Features

Ghostty is a very feature-rich terminal.

Terminal features can be divided into two categories: features for end-users and features for terminal application developers.

Features for end-users are things like multi-window, tabs, splits, ligatures, auto-update, etc. These are features that make using a terminal more pleasant without requiring any changes to the running terminal applications (such as your shell, text editor, etc.).

Features for terminal application developers are things like the Kitty graphics protocol, Kitty keyboard protocol, synchronized rendering, light/dark mode notifications, etc. These features allow terminal applications to do more than they could in other terminal emulators. While these features are not directly used by end-users, end-users benefit from them because terminal applications they use every day can do more.

Here is a list highlighting some of the larger or more interesting features that Ghostty supports:

• Cross-platform: Ghostty runs on macOS and Linux. It uses native UI components on each platform to provide an idiomatic experience. Windows support is planned for the future.

• Windows, tabs, and splits: Ghostty supports multiple windows, each with its own tabs and splits. These are all rendered using native UI components.

• GPU-accelerated rendering: Ghostty uses Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux to render the terminal screen.

• Themes: Ghostty ships with hundreds of themes that can be selected with a single line of configuration. Themes can be switched automatically based on system dark/light mode. Users can author their own themes.

• Ligatures: You can use fonts that have ligatures and Ghostty will render them correctly. You can also specify specific font features to enable or disable.

• Grapheme clustering: Multi-codepoint emoji such as flags, skin tones, etc. are rendered correctly as a single character. Certain languages like Arabic and Hebrew are also rendered correctly (LTR only).

• Kitty graphics protocol: Ghostty supports the Kitty graphics protocol, which allows terminal applications to render images directly in the terminal.

One of the primary design goals of Ghostty is to look, feel, and behave like a purpose-built native application on each platform. Here is a list of some of the platform-native features that Ghostty has.

• Quick Terminal: Lightweight terminal that animates down below the menu bar for instant access without interrupting work.
• Native Tabs, Splits, etc.: We use native macOS components for UI elements such as tabs and splits as opposed to custom-drawn text such as other terminal emulators.
• Proxy Icon: Drag the proxy icon in the title bar to move or access terminal session files, or navigate to the file path directly.
• Quick Look: Tap text with three fingers or force touch to use macOS Quick Look for definitions, web searches, and more.
• Secure Keyboard Entry: Automatically detect password prompts or manually enable secure keyboard entry to protect passwords from other processes. You can know when secure keyboard entry is active because an animated lock icon appears in the top-right corner of the terminal.

For terminal application developers, we believe Ghostty is one of the most modern and comprehensive terminal emulators available¹. Our goal with Ghostty is to be the most compatible for legacy applications while also providing the most modern features for new applications.

What that means in practice is that Ghostty supports a wide range of control sequences, terminal features, and terminal protocols. And to determine the behavior of these features, we follow the following principles:

1. Xterm compatibility: xterm is the de facto standard for terminal emulation. If xterm does something, we should do the same thing².

2. Protocol origin compatibility: If the terminal that defined a protocol behaves a certain way, we should follow that behavior, even if it is not specified³.

3. Defacto standard compatibility: If a behavior is widely accepted as the standard, we should follow that behavior. "Widely accepted" is generally subjective based on popular opinion and usage.

For a list of terminal developer features Ghostty supports, see the reference (but note at the time of writing this is still a work-in-progress).

Footnotes

1. If not, we want to know! Please open a discussion. ↩

2. We may put some xterm behaviors behind a configuration flag if the behavior is questionable or not widely accepted. ↩

3. If a behavior differs between the specification and the terminal that defined the protocol, we open a discussion to determine the correct behavior. ↩