Alacritty is a cross-platform, open-source and modern terminal emulator that has “sensible defaults,” and offers extensive configuration options.
Even though its appearance is minimalistic, Alacritty has various useful features.
Alacritty’s features
The cursor movement in Alacritty is designed to mimic Vi. However, this feature is fully configurable. You can change the motion settings in Alacritty by taking a look at the configuration file.
The Vi Mode is one of Alacritty’s main features. It allows you to move the app’s viewport and scrollback using just the keyboard. It also serves as a gateway to other features such as search and opening URLs (also with the keyboard). To activate it, use the CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE keyboard combination.
To select any element in Alacritty (and copy text to the clipboard), simply use V and copy the selected element using Y. The Vi Mode also provides various selection modes, including the semantic (ALT+V), line (SHIFT+V), and block selection (CTRL+V).
There are two main search modes in Alacritty. You can find anything in Alacritty’s scrollback buffer, and search using CTRL+SHIFT+F, and CTRL+SHIFT+B for backward search.
The normal search is quite straightforward. You can jump between matches using Enter and Shift+Enter. Something to note here is that after leaving the search using the Escape key, the active match remains selected.
Alacritty supports running multiple terminal emulators from the same instance. Opening URLs can be done via the mouse (by clicking on them), and any selection can be expanded by right-clicking it.
A full list of features and some basic configuration options can be found on the app’s official GitHub repository.
Verdict
Alacritty sets itself apart from other similar apps thanks to its speed. Because it uses the GPU for rendering, it leaves most basic terminal emulators in the dust.
However, all this speed does come at a price. Alacritty sacrifices some basic features one might come to expect from terminal emulators for blazing performance.
