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SPECIFICTION
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Cool Retro Term vs Macterm

Cool Retro Term

github.com

Macterm

macterm.thdxg.dev

Side by side

FigureCool Retro TermMacterm
Price fromFree—
Free planYes—
Free trial——
Open sourceYes—
macOSYesYes
LinuxYes—
Self-hostedYesYes
Plans published10
Spec score · Terminal Emulators8.8 (#2)7.4 (#35)
Spec score · Terminal apps8.0 (#24)7.2 (#39)
Free planYesYes
Supported platformslinux,macosmacOS

Plans

Cool Retro Term

  • FreeFree

Cool Retro Term pricing →

Macterm

No plans published.

Macterm pricing →

In their own words

Cool Retro Term

Cool Retro Term is a free, open-source terminal emulator for Linux and macOS that imitates the appearance of cathode-ray tube screens. The project describes it as customizable and reasonably lightweight. A context menu exposes color, font, and visual-effect settings. Community profiles can add flicker, scanline rasterization, screen curvature, static noise, and burn-in effects, while the wiki invites users to share themes and provides JSON examples. Release notes list support for multiple tabs and windows, plus shortcuts for tab management. Cool Retro Term uses the QML port of qtermwidget, a terminal widget based on Konsole. Linux users can download an AppImage or find packages in repositories for distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch. macOS users can download a DMG. Build information covers Qt6 requirements, Linux Qt5 dependencies, and qmake instructions. Installation, build, theme, and widget guidance appears in the project wiki.

Visit github.com

Macterm

Macterm has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit macterm.thdxg.dev