# Helium Terminal – A tiny macOS terminal for coding agents, built on libghostty

> Source: <https://helium-terminal.bensarmiento.com/>
> Published: 2026-10-10 08:14:01+00:00

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](https://github.com/yowmamasita/helium-terminal/tree/main/bench).

```
brew install --cask yowmamasita/tap/helium-terminal
zb install yowmamasita/tap/helium-terminal
```

Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later.