After nearly two years of development and private beta testing¹, I’m excited to share that Ghostty 1.0 will be publicly released in December 2024 as an open-source project under the MIT license.

In this blog post, I want to restate the broader goals of the Ghostty project and outline the specific goals for the 1.0 release. I have ambitious plans for Ghostty, but I also want to set clear expectations for what to expect on day one versus what will come in the future.

In short, Ghostty 1.0 aims to be the best drop-in replacement for your current terminal emulator on macOS and Linux. Ghostty will be fast, feature-rich, and have a platform-native GUI while being the most standards-compliant terminal emulator available.

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Best Existing Terminal Emulator

This slide from my Zig Showtime talk in September 2023 best summarizes why I started working on a new terminal emulator:

The number of terminal emulators compared is limited primarily due to slide design considerations but the broader point remains: I felt that the existing terminal emulators pushed an unnecessary choice between speed, features, and platform-native GUIs.²

With Ghostty, I set out to build a terminal emulator that was fast, feature-rich, and had a platform-native GUI while still being cross-platform. I believe Ghostty 1.0 achieves all of these goals.

This goal focuses on being the best existing terminal emulator. Within this goal, Ghostty 1.0 isn't trying to innovate on what a terminal can do but instead provide the best single terminal emulator experience available today on macOS and Linux³.

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Fast, Feature-Rich, and Platform-Native

The most common feedback I've received from people before they've used Ghostty is skepticism that any of this makes a difference. The most common feedback I've received from people after they've used Ghostty is that they didn't realize how much of a difference it makes and they can't imagine going back.

What does it mean for Ghostty to be fast, feature-rich, and platform-native? Each of these are large, complex topics so I'll only highlight a few key points for each area.

For "fast", I recently gave a 5-minute lightning talk at Systems Distributed 2024 titled "Making a Terminal Emulator Really, Really Fast: Ghostty" (timestamp link to 50:15). This gives a good overview of the performance thought that has gone into Ghostty, but isn't exhaustive since it is only a lightning talk.

For "feature-rich", Ghostty first and foremost aims to support the widest range of terminal applications possible. This means Ghostty supports more of the xterm escape sequences than any other terminal emulator (besides xterm itself). Ghostty also supports almost all modern terminal specifications such as styled underlines, Kitty keyboard protocol, graphics protocol, and more. (Not a terminal escape sequence but yes, Ghostty does support ligatures!)

For "platform-native", Ghostty uses the native GUI toolkit on macOS and GTK (plus libadwaita if available) on Linux. This means that Ghostty looks and feels (and really is) a native application on both platforms. This is in contrast to many terminal emulators that use the native GUI toolkits only to create a window.

As an example of the platform-native benefits: Ghostty has native tabs, splits, right-click menus, menu bars, dock integration, input method support (emoji keyboards, dictation, etc.), confirmation windows, desktop notifications, macOS secure input mode, and more.

Here are some screenshots of Ghostty on macOS and Linux (both themed but likely only a few lines of configuration), showing the platform-native GUI:

(Both images are from the community in our public showcase channel in the Ghostty Discord server)

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The First Release Will Be 1.0

Ghostty has been in private beta testing for nearly two years. At the time of writing, Ghostty has around 2,000 testers across macOS and Linux, most of whom have been using Ghostty as their primary daily terminal emulator without issue.

Due to the extensive private beta testing, the first public release of Ghostty will be version 1.0. There won't be any ZeroVer here!⁴

My motivation for the extensive private beta testing was principally selfish: I had my first child and I wanted to prioritize my time with my family over external pressures to build features or fix bugs. In theory, I could have ignored the noise but in practice I know myself well enough to know that I would have been distracted and it would've been mentally taxing.

Beyond the family motivation, I am nostalgic for the days when software was released when it was ready. I like to imagine that if stores like CompUSA still existed, Ghostty 1.0 would be boxed, shrink-wrapped, and on the shelf ready for purchase (but also free and open-source).

