Gemini-cli is glitching on Mac and Linux

[dhanvantaritkv]

Hi,
I am using a MacBook M1 and I usually work with iterm2. I installed gemini-cli globally following the instructions mentioned in the readme but it seems to be getting stuck after displaying the logo. I couldn't see the initial theme selection nor do I see a response coming from the tool where I can interact with the model. I was however able to login to the google account by pressing enter a couple of times and in-order to exit, I am using ctrl+c a couple of times.

Is it just me or anyone else facing this issue ? I tried using the inbuilt terminal too and still facing the same issue. Appreciate your help!

Node version v22.17.0 (lts)
Gemini version 0.1.3
MacOS Sequoia 15.5 on Macbook with M1

[dhanvantaritkv]

Interestingly I am facing another issue within Linux.

I installed the cli tool on OEL8 (similar to RHEL8) and ran the command. This time, everything show up correctly on the terminal but exits immediately too. I don't know how to fix this one either.

So far I couldn't run the tool at all. Let me know if any one is facing similar issues.

[deadcoder0904]

@dhanvantaritkv I'm on Mac M4 & don't face any such issues.

Try Ghostty + Fish shell & see if it happens again. Works smoothly.

[dhanvantaritkv]

Thats a nice combo, love it!
But unfortunately didn't help with the problem.

So I tried cloning the repo, build it and ran it but still ending up where I started. I even upgraded to the latest version of nodejs v24.3.0 and pull in the latest version of the code and .. alas!

$ npx gemini -v
0.1.5

[deadcoder0904]

@dhanvantaritkv maybe its the VPN. I had to use VPN yesterday if you are not from 1st world country. Try that. Its the only answer bcz yeah it didnt work for certain countries lol.

[dhanvantaritkv]

I tried a couple of VPNs. Didn't help

[jacob314]

One thing you could try to debug is to open your ~/.gemini/settings.json file and fill in the values that would typically be specified on startup. That should rule out whether the startup dialogs are having trouble on your machine or something else.
for example:

{
  "theme": "Atom One",
  "preferredEditor": "neovim",
  "selectedAuthType": "gemini-api-key"
}```

[dhanvantaritkv]

❯ echo $TERM
xterm-256color

[dhanvantaritkv]

Its not issue with the gemini itself but rather due to the react-ink library not working on my Mac. Tried to write a basic app to render text in different colours but they all came back black and white.

[dhanvantaritkv]

Well here is some good new!

The issue with colours not getting rendered is fixed. We need to set export FORCE_COLOR=1

This only solves the issue with the colours but not with the boxes and inputs. I still cannot see what I'm typing. Research on ..!

[jacob314]

I wonder if ascii art box rendering is breaking your terminal for some strange reason. Can you try a simple ink app that renders boxes. It might also possibly be a font issue. One other idea is to run gemini cli with the flag —no-sandbox to rule out something in the sandbox setup as a cause.

[dhanvantaritkv]

The ascii rendering is working. I am able to create the box as seen in the screenshot.

The problem is with the input. In all my terminals, including the default terminal.app, iterm2 and even ghostty, the raw input works but the input from the react-ink (or related modules) is failing to render the input as we type. After we force exit by pressing ctr+c, that is when we see the box as well as the input we types while invisible.

[jacob314]

Which shell are you using inside the terminal? You might want to try another one to make sure that how your shell is configured isnt the cause of the problem. You might try fish or bash. Apologies if this was discussed before. Replying in my phone so I may have missed things.

[dhanvantaritkv]

I was using zsh but I tried with bash and fish as well. I even switched over to teminal.app with all settings reset. Didn't help.

I don't understand why it won't work only in my Mac but seems to be working in all the youtube videos. sob sob!

[jacob314]

Ok a couple ideas. Make sure it eworks when you pass the prompt on the command line. E.g
gemini —prompt “tell me a joke”
Other thing to try is add debug logging
gemini —debug
If that doesnt help try
node —inspect /Users/path/to/gemini/cli —debug
You can then open chrome:// inspect to debug
Be sure to use a free gemini api key rather than trying to login with your google account to reduce sources of failure

[dhanvantaritkv]

Tried the recommendations. The gemini cli is working in a manner of speaking. As you can see in the screen shot, I typed something and it did respond back but the input part is empty. I am able to connect to the debug url but nothing much in the console as shown in the below screen shot. Sorry, not sure if we need to do other things. I am mostly sure its got something to do with the ink module.

[jacob314]

Good news is we arent depending on native ink for keyboard input so even if the input prompt isnt displaying you may still be able to type text and get a response. Other idea is to see how the rendering updates ad you move the window to make it narrower or wider. We will update the window width when it changes size causing the gemini logo to remove the >
If that doesnt happen could explain yiue issue in terms of us not computing your window width correctly m. You can also set a breakpoint jn app.tsx to see what we are computing for the width and height of the window.

[dhanvantaritkv]

So far here is what I got. The TextInput is just stuck when waiting for input. Resizing the window, snaps the headers title to the top of the terminal but that it. The inputs still dont work. Neither do I see the >. After ctrl+c all the text I typed appear with the > and then responds. At times it responds to enter key but the input field doesn't respond as before. Not sure what made it work, probably something to do with the following.

With the help of gemini, inputText comes from Ink and Ink-text-input. From the first example in their page (https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink-text-input) I saw the same behaviour of the stuck input. Gemini explained something like this so I tried all suggestions but didn't help.

Your error indicates that yoga-layout (a dependency often used by layout engines, including React Native and potentially Ink under the hood for its layout calculations) is using top-level await, but the tool attempting to process it (esbuild via tsx in your case) is configured to output or interpret it as a CommonJS module.

But this doesn't make sense if it works on other machines. Tried to check with gemini regarding this but didnt help to find a working solution.

[jacob314]

Sorry you are still experiencing this. Given you are able to reproduce this with all ink apps I'd suggest reaching out at
https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink to try to find out if this is a general issue others have experienced with ink and whether there are any known fixes. If you figure out something please let me know as I am sure you aren't the only Gemini CLI user impacted by this.

[dhanvantaritkv]

Finally found a workaround to this problem. Thank for pointing me to the right repo.

Thanks to FauxFaux in this post - vadimdemedes/ink#718 who mentioned that the inputs are hanging only when we have any CI_* variables set in the env. I was using a few variable for my own purposes. After unsetting all the CI_* variables with unset, the colours came back, the inputs are working and every thing is working as it should be .. yay!

[dhanvantaritkv]

[surajair]

I can confirm that this fixed the issue. Removing/commenting CI=true fixed the issue for me as well.

[jacob314]

That is great news! Thanks for all your dedication tracking down the root cause of the issue. I'll keep this issue in mind if any other users report a similar issue.

[shiwangsingh84]

Yes it works. In Terminal, type env | grep CI_ -> If found -> remove it. I commented it out for example in ~/.zshrc bash profile.