{"slug": "ghostty", "name": "Ghostty", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "A fast, native, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator for macOS and Linux, written in Zig.", "recommenders": 58, "commenters": 118, "warners": 7, "score": 60.829, "rising": 9.89, "first": "2025-11-06", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "Loved for fast, responsive rendering, a simple file-based config with good defaults, and stability that lets it stay out of the way.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 60, "neutral": 44, "compare": 10, "warn": 7}, "spark": [3, 2, 4, 1, 9, 0, 3, 11, 5, 2, 0, 20], "listed": true, "loved": ["Speed", "Agent workflows"], "caveat": "iTerm2 switching", "short_quote": "I use the ghostty terminal emulator regularly -- it is built in Zig and it is super stable. It is a fantastic piece of software.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty", "official_url": "https://ghostty.org", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Ghostty"], "verdict": [{"text": "Loved for fast, responsive rendering", "cites": [{"id": 804428481, "item_id": 50276780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276780", "by": "bayesnet", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around.", "excerpt": "I was literally just griping about how I couldn't do this. I had no idea it was possible with kitty. Now to decide whether to switch back for it... As an aside, I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around. But kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804252576, "item_id": 50265786, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265786", "by": "wensheng", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Now Ghostty is the fastest.", "excerpt": "Judging from kitty benchmark, 1.4 is much faster than previous version 1.3.1. Vivido[0] was the fastest terminal when i measured terminal performance a month ago. Now Ghostty is the fastest. Time to catch up. [0] https://github.com/vivido-dev/vivido", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 759434688, "item_id": 47464668, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47464668", "by": "lzhgusapp", "date": "2026-03-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close.", "excerpt": "I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close. The rendering speed is noticeably better than iTerm2, especially with large log outputs. Excited to see libghostty enabling projects like this \u2014 the idea of packaging TUIs as native desktop apps is really compelling for indie developers.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostling"}]}, {"text": ", a simple file-based config with good defaults", "cites": [{"id": 804232336, "item_id": 50264521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264521", "by": "s4i", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file.", "excerpt": "While I'm not a hard core terminal emulator expert or tweaker, it was a bit of a learning curve to get into Ghostty after iTerm2. I hope this latest release makes it easier to edit the splits, haven't tested yet. But the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file. With iTerm you had to export the profile and keybindings, and then import them on a new system which was clumsy, an", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 778111776, "item_id": 48631986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631986", "by": "hack1312", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults", "excerpt": "i switched from iTerm 2 on macOS because it would get bogged down sometimes or occasionally lag. it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults, leading to my config being under 5 lines. on linux i use the default terminal in gnome which is ptyxis now iirc and haven\u2019t felt any need to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator on macOS", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 778115392, "item_id": 48632212, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632212", "by": "zemnl", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I definitely spent way less time configuring it to suit my needs that I did with any other terminal I used before.", "excerpt": "Same for me. My config is a couple lines longer, but other than font-family, font-size, color theme and a couple of other settings I didn't need to change anything else. I definitely spent way less time configuring it to suit my needs that I did with any other terminal I used before.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}]}, {"text": ", and stability that lets it stay out of the way.", "cites": [{"id": 804237008, "item_id": 50264813, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264813", "by": "alemanek", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty has been flawless for me the past 9months. It gets out of the way and just works really well.", "excerpt": "It being super responsive is the reason I switched to it. MacOS terminal had issues keeping up with Claude Code. It would frequently be super slow rendering the text output or sometimes just stop altogether. When looking at options I looked at speed and simplicity. Ghostty fit the bill but I did evaluate iterm as well. Excellent terminal but too many features for what I was looking for. I live in the terminal but am ", "context": "lives in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal for Claude Code", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 782120528, "item_id": 48882533, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48882533", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using Ghostty for a few months, very intensively, all day long, and I have not seen any crash or other suspicious behavior.", "excerpt": "I am running Ghostty 1.1.3, on Gentoo Linux. I have opened right now about a dozen Ghostty windows and about 20 tabs in each window, i.e. more than 100 shell instances. I have started in as many of them as I could, before becoming too bored, a \"ls -lR\" on a file system with many millions of files. I could not see any problem, much less any crash. I have been using Ghostty for a few months, very intensively, all day l", "context": "Gentoo Linux user", "use_case": "daily terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty"}, {"id": 804230656, "item_id": 50264416, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264416", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty has been a pretty good upgrade", "excerpt": "I don't know about the others as I used Terminal.app on mac since Panther, but Ghostty has been a pretty good upgrade, at first offering 24-bit colour which Terminal.app didn't have at the time of its release. I also like the shell integration such as easy selection of command output. I don't ask much from a terminal as evidenced by using Terminal.app for almost 2 decades, but Ghostty has not once been an issue and i", "context": "Mac user since Panther", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveats are friction for longtime iTerm2 users", "cites": [{"id": 804227873, "item_id": 50264242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264242", "by": "dimator", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "then the subtle usability issues become too much, and i wonder why i switched from iterm2 to begin with", "excerpt": "i tried ghostty, rio, wezterm, they all stuck for about a month or so... then the subtle usability issues become too much, and i wonder why i switched from iterm2 to begin with. there's something to be said for years of polish, and feature work that is well-baked. iterm2 is fast, reliable, and second nature. i don't have to edit settings every day.