Scrolling on MacOS Terminal Does Not Work/Scrolls Commands instead of Text

This happens when the terminal is in ‘Alternative Screen Mode’. The problem might also be combined with characters looking like ^[OB^[OB.

What is Alternative Screen Mode?

Many user-interactive terminal application such as vi, screen and htop use ‘alternative screens’ which acts as a buffer of terminal content which is different to the ‘main’ screen. This means that once the application is terminated, the alternative screen closes and returns to the normal screen making it look like the application didn’t output anything.

How to Fix

Click View > Hide Alternative Screen. The shortcut for this is โ‡งโŒ˜โ†‘.

Comments

No comments yet. Why don’t you start the discussion?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *