Ghostty

Overview

Ghosty “is a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration”. It is currently available for macOS and Linux. Windows support is planned for the future.

Ghostty supports multiple windows, tabs within a window, and panes within a tab (referred to as “splits”).

Ghostty is primarily implemented in Zig.

All the keyboard shortcuts described below are for macOS.

Installing

Browse ghostty.org and click the “Download” button, choose an installation method, and follow the directions.

Once Ghostty is running, check for updates by selecting Ghostty … Check for updates…

Auto Updates

In macOS, Ghostty can be configured to notify you about an available update. It can also automatically download a new version, but will not install it.

Set the configuration option auto-update to off, check, or download.

Set the configuration option auto-update-channel to stable or tip (latest development version). The default is based on whether the currently running version is from the tip.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Keyboard Shortcut
toggle full screen	globe f
increase font size	cmd-plus
decrease font size	cmd-minus
open new window	cmd-n
goto next window	cmd-`
open new tab	cmd-t
goto next tab	cmd-shift-]
goto previous tab	cmd-shift-[
create horizontal split	cmd-d
create vertical split	cmd-shift-d
reset font size	cmd-0 (zero)
close split	cmd-w
zoom split	cmd-shift-return
goto previous split	cmd-[
goto next split	cmd-]
goto split above	cmd-option-up arrow
goto split below	cmd-option-down arrow
goto split left	cmd-option-left arrow
goto split right	cmd-option-right arrow
resize split up	cmd-ctrl-up arrow
resize split down	cmd-ctrl-down arrow
resize split left	cmd-ctrl-left arrow
resize split right	cmd-ctrl-right arrow

Each new tab begins with a single split.

Changing the font size only affects the currently focused split. It would be nice to have a way to change the font size of all splits at once.

Closing the last/only split in a tab closes the tab.

“Zoom split” causes the currently focused split to use the entire window and hides all other splits. Doing it again returns to the previous view.

Tabs display their current working directory. Currently tabs cannot be given a custom title, but that feature is coming soon. It is available now if Ghostty is built from source.

It seems there is currently no way to swap the positions of existing splits.

Configuration

To modify Ghostty settings, select Ghostty … Settings… or press cmd-comma. This will open a text file (seems to use TOML syntax) in your default text editor. In macOS this file is ~/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config. In Linux this file is $HOME/.config/ghostty/config. See the comments in this file for instructions.

To see all the available configuration options and their default values, enter the following in a split:

ghostty +show-config --default | sort

To also see documentation on the configuration options enter the following in a split:

ghostty +show-config --default --docs

This outputs over 2500 lines! Pipe the previous command to Vim to make it easier to navigate and search the content.

After modifying the config file, return to Ghostty and select Ghostty … Reload Configuration or press cmd-shift-comma.

The following is an example of a Ghostty config file.

background-opacity = 0.9
font-size = 16
macos-titlebar-style = tabs
theme = catppuccin-mocha

# Save the windows, tabs, and splits when exiting Ghostty
# so they are automatically restored when Ghostty is launched again.
window-save-state = always # This does not save split titles!

keybind = shift+ctrl+r=reload_config

# Empty values reset the configuration to default value.
font-family

Themes

Ghostty ships with support for hundreds of color themes, including all of them from Iterm2-color-schemes.

To view the available color themes, enter the following in a split:

ghostty +list-themes

To exit, press q.

To select a color theme, edit the settings file, add line containing theme = {name}, and reload the configuration.

To configure Ghostty to use different themes for light and dark mode based on the OS light/dark mode, set the theme like the following:

theme = dark:catppuccin-frappe,light:catppuccin-latte

Fonts

Ghostty uses the “JetBrains Mono” font by default. This font supports ligatures which are enabled by default.

To list the available fonts, enter ghostty +list-fonts.

To use a different font, edit the config file, add line containing font-family = {name}, and reload the config file.

Key Bindings

To list the current key bindings, enter ghostty +list-keybinds.

To change the key bindings, modify and reload the config file. Add lines with the syntax keybind = {trigger}={action}. For example, keybind = ctrl-shift-c=clear_screen.

