

tl;dr - small customizations add up. It's basically the same migration as when
I moved from Sublime Text to Atom (though I use VS Code now)

~~~
intertextuality
You say the small things. You mean like, how quickly the terminal opens and
how quickly text gets painted on the screen?

iTerm2 blows hyper out of the water in those regards, and it actually does add
up. Styling otherwise really isn't that difficult, but it begs the question of
_why_ do you need so much information? Are you actually developing or just
spending time tinkering on your terminal to have bells and whistles that you
don't actually even look at? Surely a simple colorscheme + font that aliases
correctly should be enough to "feel nice" to look at?

The only thing keeping me from the better performance of alacritty is iterm2's
infinite scrollback and some other miscellaneous features that alacritty will
probably never get.

~~~
jacobwg
Yeah, I mean all this is very subjective. For me I don't care about terminal
open speed since I keep the app always running, and my criteria for text
rendering speed is it has to be fast enough to not be annoying, which is the
case for me.

It's less about having lots of info and more about being able to control how
it's displayed. I really only have a few things I keep around in my prompt /
status bar, and they're all immediately useful to the task at hand and are
reflective of the current project I'm working inside - I jump around a lot
between tech stacks for personal and work environments, and being able to know
where I am is important:

\- what's the git status of this project

\- is this a Python or Node app

\- am I inside a virtualenv

\- what's the Kubernetes cluster context name

\- what's the currently active Kubernetes namespace

I really hate visual clutter, so the ability to move some of this stuff to a
status bar rather than keeping it around on every repaint of the prompt, and
be able to exactly style it as desired with CSS, is what attracted me to
Hyper. This applies to the whole UI, if there's any element I don't like, I
can change it.

Similar to you, I've considered switching to Alacritty, but it doesn't hit the
features/customization to performance ratio for me.

------
mwexler
For those wondering, HTML/JS/CSS terminal.
[https://hyper.is/](https://hyper.is/) gives more useful introduction.

------
nailer
I've been using Hyper 3 Canary for a while, if you're on Windows it's a
MASSIVE difference from previous versions - all the normal stuff you expect to
work (select to copy, right click paste, rendering, readline shortcuts etc)
works (with a little tweaking, see below). It's definitely usable as a daily
driver.

I've been using Windows Terminal in the last 24 hours and it still has some
major bugs. While I'd say Fluent Terminal is the best in terms of being
lightweight and feature filled, and Alacritty for raw power if you have big
shell workloads, Hyper 3 is pretty damn good and worth a try.

Sane defaults:

Use pwsh (not cmd, that's the Windows equivalent of launching 70's Bourne
shell on a *nix box):

    
    
        shell: "C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\6\\pwsh.exe",
        shellArgs: [],
    

Normal new tab, close window keys, make readline keys work:

    
    
        keymaps: {
          "tab:new": "ctrl+t",
          // Also known as 'close tab'
          "pane:close": "ctrl+w",
          // Bug workaround for https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/2873
          "editor:movePreviousWord": "",
          "editor:moveNextWord": ""
        },

------
sirtoffski
My choices are as follows.

* Linux:

# Tilix - probably the best option in terms of performance, customization,
looks and features.

[https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/](https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/)

# Extraterm - in my experience the best electron-based terminal emulator in
terms of performance. It has some neat features too. I catch myself using it
more often than Tilix.

[https://github.com/sedwards2009/extraterm](https://github.com/sedwards2009/extraterm)

* Windows:

# CMDer - pretty much the only option. Has everything one needs, even built in
bash on Windows. Useful on Windows 7 PCs at work that don't have WSL or admin
rights to install more stuff.

[https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder](https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder)

* MacOS

# Plain old built in terminal is actually nice ;)

# Extraterm is alright too, but it's electron based and the old mac-mini does
not really like it.

# iTerm 2 - never got around to fully configuring it, but everyone swears by
it.

[https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2](https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2)

~~~
y4mi
cmdr/conemu's copy paste is broken on my work pc.

i tried all available copy-paste options (i think there were 4?). none worked.
also, the screen keeps flickering with cmdr.

probably a byproduct from the cheap hardware or virus scanner... so hyper won
by default.

i'm looking forward to the new windows terminal though. it'll hopefully get
rid of that atrocity.

~~~
sirtoffski
I usually use ctrl+c/ctrl+v for single line copy paste.