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804230304, "item_id": 50264394, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264394", "by": "merb", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I now use ghostty it\u2019s faster definitely", "excerpt": "btw I used iterm2 for years as well and sometimes tried others. I now use ghostty it\u2019s faster definitely. Yes it has some quirks which is hard to overcome as a iterm2 user. But I could live with it. I think ghostty is basically also the only alternative to iterm2", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804232336, "item_id": 50264521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264521", "by": "s4i", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file.", "excerpt": "While I'm not a hard core terminal emulator expert or tweaker, it was a bit of a learning curve to get into Ghostty after iTerm2. I hope this latest release makes it easier to edit the splits, haven't tested yet. But the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file. With iTerm you had to export the profile and keybindings, and then import them on a new system which was clumsy, an", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"text": " and gaps in search, such as working Cmd+F shortcuts.", "cites": [{"id": 755332704, "item_id": 47208294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208294", "by": "thallavajhula", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "without the CMD+F, it's of no use to me.", "excerpt": "When Ghostty was publicly announced, I used it for a few months and gave up on it due to the lack of support for the CMD+F feature that I use Terminal.app. This is a critical feature for me while tailing logs on my local. I tried the workaround of capturing the text into a text file and then searching it. It just didn't work for my workflow and dropped it. Ghostty is great otherwise. But, without the CMD+F, it's of n", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}, {"id": 804216304, "item_id": 50263519, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263519", "by": "eclipticplane", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "still does not fix the one bug I care about", "excerpt": "Man, still does not fix the one bug I care about: being able to quickly `\u2318+F, \u2318+V` - the find textbox does not respect keyboard shortcuts: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/11159", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Speed", "summary": "Commenters call it the most responsive or fastest terminal they have used, especially with heavy output.", "quotes": [{"id": 804428481, "item_id": 50276780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276780", "by": "bayesnet", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around.", "excerpt": "I was literally just griping about how I couldn't do this. I had no idea it was possible with kitty. Now to decide whether to switch back for it... As an aside, I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around. But kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 759434688, "item_id": 47464668, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47464668", "by": "lzhgusapp", "date": "2026-03-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close.", "excerpt": "I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close. The rendering speed is noticeably better than iTerm2, especially with large log outputs. Excited to see libghostty enabling projects like this \u2014 the idea of packaging TUIs as native desktop apps is really compelling for indie developers.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostling"}, {"id": 778111776, "item_id": 48631986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631986", "by": "hack1312", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults", "excerpt": "i switched from iTerm 2 on macOS because it would get bogged down sometimes or occasionally lag. it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults, leading to my config being under 5 lines. on linux i use the default terminal in gnome which is ptyxis now iirc and haven\u2019t felt any need to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator on macOS", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}]}, {"label": "Agent workflows", "summary": "Often used as the terminal for running Claude Code, Codex and multiple agents.", "quotes": [{"id": 804237008, "item_id": 50264813, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264813", "by": "alemanek", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty has been flawless for me the past 9months. It gets out of the way and just works really well.", "excerpt": "It being super responsive is the reason I switched to it. MacOS terminal had issues keeping up with Claude Code. It would frequently be super slow rendering the text output or sometimes just stop altogether. When looking at options I looked at speed and simplicity. Ghostty fit the bill but I did evaluate iterm as well. Excellent terminal but too many features for what I was looking for. I live in the terminal but am ", "context": "lives in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal for Claude Code", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 774661616, "item_id": 48416351, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416351", "by": "nimonian", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty with Claude Code. That's pretty much it.", "excerpt": "Ghostty with Claude Code. That's pretty much it. For each new feature, I open a worktree, spar with Claude to work up a gherkin spec with @todo on each story. Each agent pushes commits to a WIP PR in GitHub where I review and leave comments or questions. Once the spec is done we mainly interact on the PR. @todo becomes @wip and @done as the agent progresses. I really like gherkin for agentic engineering, it's very cl", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 747216208, "item_id": 46701013, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46701013", "by": "chrislloyd", "date": "2026-01-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recommend using Ghostty which has 2026 support and zero flicker.", "excerpt": "Hi! I work on TUI rendering for Claude Code. I know this has been a long-standing frustration \u2014 it's taken longer than any of us wanted. The good news: we shipped our differential renderer to everyone today. We rewrote our rendering system from scratch[1] and only ~1/3 of sessions see at least a flicker. Very, very few sessions see flickers in rapid succession which was so annoying before. Those numbers will keep dro", "context": "works