Removing the Title Bar from iTerm2

I have recently been trying to learn Vim, and have therefore spent a great deal of time in the OS X terminal app. I soon made the upgrade to iTerm2, but started getting jealous whenever I saw some of the crazy minimalistic terminal pane setups on /r/unixporn. So I wondered: was there a way to remove the shameful title bar from iTerm2 on OS X like there was on Linux/BSD distros?

The answer is yes. It’s a bit involved, but yes. It took me a bit of Googling to figure it out though, so here’s a guide.

Firstly, you’ll need to grab the source code for iTerm. This can be done with git:

$ git clone https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2.git

Then, you’ll need to do a tiny modification to the source code. Navigate to the cloned folder, then to the sources folder, and then open PseudoTerminal.m with your editor of choice.

$ cd iTerm2/sources
$ vi PseudoTerminal.m

Find the following switch case:

default:
	return (NSTitledWindowMask |
		NSClosableWindowMask |
		NSMiniaturizableWindowMask |
		NSResizableWindowMask |
		NSTexturedBackgroundWindowMask);

And remove the NSTitledWindowMask

default:
	return (NSClosableWindowMask |
		NSMiniaturizableWindowMask |
		NSResizableWindowMask |
		NSTexturedBackgroundWindowMask);

Then, change back to the main directory and compile the app.

$ cd ..
$ make

There should now be a new iTerm2.app file sitting in the build/Development folder. Replace the one in your Mac’s applications folder with it and voila! You have a beautiful, minimal terminal for your Mac.

my setup