InciseBuilt-in terminalA real shell, inside the editor
Press ⌃` and a terminal opens below your code — your actual login shell, with your actual profile, already in the folder you have open. Not a build-output pane, and not a cut-down emulator: it runs zsh (or whatever your login shell is), so vim, htop, and full-screen TUIs all behave.
It’s included in the free Homebrew and direct-download editions. The Mac App Store edition can’t have one — see why below, and how to switch if you want it.
What you get
Opens where you are
A new terminal starts in the folder you have open, so there's no cd to type before you can do anything.
Tabs, like the editor
Run several at once — a dev server in one, git in another — and cycle them with ⌘`. Rename any tab, or give it its own color scheme.
It comes back
Terminal tabs and their layout are restored when you relaunch, the same way your editor tabs are.
Search the scrollback
⌘F finds text in terminal output, with match-case, whole-word, and regex; ⌘G steps through the hits. For when the answer scrolled past four minutes ago.
Tells you when it's done
If a long command or an agent finishes in a background tab, that tab shows a dot — and you get a notification if Incise isn't frontmost.
Dock it anywhere
Put it below the editor, to either side, or go full-screen terminal with ⌃⌥`.
Themed with your editor
Eleven color schemes, or let it follow your editor theme and font, including light/dark switching.
Who actually wants this
An editor with a terminal in it isn’t automatically better than an editor without one. It matters if you’re one of these people, and barely at all if you’re not.
You run coding agents
This is the big one. Claude Code, Codex, and Antigravity are terminal programs. Running one inside the editor it's driving means a single window: you type the request, watch it work, and review the diff it proposes without leaving the app.
You live in a build/test loop
Edit, ⌃`, run the tests, read the failure, jump back. The terminal is already in the right directory and the output stays next to the code that produced it.
You came from Notepad++
It's what NppExec was for — run a command against the thing you're editing, without a second app and a second window to arrange.
You'd rather not alt-tab
Some people genuinely prefer a separate terminal app, and that's fine. Incise works well that way too. This is for the people who don't.
Why the App Store edition doesn’t have it
Apps on the Mac App Store must run in Apple’s sandbox, which forbids launching arbitrary programs outside the app’s own container. A terminal’s entire job is to launch arbitrary programs, so a sandboxed build can’t host one. That’s a rule about the store, not a limitation of Incise, and no editor on the Mac App Store ships a real shell.
Everything else is identical. Both editions are the same app, built from the same source, and both are free. The App Store edition still has the MCP server and Claude Code’s /ide integration — you just run the agent in Terminal.app instead of inside Incise.
Homebrew / direct download
Built-in terminal, git-aware file tree, and everything else. Notarized by Apple, free.
Mac App Store
Everything except the terminal. Automatic updates, and the sandbox if you want it.
Switching from the App Store edition
Install the Homebrew or direct-download build and it replaces the App Store one — both are the same application, so you end up with a single Incise that has the terminal.
- Quit Incise, then delete it from Applications. (Homebrew won’t install over an App Store copy.)
- Install with
brew install --cask incise, or download the DMG below and drag it to Applications. - Open it and press
⌃`.
Your settings won’t follow you. The App Store build is sandboxed, so its preferences and restored session live inside its private container, and the unsandboxed build reads the normal location. Nothing is lost — your files are untouched, since Incise only ever edits files where they already are — but you’ll set your theme and preferences again, and the first launch won’t restore the tabs you had open in the other edition.
Updates come from brew upgrade --cask incise instead of the App Store. You can go back at any time by deleting the app and installing from the store again.
Get the edition with the terminal
Version 1.12.19macOS 13.0+Notarized & signed