I wanted to see if I was missing out on anything in the built-in Apple Terminal app over using GhosTTY, which is really fast. It turns out, yes, there are some neat features that other terminals don’t have, like “Alternate Screens”.

Basically, your standard screen is the log of commands and the returned text, if any. Then, if you run any interactive applications, like less or nano, then that gets pushed to an alterative screen while you’re in the app. You can toggle each of these screens with the “[Show|Hide] Alternate Screen” item in the menu, or with the ⇧-⌘-↑/⇧-⌘-↓ keyboard commands.