mOT
An opinionated terminal for macOS.
Instant ⌥ Space overlay · low-latency · native APIs · 440 KB binary
Architecture
An opinionated terminal for macOS.
Instant ⌥ Space overlay · low-latency · native APIs · 440 KB binary
Draws every cell, cursor, and glyph on the CPU into a shared IOSurface.
Font loading, glyph shaping, and fallback fonts.
The CPU-rendered IOSurface is a zero-copy texture, blitted into a CAMetalLayer and shown synchronously to shave a frame of input latency.
GPU-composites the ⌘ M mosaic — every tab scaled live into a grid.
Neovim's VT100 / ANSI parser.
Runs PTY reads and writes off the main thread.
Registers the system-wide ⌥ Space hotkey.
Verifies the Pro license locally with RSA. No phone home.
Code-signed, EdDSA-verified auto-updates.
Windows, tabs, events, and the app shell.
Config lives in ~/.mot.yaml, hot-reloaded on save.
Editing is a Pro feature.
font:
name: Maple Mono
size: 14
# Two palettes. mOT picks one to match the macOS system appearance and
# switches live when you toggle Light or Dark.
dark:
background: #000000
foreground: #AAAAAA
black: #000000
red: #AC2B23
green: #289E46
yellow: #CAA71A
blue: #007AFF
magenta: #803CA2
cyan: #277396
white: #CCCCCC
bright_black: #5B5B5B
bright_red: #CC352D
bright_green: #29AD4E
bright_yellow: #E0B91D
bright_blue: #3395FF
bright_magenta: #C77DEA
bright_cyan: #407A95
bright_white: #FFFFFF
cursor: #AAAAAA
cursor_text: #000000
selection_background: #CFA518
selection_foreground: #333333
link: #4880D9
find_match: #CFA518
find_match_current: #FECB1F
light:
background: #AAAAAA
foreground: #333333
black: #000000
red: #AC2B23
green: #289E46
yellow: #AD8F16
blue: #007AFF
magenta: #803CA2
cyan: #277396
white: #CCCCCC
bright_black: #5B5B5B
bright_red: #CC352D
bright_green: #29AD4E
bright_yellow: #BC9C1C
bright_blue: #3395FF
bright_magenta: #A467C1
bright_cyan: #407A95
bright_white: #FFFFFF
cursor: #333333
cursor_text: #AAAAAA
selection_background: #CFA518
selection_foreground: #333333
link: #3C6AB4
find_match: #CFA518
find_match_current: #FECB1F
general:
shell: zsh
editor: vi
hotkey: opt+space
opacity: 1.00
# margin: inset from the screen edge (points, 0–100)
margin: 8
# scrollback: lines of history kept per tab (200-100000)
scrollback: 10000
# max_columns: hard cap on grid width / scrollback row stride (80-512).
# Lower it to cut per-tab memory (scrollback × max_columns × 16 bytes),
# but windows wider than this will be clamped (dead space on the right).
max_columns: 512
# tab_placement: one of tl, tc, tr, bl, bc, br, none
tab_placement: none
# option_as_alt: which Option key sends Meta (ESC-prefixed) to the shell
# vs. composes characters via your keyboard layout. On layouts where ⌥
# types { } [ ] | \ etc. (e.g. Norwegian), keep at least one ⌥ composing.
# left -> only left ⌥ is Meta (default), right ⌥ composes (like AltGr)
# right -> only right ⌥ is Meta, left ⌥ composes
# true -> both ⌥ keys are Meta (never compose)
# false -> neither is Meta (both compose)
option_as_alt: left
# present_mode: how each frame reaches the screen.
# hybrid -> small updates present immediately (low keystroke latency,
# smooth held-key scrolling), bulk output coalesces (default)
# sync -> always present immediately (lowest latency, off-vsync)
# coalesced -> always present at the display refresh (smoothest for
# continuous animation; can stutter held-key scrolling)
# deadline -> one present per refresh, sampled just before scanout
# (coalesced's pacing without the fast-scroll beat)
present_mode: hybrid
# scroll: trackpad scrolling style.
# smooth -> follows the trackpad by pixels, settles on a row (default)
# step -> whole rows per wheel tick
scroll: smooth
# clipboard_read: whether programs may READ the system clipboard via
# OSC 52 (tmux/nvim "paste from terminal"). When on, anything on the
# tty (including remote ssh hosts) can read whatever you last copied.
# Copying TO the clipboard via OSC 52 always works.
clipboard_read: true
# ligatures: whether adjacent characters like -> or != render as a
# single combined glyph in supported fonts (Maple Mono, JetBrains Mono, etc.)
ligatures: true
An opinionated terminal for macOS.
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