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Ghostty — A fast terminal emulator combining a Zig core, native UI, GPU rendering, and libghostty

OSS health 81
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Discovery score is an unbounded weighted, log-compressed index of stars, watchers, forks, and contributors. Growth momentum is its change over the observed period; OSS health is a 0–100 score from available repository recency, Community Health, and release data.

Stars
61,216
Primary language
Zig
License
MIT
Repository last updated
Sep 16, 2026

Overview

Ghostty is a terminal emulator designed to combine high performance, broad terminal-protocol support, and platform-native UI. Its shared core is written in Zig; the macOS app uses SwiftUI and Metal, Linux uses GTK and OpenGL, and libghostty exposes terminal functionality for embedding. Versioned tags checked on September 17, 2026 reach v1.3.1.

Features and best fit

Based on official documentation; not hands-on tested · Content checked:

Combine modern terminal protocols with a performance-focused parser and renderer

Beyond xterm-oriented compatibility, Ghostty supports modern sequences such as Kitty graphics/image protocols, clipboard sequences, synchronized rendering, and light/dark notifications. Each terminal uses dedicated read, write, and render threads, with Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux.

Sources: [2]

Ship platform-native applications and an embeddable terminal library from one project

The macOS application uses SwiftUI, CoreText, AppleScript, and Shortcuts, while Linux uses GTK and systemd integration. libghostty and libghostty-vt also expose terminal parsing and state functionality to C and Zig applications.

Sources: [2]

For developers who want a fast native terminal or need to embed a terminal engine in another application

It can be evaluated both as a standalone terminal and as a building block for IDEs, developer tools, or custom terminal interfaces.

Sources: [2]

Separate GUI platform support from libghostty maturity and treat crash reports as potentially sensitive

The GUI currently focuses on macOS and Linux. libghostty-vt also targets Windows and WebAssembly, but its API signatures can still change. Crash reports are not uploaded automatically, yet they can contain thread stack memory and should be reviewed before sharing.

Sources: [2]

Official sources

  1. [1]ghostty-org/ghostty — GitHub repository metadata(2026-09-17)
  2. [2]Ghostty — README(2026-09-17)
  3. [3]Ghostty v1.3.1 tag(2026-09-17)
Supplemental curator note

Treat Ghostty as both a native terminal application and an embeddable terminal-engine project through libghostty.

Try it in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Get the source

    git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.git
  2. 2

    Enter the repository

    cd ghostty
  3. 3

    Check the official steps

    Continue with the commands in the README Installation, Quick Start, or Getting Started section.

    find . -maxdepth 1 -iname 'README*' -exec sed -n '1,220p' {} \; -quit
Check the official README

Growth

Growth trends · Last 30 days

61,216 Stars

Trend data is still being collected.

Development activity

Last 90 days · weekly

Commits (last 30 days)
511
Open PRs
113

Development activity is still being collected.

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GitHub data

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Stars
61,216
Forks
3,459
Watchers
224
Open issues
137
Primary language
Zig
License
MIT
Repository last updated
Sep 16, 2026
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