Velocity feels like Terminal.app first: fast, quiet, and familiar. The extra functionality is there, but doesn't overwhelm.
Its distinguishing features are:
- it opens straight into a real local terminal
- it has a
Command+/slash bar for Velocity actions that does not send text to your shell - it supports saved hosts, saved commands, command history, themes, and settings
- it uses subtle tabs only when you have more than one session open
- it has a translucent, themeable window with optional background blur
- it can sync app data through iCloud, with explicit
.zshrcupload/download controls
Velocity is currently built for macOS 26+ on Apple Silicon only.
Velocity uses a locally vendored SwiftTerm package for terminal emulation. The local copy includes a small public caret-frame patch so Velocity can anchor inline UI to the actual terminal cursor while still relying on a proper terminal emulator.
Open Velocity.xcodeproj in Xcode, select the Velocity scheme, and run it on an Apple Silicon Mac with the macOS 26 SDK.
For iCloud sync, enable the iCloud container for iCloud.com.maxhewett.Velocity in Signing & Capabilities / Apple Developer before building a signed copy.