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▲ mitchellh 7 hours ago

These are Ghostty GUI release notes, but I want to take a moment to highlight the libghostty progress we've made since Ghostty 1.3.

As a reminder, libghostty is the highly portable, embeddable library that provides core terminal emulation, render state, and more. I always felt that a free, high qualty, lightweight, reusable terminal emulation core would benefit the developer world more than any single GUI application. And that is playing out!

It is and always was my true purpose with the Ghostty project (I said this in my first ever talk about Ghostty!). I've jokingly said many times that Ghostty GUI is just a glorified tech demo for libghostty. That's not fair though, because GUI is great and there are really talented people working on it.

Since I started the project, Ghostty has always gotten people saying "I don't understand why you'd start a terminal emulator today." Well, the answer is libghostty. It's truly unique and its enabling something special (imo!).

Highlights of libghostty since 6 months ago (none of the below was true 6 months ago):

- Libghostty has nearly 100% coverage of all of Ghostty's core (and you can compile with flags to remove any of these features for size/safety): https://libghostty.tip.ghostty.org/

- Libghostty now builds and is tested (in CI) for: Apple (macOS, iOS, visionOS), Windows (MSVC and GNU), Linux, FreeBSD, Android, WebAssembly, and freestanding (i.e. direct on hardware with no OS).

- Libghostty has bindings in pretty much every popular programming language: C, Zig, Go, Swift, Python, Rust, .NET, etc.

- Libghostty's memory requirements have dramatically shrunk to enable the portability above. There's still work to do but a single empty terminal now takes 90% less memory. And at scale I've proven 10,000 active (input/output happening) terminals on a Linux server with 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM.

- Libghostty powers all JetBrains IDE terminals, over 12.5 million active users. https://blog.jetbrains.com/platform/2026/10/jetbrains-termin...

- Libghostty is the most popular core behind the wave of venture-backed "agentic" terminals and editors, such as Herdr, cmux, and many others.

- Libghostty is being discussed and has been verbally accepted to replace the terminal core in Neovim: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/39773 (work still to be done)

- Libghostty powers a really popular and powerful terminal emulator for emacs (Ghostel): https://github.com/dakra/ghostel

- Libghostty's speed is used by Antithesis to fuzz popular terminal programs and has directly led to hundreds of bug fixes sent upstream to programs such as tmux, btop, shells, and other terminal emulators. :)

- And so much more: https://github.com/Uzaaft/awesome-libghostty

Libghostty is really successfully turning into the tide that raises all boats. As it becomes more popular, Ghostty itself gets more performant and stable, and so does everyone else. It is also a vehicle for delivering modern terminal emulation to the widest source possible.

I plan on tagging libghostty 1.0 in the next few months and declaring ABI stability at that point!

▲why-el 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because of your multiple "I am tired of saying this, but this text was written by me and not an LLM" in your blog posts, I want to tell you that I read it word for word. :D I know this comment adds not much but I felt it needed to be said.

▲NorthSouthNorth 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One almost forgets how easy it is to read a wall of text when it was written by a human. This was nice to read (also because you can feel it's got care behind it).

▲_matthew_ an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Lowkey so true. I was wondering why I was able to read to the end without getting lost or distracted lol

▲anonreplier 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

you mean you don't like phrases like "here’s what they don’t tell you" !?

▲coldtea 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

And the real load-bearing part? It's not that, it's this. And honestly? That's great!

▲tigerlily 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When I am tired, it's when I know I am alive.

▲sho_hn 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm from the KDE project, and have been working on a new frontend built on libghostty-vt to hopefully one day ease our maintenance burden.

It's been a quite smooth experience, and I remain very excited about the lib. I believe you are successfully setting the standard. Big congrats for your 1.4.0!

▲c-hendricks 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Ooooo, will this end up in Konsole / konsolepart? Or will it be a new app?

▲sho_hn 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It'll be a new app, but it does provide a drop-in replacement for konsolepart (along with also having a QML module API for embeds into Qt Quick-based app, closing a gap Konsole currently leaves open). I'm sure it'll be some time before it would be ready to replace Konsole as default, also because conversations like that take some time and are a community process.

▲kombine 7 minutes ago | parent [-]

Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since.

This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though not sure how it'll fit into KDE Frameworks etc.

▲ashkankiani 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for your work on this. When I was working on neovim core and started dealing more and more with the edge cases of libvterm and terminal emulation in general, I had the same thought "we should just have a gold standard library for this." But that was 6/7 years ago (2019) and a lot of stuff happened in that interim unrelated to engineering that demotivated me from pursuing it.

Periodically, I would run into TUI issues and think "I should just finally do it," especially around wanting to replace tmux in general. But I knew from experience the long tail of annoying issues for terminals that it's more time consuming than it appears, and so I again never bothered.

Thanks for the good work to raise all boats :)

I tend to move away from terminal emulation towards GUI when I can (and using custom remote protocols somewhat inspired by arcan), but TUI is still useful for a while. I actually had a need for a good terminal emulation library for the fallback TUI/pty attachment for non-gui programs for my supervisor, so I'll try out libghostty.

▲solyin an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for Ghostty! I've got an insane fork (AI generated) that uses variable width fonts and then does math so columns (like in top) still line up!

Any interest in moving console typography past the 80's, since computers are fast now?

▲febed 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As a fairly recent ghostty user I was surprised with how quickly it became my default terminal. Very smooth experience so far.

▲riskassessment 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed on the value of libghostty. I switched from vterm to ghostel recently and it's solved some refresh issues I previously had with vterm when using CLI coding agents in emacs.

▲Atreiden 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just wanted to say thank you for all your contributions to our industry, Mitchell. I love Ghostty and your vision here, and evangelize it whenever I can.

It's a pleasure reading your posts.

▲8n4vidtmkvmk 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for libghostty! I'm using it for my own terminal on Windows. I'm quite pleased with it

▲twelvenmonkeys 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for the work on getting libghostty 1.4 out! :D

Wanted to add too that I can't wait for xterm to eventually support libghostty, you've been super supportive providing feedback!

https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/issues/5686

▲varjag 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That's xterm.js. Xterm is an entirely different piece of software.

▲trollbridge 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe I’m just dreaming here but how far off is libghostty for Linux consoles?

▲kritr 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

I prototyped this last week. Unfortunately the apprt abstraction I used isn’t something ghostty will externally support. So a proper console port needs to be rebuilt on libghostty.

But if you run nix you could give it a whirl: https://github.com/KritR/ghostty-kms

▲yjftsjthsd-h 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Libghostty now builds and is tested (in CI) for: [...] freestanding (i.e. direct on hardware with no OS).

That's really cool, but I'm drawing a blank; what's it used for? Embedded terminal something?

▲mitchellh 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, fun little demo: https://x.com/UzaAft/status/2093774764598817022

▲yjftsjthsd-h 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Okay, that's fun:) ...so if I use this on an ESP* with a physical display and keyboard attached, at what point does it stop counting as a terminal emulator again?:)

▲Imustaskforhelp 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Libghostty now builds and is tested (in CI) for: [...] freestanding (i.e. direct on hardware with no OS).

I am really impressed. When I had read your original comment, I literally shouted oye! (meaning woah) because of how interesting it felt. Glad that I can see the demo as well.

But aside from the fun little demo, what are the real use cases that we can think of as well.

here are some that I have thought of

1. SSH'ing into a terminal (VPS) or being able to view what the AI agents are doing on that VPS and controlling them very thinly in your pocket.

2. I have a slight dream that I'd like to chip in but I always wanted to create something like monkeytype but on embedded-hardware. Something which can just plug to TV's and people can connect a keyboard and start to type.

3. Or another idea but being a book reader and having it connect to some library resource

(2) & (3) for the underdeveloped regions.

Maybe (1) can be good as well and could very well be a small computer terminal which can teach/help the underdeveloped regions.

I live in India and I see it first hand how genuinely just want to create some extremely minimalist software on extremely cheap hardware to make funding of them easier and more scalable.

This also makes the constraints work good as one of the govt's basically spent a lot of money providing mid/high end tablets to every children and it turned out to be quite catastrophic because although it was kiosked because it was just intended to watch videos or read resources.

Children paid people to crack it and then started using instagram on it. My mother is a govt. teacher and she strongly thinks that it was a waste of resources and even the parents of the children and local village meeting committees think so as well. I remember reading some local news articles about villages conducting meetings on how to prevent their children from such instagram addiction so quickly after the tabs were given.

I would like to hope that maybe someday someone creates the more optimal solution to the problems that I discussed and libghostty comes handy to the situation. Thanks for making it and have a nice day :-D

▲olwmc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolutely incredible. You've convinced our team to start getting to work in Zig and we're loving it!! Thanks for all you do

▲derwiki 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I know it’s been said elsewhere ITT, but thank you for making and supporting Ghostty!

▲ExoticPearTree 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any plans for Ghostty to have the history of the terminal window reloaded on restart? Like the Mac native terminal app does? I am a heavy terminal user with a lot of tabs open, and after I restart the computer for whatever reason, I would like to have my terminal(s) as I left them.

▲brigandish an hour ago | parent [-]

Use tmux or something like it (I now use zmx[1]).

[1] https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx

▲jen20 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aha, I wondered why the JetBrains terminals had become so much better recently. Didn't realize they'd made the switch.

▲bmitc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What are use cases of libghostty? Is it for building things like the terminal inside VS Code or any other such GUI application?

▲ncphillips 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great stuff! If it wasn't for Rex I'd still be using Ghostty daily

▲nico 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for making Ghostty, it’s a pleasure to use it everyday for work :)

▲_doctor_love an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> And at scale I've proven 10,000 active (input/output happening) terminals on a Linux server with 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM.

When you say you've proven, are you hinting at use of formal verification?

▲bombcar 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But could it do two rows of tabs?

▲dr_dshiv 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is the launch timed for Halloween parties? Good job team + community!

▲ChickeNES 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn’t it written in Zig? Not sure how that is “highly portable” compared to C

▲fwlr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

From https://ziglang.org/intro/overview/

  Zig is also a C compiler

  Here’s an example of Zig building some C code:

  hello.c
  > #include <stdio.h>
  >
  > int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  >   printf("Hello world\n");
  >   return 0;
  > }
  

  $ zig build-exe hello.c -lc
  $ ./hello
  > Hello world
▲ChickeNES an hour ago | parent [-]

What does that have to do with portability? It doesn’t support a bunch of CPU architectures, the portability metric I care about.

▲8n4vidtmkvmk 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I/my agent somehow integrated it into a C++ app on Windows. So one way or another, it does work.

▲nektro 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Zig is even more portable than C

▲ChickeNES an hour ago | parent [-]

You’re kidding right? That’s not what the support matrix on the Zig site shows. Plenty of CPU archs in Tier 3/4. No support for Alpha, HPPA, M68K, Sparc, or SuperH.

▲nektro an hour ago | parent [-]

"portable" and "has ports" mean two different things. there might be targets Zig doesn't have great support for yet but what I meant is that bootstrapping a target to Zig is a simpler endeavor than it is for C

▲ 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
▲geokon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

terminal emulation keeps playing a central role in "computing" not withstanding it being an ugly prehistoric crocodile. Do you ever envision creating something modern, without the warts and with a design that incorporates half a century of lessons-learned? Something that fills this need but in a more elegant package? I'm asking because you're one of the few people that seems well-positioned to make a clean-slate replacement

I personally avoid using the terminal as much as possible b/c the whole things feels very archaic/fragile/baroque - but the central idea seems great and I'd love a modern take on it

▲Onavo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I don't want to use the wave of "venture backed ghostty wrappers" for remote mobile coding similar to Claude Code remote, what options do I have? Any plans for a first party remote solution that's not SSH?

▲iknowstuff 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

rootshell is libghostty and free, doesnt strike me as vc backed

▲adamisnotroman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hello Onavo. Cosyra.com is not venture backed and not a ghostty wrapper! Lets you remote control all your agents from your phone without SSH.

▲latchkey 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the web version powers our quickstart via a cloudflare websocket and some custom patches (only on desktop): https://hotaisle.xyz/quick-start

it is all open source: https://github.com/hotaisle/hotaisle-website

▲colechristensen 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is libghostty better than alacritty?

Although not necessarily advertised as such, I've been successfully using alacritty in several projects injecting terminals into things both serious and silly.

▲skhameneh 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I wouldn’t say it’s better, because that’s very subjective, but it is more “feature complete”. Alacritty is very minimal and rejects community PRs for features often driven by their general ethos. libghostty supports a lot of features I don’t foresee making their way into Alacritty.

I use Alacritty and GNOME Terminal. I don’t have a great reason for not using or trying Ghostty other than I have a minor aversion to Zig. (Again, not a great reason and arguably a not good reason)

▲ziiinq an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

▲axiosgunnar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

▲TrueDuality 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm super excited for you and this, but this is mostly a highlight list of who is using your library. I was kind of excited to read about the actual changes to the library but I suppose I can go read the changelog on my own.