Shell Integration

• Do not confirm close for terminals where the cursor is at a prompt.
• New terminals start in the working directory of the previously focused terminal.
• Complex prompts resize correctly by allowing the shell to redraw -- rather than reflow -- the prompt line.
• Triple-click while holding control (Linux) or command (macOS) to select the output of a command.
• The cursor at the prompt is turned into a bar to represent more typical text editing.
• The jump_to_prompt keybinding can be used to scroll the terminal window forward and back through prompts.
• Alt+click (option+click on macOS) moves the cursor to the click location while at a prompt.
• sudo can be automatically wrapped to preserve Ghostty terminfo (disabled by default)

Ghostty will automatically inject the shell integration code for bash, zsh, fish, and elvish.

Note

The version of Bash distributed with macOS (/bin/bash) does not support automatic shell integration. You'll need to manually source the shell integration script (as shown below). You can also install a standard version of Bash from Homebrew or elsewhere and set it as your shell.

Other shells do not have shell integration code written but will function fine within Ghostty with some or all of the above mentioned shell integration features inoperating.

Some shells such as Nushell have built-in support for some of the features that Ghostty provides, so shell integration is not necessary. For example, newer versions of Fish (4.0+) have built-in support for prompt marking so jump_to_prompt, prompt resizing, and prompt selection will work without shell integration.

Ghostty detects your shell using a simple string match on the basename of the command to execute. If you are using a supported shell with a different name, you can force the shell integration by setting the shell-integration configuration option:

shell-integration = fish

If you want to disable automatic shell integration:

shell-integration = none

To verify shell integration is working, look for the following log lines:

info(io_exec): using Ghostty resources dir from env var: /Applications/Ghostty.app/Contents/Resources
info(io_exec): shell integration automatically injected shell=termio.shell_integration.Shell.fish

If you see any of the following, something is not working correctly. The main culprit is usually that GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR is not pointing to the right place.

ghostty terminfo not found, using xterm-256color

shell could not be detected, no automatic shell integration will be injected

For the automatic shell integration to work Ghostty must either be run from the macOS app bundle or be installed in a location where the contents of zig-out/share are available somewhere above the directory where Ghostty is running from.

On Linux, this should automatically work if you run from the zig-out directory tree structure (a standard FHS-style tree) or run from a properly installed location via -p (see build from source).

You may also manually set the GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR to point to the zig-out/share/ghostty contents. To validate this directory the file $GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR/../terminfo/ghostty.terminfo should exist. Setting this environment variable manually is a red flag that something else is wrong, though, and you should investigate further.

Shell integration can also be manually sourced in your shell configuration. This ensures that shell integration works in more scenarios (such as when you switch shells within Ghostty).

Ghostty will automatically set the GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR environment variable when it starts, so you can use this to (1) detect your shell is launched within Ghostty and (2) to find the shell-integration.

For example, for bash, you'd put this at the top of your ~/.bashrc:

# Ghostty shell integration for Bash. This should be at the top of your bashrc!
if [ -n "${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}" ]; then
    builtin source "${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}/shell-integration/bash/ghostty.bash"
fi

Note

Technically, the bash shell integration script could be sourced from anywhere, but some bash configurations may interfere with the shell integration. To avoid this, we recommend sourcing the script as early as possible in your shell configuration.

Each shell integration's installation instructions are documented inline:

Shell	Integration
bash	${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}/shell-integration/bash/ghostty.bash
fish	"$GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR"/shell-integration/fish/vendor_conf.d/ghostty-shell-integration.fish
zsh	${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}/shell-integration/zsh/ghostty-integration
elvish	${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}/shell-integration/elvish/lib/ghostty-integration.elv

For shell-specific details see shell-integration/README.md.

Automatic shell integration as described in the previous section only works for the initially launched shell when Ghostty is started.

If you switch shells within Ghostty, i.e. you manually run bash or you use a command like nix-shell, the shell integration will be lost in that shell (it will keep working in the original shell process).

To make shell integration work in these cases, you must manually source the Ghostty shell-specific code as shown in the previous section.