on TUI rendering for Claude Code", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Chill: Fix Claude Code's Flickering in Terminal"}]}, {"label": "Stability", "summary": "Users report months of heavy use without crashes and say it just works.", "quotes": [{"id": 782120528, "item_id": 48882533, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48882533", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using Ghostty for a few months, very intensively, all day long, and I have not seen any crash or other suspicious behavior.", "excerpt": "I am running Ghostty 1.1.3, on Gentoo Linux. I have opened right now about a dozen Ghostty windows and about 20 tabs in each window, i.e. more than 100 shell instances. I have started in as many of them as I could, before becoming too bored, a \"ls -lR\" on a file system with many millions of files. I could not see any problem, much less any crash. I have been using Ghostty for a few months, very intensively, all day l", "context": "Gentoo Linux user", "use_case": "daily terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty"}, {"id": 757316272, "item_id": 47332267, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332267", "by": "sidkshatriya", "date": "2026-03-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use the ghostty terminal emulator regularly -- it is built in Zig and it is super stable. It is a fantastic piece of software.", "excerpt": "I am impressed by the achievements of the Zig team. I use the ghostty terminal emulator regularly -- it is built in Zig and it is super stable. It is a fantastic piece of software. This makes me feel that the underlying technology behind Zig is solid. But I prefer Rust over Zig. The main difference is Rust chooses a \"closed world\" model while Zig chooses an \"open world\" model: in Rust, you must explicitly implement a", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zig \u2013 Type Resolution Redesign and Language Changes"}, {"id": 804237008, "item_id": 50264813, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264813", "by": "alemanek", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty has been flawless for me the past 9months. It gets out of the way and just works really well.", "excerpt": "It being super responsive is the reason I switched to it. MacOS terminal had issues keeping up with Claude Code. It would frequently be super slow rendering the text output or sometimes just stop altogether. When looking at options I looked at speed and simplicity. Ghostty fit the bill but I did evaluate iterm as well. Excellent terminal but too many features for what I was looking for. I live in the terminal but am ", "context": "lives in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal for Claude Code", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Hackability", "summary": "libghostty, shader support and a pleasant codebase let people embed and extend it.", "quotes": [{"id": 804271920, "item_id": 50266995, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266995", "by": "grinkelhoof", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ghostty and libghostty.", "excerpt": "I love ghostty and libghostty. thanks to libghostty, ghostel.el is the nicest terminal for emacs going. Thanks to you & the others behind it.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 755493248, "item_id": 47218328, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47218328", "by": "threekindwords", "date": "2026-03-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "ghostty has extensive shader support", "excerpt": "ghostty has extensive shader support and claude knows how to write shaders... i was tired of staring at boring black rectangles all day... so i built a shader that fills the background with slow-moving color gradients. every window gets its own palette that drifts over an hour. i think it's beautiful without being distracting. thank you mitchell and contributors for implementing and supporting animated shaders! thank", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with animated shaders", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}, {"id": 778088576, "item_id": 48630536, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48630536", "by": "GodelNumbering", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's a well attended codebase and a pleasure to work with, props to Mitchell.", "excerpt": "I have been experimenting with modifying Ghostty lately. It's a well attended codebase and a pleasure to work with, props to Mitchell. Since Ghostty is written in Zig, I ended up adding native Zig AST support in Dirac (https://github.com/dirac-run/dirac/blob/master/src/services/tree-sitter/queries/zig.ts) One thing the has been a little unintuitive is the pattern of all code and tests in single files, which makes the", "context": "", "use_case": "modifying terminal codebase", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}]}, {"label": "Config file", "summary": "A plain config file with sensible defaults means little setup and easy dotfile syncing.", "quotes": [{"id": 804232336, "item_id": 50264521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264521", "by": "s4i", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file.", "excerpt": "While I'm not a hard core terminal emulator expert or tweaker, it was a bit of a learning curve to get into Ghostty after iTerm2. I hope this latest release makes it easier to edit the splits, haven't tested yet. But the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file. With iTerm you had to export the profile and keybindings, and then import them on a new system which was clumsy, an", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 778115392, "item_id": 48632212, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632212", "by": "zemnl", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I definitely spent way less time configuring it to suit my needs that I did with any other terminal I used before.", "excerpt": "Same for me. My config is a couple lines longer, but other than font-family, font-size, color theme and a couple of other settings I didn't need to change anything else. I definitely spent way less time configuring it to suit my needs that I did with any other terminal I used before.