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Ghostty

Fast, feature-rich, native terminalOpen source

About Ghostty

Ghostty is an open-source terminal emulator started by Mitchell Hashimoto, with a Zig core, a macOS app on AppKit and SwiftUI and a Linux app on GTK4 sharing the libghostty core; it offers tabs, splits, the Kitty graphics protocol and GPU rendering. As of 2026-10-25: 62,578 stars, stable 1.3.1, MIT license, no paid tier, now a non-profit project fiscally sponsored by Hack Club.

EditorialUpdated 10 min read

What it is

Ghostty is a desktop terminal emulator. Its GitHub description reads "a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration." The About page frames the goal as three things at once: fast, feature-rich and native. It argues that terminals used to make users pick two of the three, and that Ghostty aims to be competitive in all three; the same page says this is not a claim to be the best in any one of them.

It is built in two layers. At the bottom is libghostty, a terminal core written in Zig that handles emulation, fonts and rendering and exposes a C-compatible API. On top sit the platform apps. The macOS app is written in Swift on AppKit and SwiftUI and links the core through its C API; the Linux app is written in Zig on the GTK4 C API, with optional Adwaita styling. The README says rendering uses Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux, with separate threads for reading, writing and rendering.

As of 2026-10-25 the repository has 62,578 stars and 3,714 forks. The latest stable release is 1.3.1, which the ghostty.org release-notes index dates 2026-03-13. The download page offers a universal macOS build that needs macOS 13 or later. The project ships prebuilt binaries only for macOS; on Linux it relies on distribution maintainers and community packagers, or a build from source. There is no Windows app.

Ghostty is a terminal emulator that differentiates itself by being fast, feature-rich, and native.

About Ghostty

Core capabilities

First, a native interface. The About page lists macOS integrations such as Quick Look, force touch, the secure input API and window state restoration after a restart; tabs, splits and error messages use system widgets rather than drawn character interfaces. The two platforms use different default shortcuts to match their own conventions. Version 1.3 added AppleScript support for inspecting and controlling terminals, plus an action that Shortcuts can call.

Second, terminal features. The About page names the Kitty graphics protocol, light and dark mode notifications and hyperlinks, which let programs like Neovim use synchronized rendering to avoid tearing. Version 1.3 shipped scrollback search: cmd+f on macOS, ctrl+shift+f on GTK, run on a dedicated thread that takes the terminal lock in small slices so I/O is barely affected. The same release added native scrollbars and click-to-move-cursor through the OSC 133 semantic prompt extensions, supported natively by Fish 4.1 and Nushell 0.111 or later. The earlier 1.2 release added a command palette that exposes almost every keybind action.

Third, speed. The README says Ghostty and Alacritty are usually within a few percentage points of each other on various benchmarks, and both are something like 100x faster than Terminal.app and iTerm, as reported by the vendor. The About page is more restrained: the aim is to be in the class of the fastest terminals, faster on some benchmarks and slower on others, but never slow. The 1.3 notes say asciinema supplied about 4GB of public terminal recordings, which the team used to tune I/O processing, cutting the replay time for the whole set from minutes to tens of seconds.

Fourth, an embeddable core. The libghostty post of 2025-09-22 announced libghostty-vt as the first standalone piece: a zero-dependency library, not even needing libc, for parsing terminal sequences and keeping terminal state, so that editors and CI log viewers no longer each write their own emulation. The README says it targets Zig and C on macOS, Linux, Windows and WebAssembly, but the API is still in flux and not yet versioned; the repository includes an example project, Ghostling.

Who it's for / Not for

Good fit: developers who spend long days in a terminal on macOS and want it to behave like a system app, with tabs, splits, Quick Look and system shortcuts.

Good fit: Linux desktop users, especially on GNOME or other GTK environments; Arch, Gentoo, Alpine and other distributions ship official packages, and Ubuntu carries it in its official repository from 26.04.

Good fit: teams that want to embed terminal emulation in their own product, which is what libghostty-vt is for; the 1.3 notes say dozens of projects already use libghostty, as reported by the vendor.

Good fit: people who care about open-source governance. The code is MIT-licensed, the name and marks belong to the non-profit Hack Club, and the donation ledger is public down to each transaction.

Not a fit: Windows users. There is no Windows app; only the libghostty-vt layer builds on Windows.

Not a fit: people who want a built-in AI agent, cloud sync or team collaboration in the terminal. Ghostty does not offer that kind of feature.

