A tiny macOS terminal for coding agents, built on libghostty.
The sidebar shows every tab's branch, folder and ports. A pane waiting on you turns orange until you answer. Tabs split, group and take labels, and your Claude Code and Codex sessions come back after a quit.
| Helium | iTerm2 3.7 | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 15 MB | 176 MB |
| Launch | ~250 ms | ~570 ms |
| Idle memory | 62 MB | 203 MB |
| Idle CPU | ~0.2% | ~2% |
Apple Silicon, median of five launches. Script.
brew install --cask yowmamasita/tap/helium-terminal
zb install yowmamasita/tap/helium-terminal
Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later.
source & further reading
helium-terminal.bensarmiento.com — original article