For multi-line the only thing I found to work was right click :) it then
properly formats multi-line paste.

~~~
y4mi
Even a single word copy paste is missing at least a few characters in the
middle

------
qpiox
What's the point of using hypertext-(web)-standard-oriented multimedia-capable
framework to create an application that just shows plain text (ok, plain text
+ 16 colors + bold).

Why would one package a 50MB terminal, packing stuff that will never be needed
in a terminal.

It would make sense if they were to spend all that effort to create a
terminal-based web browser.

------
echelon
I thought this was the Rust HTTP client/server [1]. I've never heard of this.

When two notable projects share the same name, it's confusing. One of these
projects should consider rebranding.

[1] [https://hyper.rs](https://hyper.rs)

~~~
nat
I don't think there's all that much overlap between people who use Rust and
people who think a terminal written in javascript is a good idea.

~~~
moosingin3space
Contrary to popular HN memes, most Rust developers aren't zealots.

------
mrskitch
I'm a daily user of Hyper. There has been some gripes of pretty basic things
like scrolling and resizing. These aren't showstoppers for me, however I only
do pretty basic operations in a terminal (some server maintenance, git
commands, and basic file operations).

The big downside I see to using the GPU for this is that it is such a hit to
battery life. I was an avid iTerm user, but noticed that when I had it running
I only get ~2 hours of usable battery time, even when it was just
backgrounded. I hope that Hyper doesn't have this same issue -- will keep a
close eye on it.

------
FennNaten
I tried hyper v2 recently, took some time to fiddle with plugins and config
everything to my liking. It was usable, though missing the ability to launch
different shells in different tabs (I'm a windows user, so being able to have
a git bash tab, a cmd tab, a powershell tab, a wsl tab, etc. is kind of a
must). This morning I was prompted to upgrade to hyper v3, I clicked yes, it
refreshed. All my plugins and configs were gone. No prior warnings, no
suggested upgrade path, just full wipeout. I uninstalled hyper and went back
to cmder.

------
msavelyev
Here is my comparison of terminal typing latencies on mac.

[https://imgur.com/yFDuVpR](https://imgur.com/yFDuVpR)

Terminal.app is still going to by my go-to terminal

------
eberkund
Command prompt on Windows is pretty fast but Git Bash is still unusably slow.
I guess I'll try again next major release.

------
thosakwe
Honestly speaking, I started using Hyper again this week after 3.0.0 came out,
and I like it a lot.

I'm not really sure if there's any actual benefit to using it as opposed to
the regular Mac terminal, but the colors are bit easier on my eyes at night.

The only thing I'm missing is the ability to move tabs around.

~~~
1f97
why not use iTerm if on OS X?

~~~
ixtli
Agree. iTerm2 has been doing rendering with opengl for years. If you're on OS
X its unclear why something like Hyper is necessary.

~~~
ilikehurdles
I stopped using iTerm2 in favor of the default Terminal because iTerm2 has
worse performance and latency [1], and I wasn't getting anything out of its
additional features. I noticed an improvement going back to Terminal.app. YMMV
of course; but if we're asking why Hyper is necessary, I'd like to ask the
same question of iTerm2.

[1]: [https://danluu.com/term-latency/](https://danluu.com/term-latency/)

~~~
bauerd
iTerm2 has lots of features that Terminal.app lacks:
[https://www.iterm2.com/features.html](https://www.iterm2.com/features.html)

------
thatguyagain
If you are a developer and using hyper, what language do you work with the
most?

~~~
nailer
JS/TS. Occasionally Python or C#.

------
konart
>Disable VSCode type checking

okay?

------
lprd
Aside from the plethora of themes and other visual niceties, can anyone
explain to be the appeal of Hyper when less expensive, more performant
alternatives exist?

A terminal written in Electron seems just silly to me...

~~~
qpiox
Well, LaTeX is also Turing complete, so I wonder why has no-one tried
programming a terminal in it. It would be fun to install 1GB of TeX packages
to be able to open a terminal.

------
nkkollaw
I've been waiting for Hyper to get reordable tabs (which to me is kind of a
basic feature).

I wonder if this version will finally introduce this functionality.

~~~
Per_Bothner
May I suggest DomTerm ([https://domterm.org](https://domterm.org))? It has
builtin tabs _and_ tiling, which can dragged and reordered with the mouse. It
works very nicely (using the GoldenLayout package).

~~~
nkkollaw
You may, thank you. I'm not really looking for a terminal built on web tech
specifically, I use it for work and I care about reliability more than
anything else.

I'll take a look and see if I can install it on Linux, though.

Thanks!

------
carmate383
"New Blazing Fast WebGL Engine". Wow really? Major changes - "Emoji support".
For fucks sake, seriously?

Am I the only one that doesn't want anything of the following _bull shit_?

* A terminal emulator that is dependent on an entire web browser (not to mention the layers upon layers of bullshit abstractions all to run something from the 70s).

* Support for "emojis" (I mean, come on. It's a _damn terminal_).

* To execute code that can hijack control of my shell from any of the 956 dependencies[1] this _heap of shit_ relies on.

[1] $ git clone
[https://github.com/zeit/hyper.git](https://github.com/zeit/hyper.git) $ cd
hyper $ npm install $ ls -lt | wc -l 956

~~~
nfoz
Like it or not: in the era of Unicode, emoji's are plaintext.