Not a fit: Linux fleets that need uniformly signed packages. The project ships only macOS binaries; Debian, older Ubuntu and Fedora depend mainly on community builds, and the install docs warn that community packages carry risk and that building from source is safer.

Not a fit: machines stuck on macOS 13. Version 1.3 is the last to support it; from 1.4 the minimum is macOS 14.

How it compares

Alacritty: also known for speed, written in Rust, with 66,038 stars as of 2026-10-25; the GitHub API reports its license as Apache-2.0, and the latest GitHub release, v0.17.0, came out 2026-04-07 03:24 (UTC+8). Ghostty's README uses Alacritty as its speed reference, claiming the two are usually within a few percentage points on benchmarks while Ghostty has more features and a more native feel.

kitty: the origin of the Kitty graphics protocol. The GitHub API lists Python as its main language and GPL-3.0 as its license; it has 35,420 stars as of 2026-10-25, and its latest GitHub release, v0.49.2, came out 2026-10-01 10:57 (UTC+8). Ghostty supports the same graphics protocol.

WezTerm: written in Rust, with 29,342 stars as of 2026-10-25. Its latest formal GitHub release is still 20240203-110809-5046fc22, published 2024-02-04 02:32 (UTC+8), although the repository still saw pushes in 2026-10.

Warp: now positioned as an agentic development environment grown out of the terminal. As of 2026-10-25, the pricing page lists Free at $0 a month, Build at $20 a month ($18 a month billed yearly), Max at $200 a month and Business at $50 per user per month; the client repository is AGPL-3.0, with the UI framework under MIT, and has 65,692 stars. Ghostty charges nothing, needs no login and bundles no model.

Getting started

macOS: the download page offers a universal build, which runs on Apple Silicon and Intel and installs by dragging it into Applications. There is also a community-maintained Homebrew cask, brew install --cask ghostty, which simply repackages the official .dmg.

Linux: several distributions ship official packages. Arch uses pacman -S ghostty; Gentoo, Alpine and Solus have official packages, and Ubuntu 26.04 onward can install it from the official repository. Fedora has COPR, and the Snap Store has a classic snap that the project's CI builds. Older Ubuntu and Debian have a community .deb and an AppImage, or a source build following the docs.

Configuration: 1.3 changed some defaults. Copy to clipboard now defaults to the mixed format, writing plain text and HTML together; copy_to_clipboard can be rebound to a specific format. Command-finished notifications need shell integration; notify-on-command-finish is off by default and can be set to unfocused so it only alerts when the terminal is not focused. Key tables allow tmux-style modal keybindings.

Notes for stable versions are on the ghostty.org release-notes pages.

Contributing: the contributing guide asks people to raise problems in discussions first, and maintainers turn them into issues once confirmed; first-time contributors must ask to be vouched for; and any AI tool use must be disclosed, naming the tool and the extent. The repository's AGENTS.md is written for AI coding agents.

Pricing & license

Ghostty has no paid tier, subscription or account system; downloading and using it is free. Money comes from donations: the non-profit announcement of 2025-12-03 says the project is fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a 501(c)(3) charity, can accept tax-deductible donations, and passes 7% of each donation to Hack Club for accounting, compliance and governance oversight. It also says the Hashimoto family is giving $150,000 to Hack Club, money that does not go into Ghostty's account.

On spending, the announcement lists paying contributors, supporting upstream dependencies, funding community events and covering operating costs, with the ledger public on Hack Club Bank down to each transaction. The 1.3 notes say the project has signed 5 contributor contracts covering community management, graphics, Unicode compatibility, GTK and Discord and GitHub integrations, committing almost 300 billable hours. The announcement also says no funds will go to Hashimoto personally; Hashimoto remains project lead, final authority and the largest donor.

The license is MIT. In the git history, commit e56a9e3 added the LICENSE file at 2024-12-27 03:45 (UTC+8); commit 3d692e4 at 2025-06-11 00:20 (UTC+8) changed the copyright line to Mitchell Hashimoto and the Ghostty contributors. The non-profit announcement says the names, marks and related intellectual property moved to Hack Club, while contributors keep their copyright and the license stays MIT.

Risks & limits

First, long gaps between stable releases. Per the ghostty.org release notes, the latest stable, 1.3.1, came out 2026-03-13, and no newer stable release had followed as of 2026-10-25. The 1.3 notes say the next focus is tagging a first libghostty release, and 1.4 promises no specific features.