The trigger can be a single key, a single key with modifiers, or a sequence of keys.

Supported keys include:

letters: a to z
digits: 0 to 9
punctuation: . , ; ’ ` / \ + - = [ ]
arrows: up down right left
enter (return), escape, space, tab,
function keys: F1 to F25
shift, control, alt, super
and more keys that are less frequently used in key bindings

In macOS, “alt” means the option key and “super” means the command key.

As of Ghostty version 1.1.3, the supported actions include:

adjust_selection
clear_screen
close_all_windows
close_surface
close_tab
close_window
copy_to_clipboard
copy_url_to_clipboard
crash
csi
cursor_key
decrease_font_size
equalize_splits
esc
goto_split
goto_tab
ignore
increase_font_size
inspector
jump_to_prompt
last_tab
move_tab
new_split
new_tab
new_window
next_tab
open_config
paste_from_clipboard
paste_from_selection
previous_tab
prompt_surface_title
quit
reload_config
reset
reset_font_size
reset_window_size
resize_split
scroll_page_down
scroll_page_fractional
scroll_page_lines
scroll_page_up
scroll_to_bottom
scroll_to_top
select_all
text
toggle_fullscreen
toggle_maximize
toggle_quick_terminal
toggle_secure_input
toggle_split_zoom
toggle_tab_overview
toggle_visibility
toggle_window_decorations
unbind
write_screen_file
write_scrollback_file
write_selection_file

For more detail, see Custom Keybindings.

More Command-Line Interface (CLI)

The following options can be specified after the ghostty command to obtain specific information:

Option	Information
+boo	returns the Ghostty ASCII animation (ctrl-c to exit)
+crash-report	to inspect and send crash reports
+help	outputs help on Ghostty
+list-actions	outputs all Ghostty actions (can be bound to keys)
+list-colors	lists all predefined color names and their RGB codes
+list-fonts	lists all available fonts
+list-keybinds	lists all current key bindings
+list-themes	lists and previews all available themes (ctrl-c to exit)
+show-config	outputs the current values of all configuration options
+show-face	shows font face used to render a given codepoint or string
+validate-config	validates configuration file, outputting nothing if valid
+version	outputs Ghostty version, Zig version used to build it, and more

For help on a given option, enter ghostty {option} --help.

Images

To render images in Ghostty:

brew install --cask kitty
kitten icat {file-path}

Shaders

Shaders apply a graphical effect to the terminal background. They are typically written in the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL). Shaders can create dynamic, animated, or stylized effects.

There is a collection of shaders for Ghostty at ghostty-shaders. Most of these work, but a few seem to have no effect.

For example, download the file cineShader-Lava.glsl and add the following configuration option:

custom-shader = {path-to-shader-files}/cineShader-Lava.glsl

Reload the configuration to see a lava lamp effect in the Ghostty background. This shader makes Ghostty much slower, but the others don’t seem to hurt performance.

Comparison to Warp

Topic	Ghostty	Warp
focus	performance	user experience
AI integration	none	present
features	minimalistic	rich
tabs	only show working directory	can be named
configuration	in a single configuration file	in a graphical UI
implemented in	Zig	Rust

Supposedly tab naming has been implemented. See https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/pull/4217. But when I right-click in the body of a split, the context menu does not contain “Set Title”.

Warp supports blocks which hold a command and all its output. Users can search within a block and can scroll to the top or bottom of the output. An alternative in Ghostty is to redirect command output to a file, open the file in Vim with read-only mode, and use its commands to navigate and view the output. For example: ls | vim -R.

Building from Source

Here are the steps to build the Ghostty app from source in macOS:

Install Zig with brew install zig.
Install Xcode from the “App Store” app.
git clone https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.git
Open a terminal window and cd to the cloned directory.
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast (runs for several minutes)
cd macos
xcodebuild

To use this version of the app:

mv build/releaseLocal/Ghostty.app /Applications
Open the Finder.
Navigate to Applications.
Double-click ghostty.app.

Main Missing Features

ability to save custom tab titles so they are restored when Ghostty is restarted (see https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/6785)
integration with LLMs to provide shell command suggestions (see https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/4642)