Sam Doran

My little corner of the Internet

Serial, a Wonderful Serial Terminal for OS X →

I spend a lot of my professional working life using a serial terminal to configure routers, switches, and servers. Serial terminal applications on OS X were always a mixed bag. Most of the ones that came up a lot in searches haven’t been updated in ages. Add to that the fact that OS X has a mixed history with driver1 support for USB to serial devices and you have a perfect storm of frustration and the one area where Windows was actually a better OS choice2

Serial is an overwhelmingly great serial terminal. It includes drivers! It’s just a serial terminal, not a kitchen sink app. It does one thing well. And I love it. If you spend any amount of time in a serial terminal, Serial is the app you’ve been waiting for.

  1. This is the only driver I found that worked. Well worth the price.

  2. PuTTY is the serial/telnet/SSH client most popular on Windows. It’s terrible but gets the job done, unlike most terminal emulators on OS X before Serial came along.