Requirements
What Overterm needs to run, and what it borrows from tools you already have.
To run it
| macOS | 13 or newer |
| Mac | Apple silicon only — the frameworks ship a single arm64 slice |
| Licence | MIT |
That is the whole list. Overterm has no account, no server of its own, and makes no network request to start.
What it borrows, if it is there
Several panels drive tools you have already installed. None of them is installed for you, and the rest of the app works without them.
| Panel | Needs | What happens without it |
|---|---|---|
| Pull requests and CI | your own gh, already logged in |
The pull request tab stays empty |
| Update check | the same gh |
No update chip appears |
| Simulator | Xcode, with at least one simulator | The phone button is not offered |
| Editor code intelligence | a language server on PATH |
The editor still opens, highlights and edits; there are no diagnostics |
| “Why this file changed” | Claude Code’s local session files | The changes pane shows the diff without the explanation |
To build it
See Build from source for the steps. The versions it pins:
| Swift | 6.1, strict concurrency |
| Terminal core | libghostty v1.3.1, pinned by commit |
| Zig | 0.15.2, installed by mise — build-time only |
| Xcode | 16 or 26.2, plus the Metal toolchain |
Xcode’s version matters more than it looks. Zig 0.15.2 cannot link the macOS 26.5 and 27 SDKs, and Xcode 27’s SwiftPM builds the app in a macOS 13 compatibility mode. If you have several installed, point the build at one that works:
export DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode-26.2.app/Contents/DeveloperThe Command Line Tools alone are not enough — the terminal is rendered with Metal, so the Metal compiler has to be present:
xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain