Native interface, GPU drawing

Ghostty is a terminal emulator written in Zig and released under the MIT licence. Its technical stance is stated plainly: the interface uses each platform's own toolkit, AppKit on macOS and GTK 4 on Linux, while drawing is handed to the GPU, Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux. The practical result is a window that looks like an application of that desktop instead of a web page wearing a terminal's skin. On a system where every other window uses the same controls, the difference shows up immediately in the shape of the tabs and the weight of the scrollbar.

Splitting the work that way also settles a question every terminal faces sooner or later. Text is cheap to draw until it is not, and once a build log scrolls past a few thousand lines, the redraw either happens on the graphics chip or it becomes the reason the whole machine feels slow. Handing that job to the GPU leaves the processor for the compiler that is producing the log.

Tabs and splits that are real

Multiple windows, tabs and splits are native widgets rather than a simulation drawn inside a character grid. Each split runs on its own PTY, so resizing and managing panes behaves the way the rest of the desktop does, and a multiplexer stops being a prerequisite for ordinary work. Because the layout is not faked in text, dragging a divider lands where the pointer is, and a pane remembers its size when the window changes.

Rendering goes further than colour. Ligatures are supported, grapheme clusters are handled correctly so emoji and right-to-left text keep their alignment, and the Kitty graphics protocol lets images appear inside the terminal rather than in a placeholder. Several hundred themes are included, and they follow the system's light or dark setting on their own.

One configuration file

Zero configuration is the default promise, but the options are all there when wanted. Settings live in a single file in the user's configuration directory, written as declarative key-value pairs without pulling in a scripting language such as Lua or JavaScript. Font fallback, background blur and transparency, cursor shape, key bindings and custom shaders for effects like CRT curvature or glow all sit in that one file. Shell integration covers bash, zsh, fish and elvish, so prompt marking and the small conveniences around it work in whichever of them is in use.

Releases and platforms

Version 1.3.0, published on 9 March 2026, was the larger change: it brought scrollback search, a native scrollbar, the ability to click inside a shell prompt to move the cursor, and a notification when a long command finishes. As of September 2026 the stable build on the official download page is 1.3.1. Builds are offered for macOS and Linux, and a Windows version is still planned rather than available.

Who should look at it

The terminal is one of the few programs a developer keeps open all day, so small frictions accumulate into a mood. Anyone who currently starts a multiplexer just to get two panes, or who edits a scripting-language configuration to change a cursor shape, will notice what this one does differently within an afternoon. Anyone who needs Windows today has no reason to rearrange anything yet.

There is also a quieter argument for the approach. Because the window is drawn with the platform's own controls, the parts that are not the terminal behave the way the rest of the desktop does: menus, focus rings, window snapping, accessibility settings. A program that fights the system it runs on costs attention every time it is used, and this one has decided not to.

A terminal that works the moment it opens and can still be tuned to the last key binding is a reasonable thing to want, and Ghostty is worth installing to see whether the fit is right. Native tabs and splits, GPU rendering and a single configuration file add up to something that is quick without being bare. Windows users will have to wait for official support.