The other effects of the private beta testing were unexpected or unintended. For example, I never intended for Ghostty to feel exclusive (I quite frankly didn't expect that many people to be interested in a terminal emulator!) and I never intended for the private beta to artificially create hype around Ghostty. If you were on the negative side of this, I apologize.

I'm surprised how much criticism I received for this approach and the number of entitled people who seemed to believe that they were owed something just because I liked sharing my work and progress. At the same time, I'm thankful for the much larger number of people who have been supportive and understanding of my approach.

And finally, thank you to the testers who have been using Ghostty and providing fantastic feedback. Ghostty's stability is only possible due to the diverse set of testers who risked using an early version of what is often a critical piece in a developer's toolkit.

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The Big Vision

Looking to the future, Ghostty has ambitious plans in two main areas: libghostty and terminal application functionality.

libghostty is the core, cross-platform library that powers Ghostty. It is available as a Zig and C API and works today on macOS and Linux. The goal is to allow a large and diverse ecosystem of terminal emulator applications to emerge ranging from dedicated applications, embedded terminals such as in editors, web-based terminals, new terminal multiplexers, and more.

The idea with libghostty is that developers can focus on the hard work of building a great application and get fast, feature-rich, standards-compliant terminal emulation for free. In many ways, I describe Ghostty today as a "reference implementation" of a libghostty consumer.

For Ghostty 1.0, libghostty is not considered stable or available as a standalone public API. But, Ghostty does use libghostty internally. The goal after Ghostty 1.0 is to reach a point where libghostty is released as a standalone library and to expand platform support beyond macOS and Linux, especially to WebAssembly.

In addition to libghostty, I am interested in building out more functionality within terminals that applications can take advantage of. Some ideas include improving the security of escape sequences, allowing more modern input methods (such as touch gestures, momentum scrolling, drawing devices, etc.), allowing applications to provide native context menus, and more.

The goal with expanding terminal application functionality is to make text-based applications more attractive for developers to build and for users to use. I believe that text-based applications have a valuable niche in the software ecosystem and I want to help modernize the platform.

These are big, long-term goals to demonstrate that I have a bigger vision for Ghostty that I'm working towards. In the short term, I plan to iteratively improve Ghostty based on feedback from users and my own ideas according to the original broad goal of being fast, feature-rich, and platform-native. There are some major features I'm sad aren't going to make the 1.0 release but will come in follow-up releases.

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Finances and Sustainability

I don't want this to be a major focus of this blog post but given my background as an entrepreneur and the general interest in the topic, I will briefly touch on the financial and sustainability aspects of Ghostty to avoid any confusion or speculation.

Ghostty is a passion project for me and I have no plans to pursue any sort of commercialization of the project. As stated in the first paragraph, Ghostty will be released as an open-source project under the MIT license.

On a personal level, I am fortunate thanks to past successes to have the financial freedom to work on projects like Ghostty without any financial pressure. I have stated many times publicly that I view my work on Ghostty as a form of "technical philanthropy;" a means for me to give back while also scratching my own itch and having fun.

At the same time, I do want Ghostty to survive long-term without me and I also want to be able to potentially compensate major contributors for their work. To that end, I along with the [currently private] community are exploring not-for-profit structures to help ensure the long-term sustainability of Ghostty. But this is a long-term goal and not something that will be in place for the 1.0 release.

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See You in December

I'm looking forward to the public release of Ghostty 1.0 in December 2024.

Ghostty has been a huge passion project for me for over two years, starting as a once-in-awhile side project alongside my full-time job to becoming my primary (but very much part-time) focus after leaving my job and welcoming my first child.

Ghostty 1.0 won't be perfect, but its stability and feature set is something I'm proud of and I think it's ready to be shared with the rest of the world. Most importantly, I hope people feel how much love and care I've put into Ghostty and that it brings joy to their daily work (as much as a terminal emulator can).

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Footnotes

1. Around 2,000 testers across macOS and Linux at the time of writing. ↩

2. To learn more about what the "⚠️" means, see the original talk post. ↩

3. Windows support is planned after the 1.0 release. ↩

4. Ironically, software I started is the first example of ZeroVer. Well, not this time! ↩