Prerelease Builds

If you're comfortable with running prerelease software, you can help test the latest features and get the most recent bug fixes by running prerelease builds of Ghostty. This helps the project significantly by providing feedback on new features and addressing possible issues before they are released to the public.

Note

During the private beta period of Ghostty, testers daily drove prerelease builds using this same process. Many didn't have a single issue for months or even over a year. The prerelease builds are generally stable, but users should always be prepared for the possibility of stability issues.

An overview of how to install prerelease builds is provided below with more details in the sections following the table.

Platform	Description
macOS	auto-update-channel to get the latest prerelease builds
Arch Linux	ghostty-git on the AUR
NixOS/Nix on other distros	Flake within the Ghostty repository
Other Linux distros	Build from source

For macOS, the Ghostty project provides signed and notarized builds for the latest commit on the main branch. These are available via GitHub Releases but also via the standard macOS auto-update mechanism.

If you are on a release build, you can switch to the prerelease channel by setting auto-update-channel to tip.

auto-update-channel = tip

Tip

Don't forget to restart Ghostty after changing the auto-update-channel setting! This setting does not take effect until Ghostty is restarted.

Warning

While you can set this setting back to stable at any time, this will only take effect when a later stable release is available. If you want to downgrade back to the previous stable release, you must re-download Ghostty.

Note

Why is this setting called "tip"? The term "tip" is a common term to refer to the latest commit on a branch in Git. Since we build prerelease builds from the latest commit on the main branch, we use the term "tip" to refer to the latest prerelease build rather than something like "nightly".

You can also install prerelease builds using Homebrew using the @tip version.

brew install --cask ghostty@tip

Warning

This is community-maintained. The auto-update-channel setting is an official distribution channel.

Warning

The AUR package is community-maintained. Any issues regarding packaging or the build process should be reported to the AUR maintainer first, and then to the Ghostty project.

The ghostty-git package on the Arch User Repository (AUR) provides a way to automatically build and install the latest prerelease version of Ghostty with ease.

Installation may be done with an AUR helper or from source per the usual AUR instructions.

# Install Ghostty git
yay -S ghostty-git

The Ghostty repository comes with a Flake that can be used to build, run and install development ("tip") versions of Ghostty reproducibly, which is directly used, tested and maintained by Ghostty maintainers as our primary development and CI environment.

# Build and run the latest tip version of Ghostty without installing
nix run github:ghostty-org/ghostty

Note

The Flake currently does not support macOS builds due to limitations of the Nix ecosystem. See the Nix (macOS binary) section of the "Prebuilt Binaries and Packages" page for more details.

Warning

If you are installing the Flake on a non-NixOS system, be sure to read the important caveats regarding running OpenGL programs built with Nix on non-NixOS systems. Ghostty will likely fail to launch without the workarounds described there.

NixOS users can install Ghostty either directly as a package under packages.<system>.default (where <system> is your current host system, e.g. x86_64-linux), or use the overlay at overlays.default.

{
  pkgs,
  inputs,
}:
{
  # Installing the package directly
  users.users.somebody.packages = [
    inputs.ghostty.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default
  ];

  # Alternatively, using overlays:
  nixpkgs.overlays = [
    inputs.ghostty.overlays.default
  ];
  users.users.somebody.packages = [
    pkgs.ghostty
  ];
}

The Flake also exposes Ghostty compiled under different optimization settings, including ghostty-debug, ghostty-releasefast and ghostty-releasesafe: releasefast is the default; debug enables better debug information at the cost of performance; and releasesafe is rarely used.

debug and releasefast are also available as overlays, under overlays.debug and overlays.releasefast respectively.