Filed under: Software
DTerm: give your Mac a little shell love
DTerm is a utility just released by Decimus Software Inc. It's a Leopard-only app that provides a hotkey-triggered HUD which allows shell commands to be run from anywhere in OS X. In case you're wondering why, just imagine what less window switching and screen clutter could mean for productivity on jobs that require both Finder and Terminal. Yes, you can do a lot with Quicksilver, but DTerm provides bash name completion with a dropdown, context sensitivity to your current path and full output with clipboard features. You can also type ?-? in the HUD to run the command in the Terminal, which will open up to your current path.
DTerm is all about reducing effort, really. The process of running a command in the current directory is reduced to just a few keystrokes and there's no need to grab the mouse or switch to another application. Better Path Finder integration would be nice, but the developers tell me that it's Path Finder's own use of the Accessibility system that prevents that right now.
DTerm requires Leopard and has a free demo (up to 50 commands) after which the program costs $20. Visit the DTerm page for the download and more info, including a speedy video that will satisfy your secret bash-voyeurism fetish and won't waste much of your time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
dan said 4:52PM on 1-10-2008
Quicksilver is free....
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leon said 5:23PM on 1-10-2008
Why do you keep adding apps that require us to pay for them, when there are brilliant free apps.
Fair enough we don't have to buy them, but lets get some more open source apps on here.
by the way - http://www.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk
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J. Prevost said 5:43PM on 1-10-2008
Hmm. I wanted to leave the developer a comment saying "You should make it able to handle multiple-line shell input better—at least by making the input area expand on alt-enter instead of just having multiple lines and not expanding, but preferably by making it understand sh syntax so that enter doesn't always cause immediate execution. And if you did that, I'd pay $10 for this product."
Unfortunately, I'm not going to register for the developer's forums just to leave them a message saying "If your product was a little bit cooler, it'd be worth half as much as you're charging for it". So I guess he'll never know.
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Ross said 12:05AM on 1-11-2008
For those of you complaining about the price (i agree), take a look at http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-visor/. Remember quake, and that drop down command line? Yeah, it's like this but for OS X and terminal. Very slick, I use it, and it works on Leopard now too.
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Quine said 6:29PM on 1-10-2008
@ross: does visor automatically cd to the current directory open in finder? thats what I really like about dterm and i'd love a simple way to do that via a hotkey. Maybe i'll try my luck at an applescript.
I love the idea of this app but I tried it and I find the execution very poor, because it isn't really any more out of the way than a regular terminal since the app keeps itself in the dock. It should be a dedicated background app. That's what kills it for me.
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mck said 7:51PM on 1-10-2008
Coming from Windows, I was amazed at how many fantastic, beautiful shareware apps the Mac had. Yet, I'm still shocked when developers put out stuff like this and expect $20+ when, as already stated, near-identical alternatives. I'm sure the developer put a good amount of work into the app itself, just not on deciding a proper price point.
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Brett Terpstra said 8:07PM on 1-10-2008
Putting aside price concerns for a moment, would someone please point out one of the near-identical, open source alternatives? The one that can pick up your current path/selection, provides bash command/filename completion and unobtrusive output display? This is a genuine question.
Quicksilver can't complete shell commands or provide history.
CLIX doesn't really apply, in my opinion.
Visor is more accessible than a plain terminal window, but provides no context sensitivity and is difficult to reference from external scripts.
Dashboard widgets don't either, and I would definitely feel encumbered switching to the dash to run simple commands.
Fire away.
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Zach said 9:50PM on 1-10-2008
Make it run in the background, and not show up in my dock then I might *seriously* consider purchasing DTerm.
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Patrick McElhaney said 11:44AM on 1-11-2008
Of the last 500 lines I typed into terminal, exactly 50% have been cd.
Automatically opening the current directory is a killer feature for me. And it works from whatever application is frontmost, not just Finder.
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