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 778111776, "item_id": 48631986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631986", "by": "hack1312", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults", "excerpt": "i switched from iTerm 2 on macOS because it would get bogged down sometimes or occasionally lag. it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults, leading to my config being under 5 lines. on linux i use the default terminal in gnome which is ptyxis now iirc and haven\u2019t felt any need to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator on macOS", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}]}, {"label": "Font rendering", "summary": "Users praise its text rendering and default fonts over other terminals.", "quotes": [{"id": 804210224, "item_id": 50263139, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263139", "by": "paaloeye", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty's rendering is always superior.", "excerpt": "> here was also some pretty noticeable differences in character rendering between the two with identical-as-I-could-make-them font settings. I'm pretty sure it was iTerm's problem. I've tested a number of Terminal Emulators on macOS and Ghostty's rendering is always superior. You should give 1.4 a try.", "context": "has tested many macOS terminal emulators", "use_case": "terminal emulator on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804253920, "item_id": 50265870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265870", "by": "clumsysmurf", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty didn't have issues with the same font", "excerpt": "In 2026.2.2, I have Tools / Terminal / Reworked 2025 selected but the font selection seems buggy. It doesn't allow me to pick several fixed width fonts, including the one I use in the main editor, and there are no weight settings. Ghostty didn't have issues with the same font, not sure what the problem is.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains IDEs are now powered by libghostty"}, {"id": 749791328, "item_id": 46861958, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861958", "by": "archiepeach", "date": "2026-02-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It had nicer fonts by default, better tab switching that was consistent with the keyboard shortcut", "excerpt": "Interesting timing for me personally as I just switched from running Codex in multiple tabs in Cursor to Ghostty. It had nicer fonts by default, better tab switching that was consistent with the keyboard shortcut to switch to any tab on Mac, and it had native notifications that would ping when Codex had finished. Worktrees requiring manual configuration was probably the one sticking point, so definitely looking forwa", "context": "", "use_case": "running Codex in terminal tabs", "switched_from": "Cursor", "story": "The Codex App"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "iTerm2 switching", "summary": "Some former iTerm2 users hit a learning curve or subtle usability quirks.", "quotes": [{"id": 804227873, "item_id": 50264242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264242", "by": "dimator", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "then the subtle usability issues become too much, and i wonder why i switched from iterm2 to begin with", "excerpt": "i tried ghostty, rio, wezterm, they all stuck for about a month or so... then the subtle usability issues become too much, and i wonder why i switched from iterm2 to begin with. there's something to be said for years of polish, and feature work that is well-baked. iterm2 is fast, reliable, and second nature. i don't have to edit settings every day.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804230304, "item_id": 50264394, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264394", "by": "merb", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I now use ghostty it\u2019s faster definitely", "excerpt": "btw I used iterm2 for years as well and sometimes tried others. I now use ghostty it\u2019s faster definitely. Yes it has some quirks which is hard to overcome as a iterm2 user. But I could live with it. I think ghostty is basically also the only alternative to iterm2", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804232336, "item_id": 50264521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264521", "by": "s4i", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file.", "excerpt": "While I'm not a hard core terminal emulator expert or tweaker, it was a bit of a learning curve to get into Ghostty after iTerm2. I hope this latest release makes it easier to edit the splits, haven't tested yet. But the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file. With iTerm you had to export the profile and keybindings, and then import them on a new system which was clumsy, an", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Search shortcuts", "summary": "Cmd+F search support was missing for some users and still mishandles keyboard shortcuts.", "quotes": [{"id": 755332704, "item_id": 47208294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208294", "by": "thallavajhula", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "without the CMD+F, it's of no use to me.", "excerpt": "When Ghostty was publicly announced, I used it for a few months and gave up on it due to the lack of support for the CMD+F feature that I use Terminal.app. This is a critical feature for me while tailing logs on my local. I tried the workaround of capturing the text into a text file and then searching it. It just didn't work for my workflow and dropped it. Ghostty is great otherwise. But, without the CMD+F, it's of n", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}, {"id": 804216304, "item_id": 50263519, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263519", "by": "eclipticplane", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "still does not fix the one bug I care about", "excerpt": "Man, still does not fix the one bug I care about: being able to quickly `\u2318+F, \u2318+V` - the find textbox does not respect keyboard shortcuts: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/11159", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Missing features", "summary": "Users miss Kitty-style hints mode, sidebar tabs and OpenBSD support.", "quotes": [{"id": 804218352, "item_id": 50263647, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263647", "by": "jaywcarman", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great", "excerpt": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great, but Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty. There are quite a few discussions around this and similar features in the Ghosstty-org/ghostty Discussions[2] which I follow. Most of them are references from ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394[3]. Maybe now that Ghostty has finished implementing Kitty graphics hints will be next . [1]: h", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 755358624, "item_id": 47209914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209914", "by": "sponno", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Loving how well Ghostty works and looks.", "excerpt": "Loving how well Ghostty works and looks. When running several Projects I need quite a few tabs as all these AI agents take sometime to complete. Overhead tabs get real messy very quickly. Multiple windows become a nightmare quickly. Side bar tabs have been my solution. I love iTerms sidebar tabs - I add emojis to mine for my key projects and any subtask just lives under the master tab like a folder. Would love to see", "context": "runs several projects with AI agents", "use_case": "terminal for AI agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}, {"id": 804520400, "item_id": 50282525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282525", "by": "fleeno", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Ghostty and use it under Linux and MacOS", "excerpt": "I love Ghostty and use it under Linux and MacOS, but really wish it had OpenBSD