SixTwelve Studio / Engage
macOS & Linux · No account · Free forever
Engage
A terminal drawn on the GPU and written in systems Rust, holding a frame budget the way an instrument holds a tolerance.
Free · macOS and Linux · download without giving an address
The macOS build is universal and notarized by Apple, so it opens on the first double-click on macOS 12 or newer. The Linux tarballs carry the binary, the desktop entry and the icon set, and their installer writes only inside your home directory.
~/studio/terminal-app ❯ cargo build --release Compiling engage v0.1.0 Finished `release` profile in 4.24s ~/studio/terminal-app ❯ engage --bench keystroke → photon 0.71 ms frame budget 120 Hz resident set 21.4 MB glyph cache warm, two faces ~/studio/terminal-app ❯ theme phosphor_amber ink · paper · obsidian · brass · amber · slate ~/studio/terminal-app ❯
What it does not do
A terminal is the one application that has no excuse for being slow or for being curious about you, and the list below is as much of the product as the features are.
- No account
- Nothing to sign into. The binary has no concept of a user.
- No telemetry
- No analytics, no crash upload, no update ping. It opens the sockets you open.
- No subscription
- Free, and free of the thing that usually follows. A licence is offered, never required.
- No lock-in
- One TOML file holds the configuration. Delete the app and the machine is as it was.
What it does
Spring cursor
The cursor travels under a critically damped spring rather than jumping, and it stretches along the axis of travel while it moves, so position reads as motion instead of a block that teleported.
Retained scene
A blink repaints the cursor’s own rectangle and copies the rest of the frame forward, so a still terminal costs a scissored region rather than a full redraw.
Splits and tabs
A split tree with real geometry, tabs that own their own layouts, and broadcast input for when the same command belongs in every pane at once.
Command palette
Every action reachable by name, over a ground that blurs the session behind it rather than covering it.
Six themes
SixTwelve Ink and Paper, Obsidian Forge for OLED, Atelier Brass, Phosphor Amber 1982, and Slate. Ground in pigment rather than in neon.
The face travels with it
JetBrains Mono is bundled, and the fallback chain covers scripts beyond it, including the colour bitmap strikes that system emoji actually ship as.
The download
- macOS Universal, Apple silicon and Intel. Signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens on the first double-click. macOS 12 or newer. 9.9 MB
- Linux x86_64 A tarball holding the binary, the desktop entry and the icon set, with an install.sh that writes only inside ~/.local. 4.7 MB
- Linux aarch64 The same package built for arm64 machines. Wayland or X11, on the Vulkan driver your desktop already has. 4.4 MB
The disk image is signed and notarized under co.raastey.engage, so
macOS opens it without a warning and you can check the signature yourself with
codesign -dv /Applications/Engage.app. On Linux, unpack the tarball and
run ./install.sh; it copies the binary, the desktop entry and the icons
into ~/.local and touches nothing else.
A licence, if you want one on record
Engage does not check a licence and will not start asking, so this changes nothing about the copy you download; the buttons above work without an address. It is here because a licence is how everything else in the studio is owned, and some people would rather hold the receipt than not.
One address, one licence, and it arrives by email as well. Lost it later? Ask for it again.
Why it is free
Engage is the instrument the studio builds its own software in, and it earns its keep by existing rather than by being sold. There is no free tier above which something is paid, no account that would let us count you, and no plan to add either.
The source is at github.com/raastey/terminal-app, and the fastest way to change something is to say so there.
Requirements
macOS 12 or newer, Apple silicon or Intel. Metal.
Linux on x86-64 or arm64 · Wayland or X11 · a Vulkan driver · glibc 2.36 or newer. Built and tested against Debian bookworm.
Support
Anything about either build: hello@sixtwelve.studio. A real person answers, and there is no ticket portal.