Second, security advisories. As of 2026-10-25, the GitHub security page lists 5 advisories, 2 medium and 3 low. Both medium ones could lead to command execution: CVE-2024-56803 involves window title sequences and was fixed in 1.0.1; CVE-2026-26982 involves control characters in pasted or dropped text and was fixed in 1.3.0. The three low ones are write_*_file actions creating world-readable files, file descriptors leaking to the shell, and a privilege escalation chain on macOS, fixed in 1.0.1, 1.1.0 and 1.2.0 respectively.

Third, heavy reliance on one person. The About page says this is a side project of Hashimoto's and nobody works on it full time. Hashimoto is project lead and final authority; the non-profit structure and contributor contracts address this reliance.

Fourth, a high bar to contribute. The contributing guide requires problems to start in the Issue Triage discussions and become issues only after maintainers confirm them; as of 2026-10-25, 136 issues and 121 PRs are open. Since 2026-02, first-time contributors must request a vouch in the Vouch Request discussions, and PRs from people without one are closed automatically. AI_POLICY.md requires outside contributors to disclose all AI use, bans AI-generated images, audio and video, and puts people who submit low-quality AI work on a public list; maintainers are exempt, and the policy states that Ghostty itself is written with plenty of AI assistance.

Fifth, platform gaps. There is no Windows app; Linux binaries depend on community packagers, and the install docs record that openSUSE's official repository dropped Ghostty from around the end of 2025 until about 2026-03; macOS 13 users are stuck on 1.3.

How it got here

  • 2022-03-30 00:04 (UTC+8): Mitchell Hashimoto makes the first commit, "Initial"; GitHub records the repository as created at 2022-03-30 01:38 (UTC+8).
  • 2024-10-22: Hashimoto announces that 1.0 will be released publicly under MIT in 2024-12, with about 2,000 testers at the time.
  • 2024-12-31: 1.0.1, fixing two security advisories.
  • 2025-01-30: 1.1.0.
  • 2025-09-15: 1.2.0; the notes describe 6 months of work, 2,676 commits from 149 contributors, and a new command palette.
  • 2025-09-22: the libghostty post announces libghostty-vt.
  • 2025-10-23: 1.2.3.
  • 2025-12-03: Ghostty announces it is a non-profit, fiscally sponsored by Hack Club.
  • 2026-01-23 03:49 (UTC+8): AI_POLICY.md lands in the repository.
  • 2026-02: the vouch system goes live; first-time contributors need a vouch.
  • 2026-03-09: 1.3.0; the notes describe 6 months of work, 2,858 commits from 180 contributors.
  • 2026-03-13: 1.3.1, mainly fixing macOS regressions.

Hashimoto's reflection post of 2024-12-26 says Ghostty 1.0 is out (https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-1-0-reflection). The same post says the private beta ended with about 5,000 users, in a Discord of 28,000 at the time (author's own figures).

These release dates are from the ghostty.org release notes; no stable release has followed as of 2026-10-25.

Our verdict

Ghostty's profile: it aims to be fast, feature-rich and native at once; the macOS app uses system widgets; 1.3 added scrollback search and native scrollbars; it is MIT-licensed and fiscally sponsored as a non-profit by Hack Club, which holds the name and marks.

Its limits: the latest stable, 1.3.1, came out 2026-03-13, with no newer stable release as of 2026-10-25; Hashimoto is project lead and final authority; Linux depends on distribution and community packaging; there is no Windows version; the contribution process sets vouch and disclosure requirements for first-time contributors and AI-assisted submissions; and libghostty has no first formal release yet.

Why it stands out

Ghostty is a terminal emulator written in Zig by Mitchell Hashimoto, the founder of HashiCorp, during what he has described as his most enjoyable engineering years. It uses native macOS and GTK shells on top of a shared core, so it looks and behaves like the platform it runs on.

The project spent nearly two years in a private beta of thousands of users before a 1.0, and the release notes read like a specification. Performance is a feature, but so is correctness in the parts of the terminal spec most emulators quietly skip.

It is written in Zig, with native macOS and GTK interfaces on a shared core, and reached 1.0 after nearly two years of private beta.

Sources

Official

  1. ghostty-org/ghostty on GitHubGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  2. Ghostty READMEGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  3. Ghostty LICENSEGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  4. Ghostty commit e56a9e3: Create LICENSEGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  5. Ghostty commit 3d692e4: update copyright notices to include contributorsGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  6. Ghostty commit f8b0000: InitialGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  7. Ghostty AI_POLICY.mdGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  8. Ghostty CONTRIBUTING.mdGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026

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