support!", "context": "Linux and macOS user", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Linux rough edges", "summary": "Linux users report hard upgrades, slow launch times and a disliked Adwaita tab UI.", "quotes": [{"id": 804633456, "item_id": 50289591, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289591", "by": "sparse-Matrix", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love the application. It became my default driver overnight.", "excerpt": "I love the application. It became my default driver overnight. But the zig dependency and the odd installation paradigm make it a complete bugger to upgrade. FYI I'm using debian trixie, fully updated, and feel like installing/updating this should be a no-brainer.", "context": "Debian trixie user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804218994, "item_id": 50263687, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263687", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It's slow on Linux, for sure.", "excerpt": "Yeah. It's slow on Linux, for sure. I use Foot, which as far as I've tested is the fastest to launch. I use Niri and launch Foot terminals all the time as part of my workflow (it's just how my mind works), so time to launch matters to me.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal startup time", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 755355889, "item_id": 47209743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209743", "by": "WhereIsTheTruth", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the turn off was Adwaita, the tablet UI for the tabs and context menu.. i just can't", "excerpt": "I can't find an alternative to Terminator, being able to drag and drop panels to create layouts is such a strong workflow that it's very hard to give up I did give Ghostty a try, the turn off was Adwaita, the tablet UI for the tabs and context menu.. i just can't", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}]}, {"label": "TERM compatibility", "summary": "Some saw TUIs break or warnings caused by the TERM variable it sets.", "quotes": [{"id": 782112384, "item_id": 48882024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48882024", "by": "JoeBOFH", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used ghosty and others for awhile but had continuous issues of it not passing a compatible term variable so a lot of tuis would break.", "excerpt": "Honestly not sure. I used ghosty and others for awhile but had continuous issues of it not passing a compatible term variable so a lot of tuis would break.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty"}, {"id": 755884672, "item_id": 47242792, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47242792", "by": "mjcarden", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "WARNING: terminal is not fully functional", "excerpt": "Installed the snap on Ubuntu 24.04 and when I used it to look at /etc/sudoers.d/README, it emitted: WARNING: terminal is not fully functional Press RETURN to continue ...which I thought a little odd.", "context": "Ubuntu 24.04 user", "use_case": "terminal emulator on Ubuntu", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}]}], "who": [{"by": "sparse-Matrix", "context": "Debian trixie user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289591", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "fleeno", "context": "Linux and macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282525", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "pcblues", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50269026", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "alemanek", "context": "lives in the terminal", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264813", "date": "2026-10-27"}, {"by": "commandersaki", "context": "Mac user since Panther", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264416", "date": "2026-10-27"}, {"by": "adrian_b", "context": "Compiles big software projects, Gentoo user with NVIDIA GPUs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "date": "2026-10-27"}, {"by": "paaloeye", "context": "has tested many macOS terminal emulators", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263139", "date": "2026-10-27"}, {"by": "moecables", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49938059", "date": "2026-10-02"}, {"by": "spencerldixon", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49697336", "date": "2026-09-14"}, {"by": "vicek22", "context": "works with coding agents", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099631", "date": "2026-07-29"}, {"by": "jwr", "context": "Emacs user for over 32 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677810", "date": "2026-06-25"}, {"by": "CraigJPerry", "context": "building an agent-manager app in SwiftUI", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47466773", "date": "2026-03-21"}], "tags": ["for macOS users", "for Linux users", "for coding-agent workflows", "for iTerm2 switchers", "embeddable via libghostty"], "use_cases": ["terminal emulator", "terminal", "daily terminal", "terminal emulator on macos", "terminal with custom shaders", "terminal for claude code"], "compared": [{"slug": "iterm2", "name": "iTerm2", "co": 21, "switched_from": 12, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kitty", "name": "Kitty", "co": 15, "switched_from": 6, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "wezterm", "name": "WezTerm", "co": 10, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "alacritty", "name": "Alacritty", "co": 9, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "terminal-app", "name": "Terminal.app", "co": 6, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "warp", "name": "Warp", "co": 5, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261998", "title": "Ghostty 1.4", "mentions": 28}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50298436", "title": "Herdr has released native app", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48630020", "title": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413629", "title": "Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206009", "title": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098965", "title": "Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 3}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 3}, "2026-03": {"compare": 1, "warn": 3, "recommend": 9, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 4}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 3, "compare": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 6, "recommend": 11, "compare": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 6, "compare": 2, "recommend": 5, "warn": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 2}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 11, "recommend": 20, "warn": 3, "compare": 4}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804965890, "item_id": 50310368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50310368", "by": "threecheese", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I can use the tui in ghosttty or wezterm or iterm", "excerpt": "Right now the new herdr has more ... just more. Rex has the polish, attention to detail, and attention to performance. They both follow the same \"gui with a cli to manage the engine which owns the PTYs, has some interaction protocol, wraps coding agent interfaces, and you can connect to remote machines\" model. Unfortunately they are both GUI only atm and so I'm still using herdr-tui over ssh until it breaks or we get", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804922481, "item_id": 50307655, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50307655", "by": "albertgoeswoof", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "compare", "quote": "After trying out all the others ghostty, alacritty etc. I still found it incredibly annoying", "excerpt": "I got used to warp\u2019s terminal, with really nice text editing, but it\u2019s gotten so slow and weird, that I can\u2019t stand it anymore. After trying out all the others ghostty, alacritty etc. I still found it incredibly annoying to have to navigate with different shortcuts from the rest of my stack, sometimes copying and pasting commands back and forth into my text editor just to edit and run them. So I wrote this, and I\u2019m d", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Prompt \u2013 A New, Beautiful Terminal"}, {"id": 804894961, "item_id": 50305935, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50305935", "by": "desipenguin", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it from Ghostty", "excerpt": "https://github.com/jkuepker/herdr-layouts/blob/main/lcars/preview.png This alone is worth trying the Desktop app I'm sure I'll get bored once the novelty wears off I'm already a happy user of herdr CLI (or whatever it is called. I use it from Ghostty)", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804891424, "item_id": 50305714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50305714", "by": "desireco42", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since I am using Ghostty I can give it a try", "excerpt": "Since I am using Ghostty I can give it a try, it would be nice to see it resolved as it was stupid tbh, all the difficult stuff is working well.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804830258, "item_id": 50301891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50301891", "by": "stingraycharles", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I just use tmux with multiple ghostty sessions", "excerpt": "I use Claude Code extensively as I mentioned, but what does \u201cprimary support\u201d look like? Why should tmux \u201cknow\u201d what an agent is? I just use tmux with multiple ghostty sessions and I have different Claude code sessions behind different tabs and panes and work like that. What am I missing out on that justifies now using a normal terminal+tmux anymore?", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804820178, "item_id": 50301261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50301261", "by": "stingraycharles", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "But I\u2019m already using ghostty.", "excerpt": "But I\u2019m already using ghostty. I installed herdr but made the mistake of launching it from within tmux and had no idea how to close it. I then opened it somewhere else, but I had no idea how to interact with it. I also couldn\u2019t get two other windows to \u201cjoin\u201d the same herdr session, so I gave up and went back to tmux. For someone who has used screen / tmux for almost 30 years at this point, what does herdr do that tm", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804812113, "item_id": 50300757, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300757", "by": "ajoseps", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I recently switched to Zellij with Ghostty", "excerpt": "I recently switched to Zellij with Ghostty and the selection/copy/pasting seems to work just fine. I previously used zellij and kitty and I would have issues.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "kitty", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804633456, "item_id": 50289591, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289591", "by": "sparse-Matrix", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love the application. It became my default driver overnight.", "excerpt": "I love the application. It became my default driver overnight. But the zig dependency and the odd installation paradigm make it a complete bugger to upgrade. FYI I'm using debian trixie, fully updated, and feel like installing/updating this should be a no-brainer.", "context": "Debian trixie user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804520400, "item_id": 50282525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282525", "by": "fleeno", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Ghostty and use it under Linux and MacOS", "excerpt": "I love Ghostty and use it under Linux and MacOS, but really wish it had OpenBSD support!", "context": "Linux and macOS user", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804482417, "item_id": 50280151, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50280151", "by": "elias1233", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use that version every day", "excerpt": "Make a fork and Claude can probably one-shot it. Mitchell will not accept a vibe coded PR though, but that is fine if it is for personal use. I added Tmux control mode (a pretty extensive feature) https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Control-Mode to Ghostty: https://github.com/eliasfloreteng/ghostty-tmux and I use that version every day", "context": "", "use_case": "daily terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804428481, "item_id": 50276780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276780", "by": "bayesnet", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around.", "excerpt": "I was literally just griping about how I couldn't do this. I had no idea it was possible with kitty. Now to decide whether to switch back for it... As an aside, I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around. But kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804390224, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty.", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Kitty", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804347890, "item_id": 50271743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271743", "by": "Shugyousha", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I was wondering about the actual measurements of the improvements given the added complexity", "excerpt": "I do most of my work in a terminal emulator and I mostly want the terminal I use to be fast to run and start. I have tried other terminal emulators as well (kitty, for example) since they promise to be GPU-accelerated which sounded relevant to my needs. I always end up back at \"st\" though. It is fast enough for my purposes and does just about exactly what I want and not more. Reading about Ghostty 1.4's D-bus activat", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804334561, "item_id": 50270910, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50270910", "by": "selectnull", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Ghostty is fine, but I want a scripting language for my terminal", "excerpt": "I feel fine after the switch. That says a lot because I really liked WezTerm (I was sponsoring Wez on github because of it) and I still do. But, the development stopped to a crawl, Wez has other priorities (obviously) and it was time for me to find an alternative. Ghostty is fine, but I want a scripting language for my terminal - I don't need much, but those few little things mean a lot to me. Based on the Rex docs, ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "WezTerm", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804324576, "item_id": 50270286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50270286", "by": "toxik", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Ghostty is a lot faster and lighter, it has occasional rendering issues and does not detect URLs as well.", "excerpt": "There is no reason. I switched from iTerm 2 and while Ghostty is a lot faster and lighter, it has occasional rendering issues and does not detect URLs as well. It also doesn't have tmux control mode which I really liked. I quit using iTerm 2 because of the AI features. Ew.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804304416, "item_id": 50269026, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50269026", "by": "pcblues", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use ghostty as my go-to terminal on my linux devices. I chose it after trying four or so", "excerpt": "I have an interesting reason to not upgrade: I use ghostty as my go-to terminal on my linux devices. I chose it after trying four or so with the way I work. It just works perfectly for me. But I only really have one use case: 1) Work the way I want it to I could list my wants as an example, but there is no point because I don't know whether my needs are being met by what they consider a mistake in their design or a f", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804271920, "item_id": 50266995, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266995", "by": "grinkelhoof", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ghostty and libghostty.", "excerpt": "I love ghostty and libghostty. thanks to libghostty, ghostel.el is the nicest terminal for emacs going. Thanks to you & the others behind it.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804269568, "item_id": 50266848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266848", "by": "thiht", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty just fits my needs pretty much exactly.", "excerpt": "If you\u2019re fine using iTerm just use iTerm. In my case I used iTerm for years and kinda liked it, but not completely. I\u2019d been looking for an alternative for years but couldn\u2019t find one I like (Alacritty doesn\u2019t support pane splitting, Wezterm has full code config which I hate, Kitty doesn\u2019t look good on Mac, Terminal.app is dog slow\u2026). Ghostty just fits my needs pretty much exactly.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804260432, "item_id": 50266277, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266277", "by": "Atreiden", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Ghostty and your vision here, and evangelize it whenever I can.", "excerpt": "Just wanted to say thank you for all your contributions to our industry, Mitchell. I love Ghostty and your vision here, and evangelize it whenever I can. It's a pleasure reading your posts.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804255696, "item_id": 50265981, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265981", "by": "ktosobcy", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Why should I use Ghostty over iTerm2?", "excerpt": "Why should I use Ghostty over iTerm2? I don't care about fancy fonts, iTerm2 speed (for me) is plenty (just tested against 1.4 -- don't see noticeable difference on MBP M1) and I do like to tweak some options/settings (and was just mildly annoyed when hitting `cmd+,` opened my default text editor...", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804253920, "item_id": 50265870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265870", "by": "clumsysmurf", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty didn't have issues with the same font", "excerpt": "In 2026.2.2, I have Tools / Terminal / Reworked 2025 selected but the font selection seems buggy. It doesn't allow me to pick several fixed width fonts, including the one I use in the main editor, and there are no weight settings. Ghostty didn't have issues with the same font, not sure what the problem is.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains IDEs are now powered by libghostty"}, {"id": 804252576, "item_id": 50265786, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265786", "by": "wensheng", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Now Ghostty is the fastest.", "excerpt": "Judging from kitty benchmark, 1.4 is much faster than previous version 1.3.1. Vivido[0] was the fastest terminal when i measured terminal performance a month ago. Now Ghostty is the fastest. Time to catch up. [0] https://github.com/vivido-dev/vivido", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804237008, "item_id": 50264813, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264813", "by": "alemanek", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty has been flawless for me the past 9months. It gets out of the way and just works really well.", "excerpt": "It being super responsive is the reason I switched to it. MacOS terminal had issues keeping up with Claude Code. It would frequently be super slow rendering the text output or sometimes just stop altogether. When looking at options I looked at speed and simplicity. Ghostty fit the bill but I did evaluate iterm as well. Excellent terminal but too many features for what I was looking for. I live in the terminal but am ", "context": "lives in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal for Claude Code", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804234784, "item_id": 50264674, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264674", "by": "jen20", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switching to Ghostty full time in 2024 with minimal fuss", "excerpt": "I used iTerm and iTerm 2 for almost 20 years before switching to Ghostty full time in 2024 with minimal fuss besides the muscle memory of \"cmd+space ite\" switching to \"cmd+space gho\" to launch it! Do you have specific examples of usability issues?", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804232336, "item_id": 50264521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264521", "by": "s4i", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file.", "excerpt": "While I'm not a hard core terminal emulator expert or tweaker, it was a bit of a learning curve to get into Ghostty after iTerm2. I hope this latest release makes it easier to edit the splits, haven't tested yet. But the biggest thing that made me stay on Ghostty was that there's a freaking config file. With iTerm you had to export the profile and keybindings, and then import them on a new system which was clumsy, an", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804230656, "item_id": 50264416, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264416", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty has been a pretty good upgrade", "excerpt": "I don't know about the others as I used Terminal.app on mac since Panther, but Ghostty has been a pretty good upgrade, at first offering 24-bit colour which Terminal.app didn't have at the time of its release. I also like the shell integration such as easy selection of command output. I don't ask much from a terminal as evidenced by using Terminal.app for almost 2 decades, but Ghostty has not once been an issue and i", "context": "Mac user since Panther", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804230304, "item_id": 50264394, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264394", "by": "merb", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I now use ghostty it\u2019s faster definitely", "excerpt": "btw I used iterm2 for years as well and sometimes tried others. I now use ghostty it\u2019s faster definitely. Yes it has some quirks which is hard to overcome as a iterm2 user. But I could live with it. I think ghostty is basically also the only alternative to iterm2", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804227873, "item_id": 50264242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264242", "by": "dimator", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "then the subtle usability issues become too much, and i wonder why i switched from iterm2 to begin with", "excerpt": "i tried ghostty, rio, wezterm, they all stuck for about a month or so... then the subtle usability issues become too much, and i wonder why i switched from iterm2 to begin with. there's something to be said for years of polish, and feature work that is well-baked. iterm2 is fast, reliable, and second nature. i don't have to edit settings every day.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804224194, "item_id": 50264012, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264012", "by": "railka", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Alacritty -> Ghostty -> tty7", "excerpt": "My experience with terminals was like this - Alacritty -> Ghostty -> tty7. The last one implements exactly what I had in mind when I used Alacritty and Ghostty. Only it doesn't hype much (the author apparently doesn't strive for that much), maybe that's for the better.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Alacritty", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804220210, "item_id": 50263763, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263763", "by": "kccqzy", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Ghostty was slightly faster, but then Ptyxis was also faster.", "excerpt": "I have been using Alacritty for its GPU acceleration long ago. Ghostty was slightly faster, but then Ptyxis was also faster. Since I preferred to configure my terminal with GUI, I have switched to Ptyxis.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804218994, "item_id": 50263687, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263687", "by": "christophilus", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It's slow on Linux, for sure.", "excerpt": "Yeah. It's slow on Linux, for sure. I use Foot, which as far as I've tested is the fastest to launch. I use Niri and launch Foot terminals all the time as part of my workflow (it's just how my mind works), so time to launch matters to me.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal startup time", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804218352, "item_id": 50263647, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263647", "by": "jaywcarman", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great", "excerpt": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great, but Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty. There are quite a few discussions around this and similar features in the Ghosstty-org/ghostty Discussions[2] which I follow. Most of them are references from ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394[3]. Maybe now that Ghostty has finished implementing Kitty graphics hints will be next . [1]: h", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804216304, "item_id": 50263519, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263519", "by": "eclipticplane", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "still does not fix the one bug I care about", "excerpt": "Man, still does not fix the one bug I care about: being able to quickly `\u2318+F, \u2318+V` - the find textbox does not respect keyboard shortcuts: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/11159", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804211744, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "Compiles big software projects, Gentoo user with NVIDIA GPUs", "use_case": "fast terminal for compiling", "switched_from": "kitty", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804210224, "item_id": 50263139, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263139", "by": "paaloeye", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ghostty's rendering is always superior.", "excerpt": "> here was also some pretty noticeable differences in character rendering between the two with identical-as-I-could-make-them font settings. I'm pretty sure it was iTerm's problem. I've tested a number of Terminal Emulators on macOS and Ghostty's rendering is always superior. You should give 1.4 a try.", "context": "has tested many macOS terminal emulators", "use_case": "terminal emulator on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804206144, "item_id": 50262884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262884", "by": "selectnull", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I switched to Ghostty just because I got tired of nothing happening in the WezTerm land", "excerpt": "At this point, I'm really looking forward to Rex. I've been a laggard in switching to Ghostty because I used WezTerm and wrote a plugin to customize it to my liking. I switched to Ghostty just because I got tired of nothing happening in the WezTerm land and wanted to try something different. Rex will allow me to use my old workflow again.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "WezTerm", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 802411749, "item_id": 50150734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50150734", "by": "Tooster", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "ghostty as snap on fresh boot/after a while opens in several seconds vs miliseconds for deb", "excerpt": "AppImage works in the same way downloading a binary from the web and running it with `./program` works. It is dumb simple, but it has really poor integration with the system. I've been using AppImages for several years but the manual churn got to tedious \u2014 auto updates, system integration, background services, keeping it tidy. I contributed AppImage packaging workflow to some apps \u2014 mechanism itself is messy, support", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Flatpak \u2013 An Insecurity Nightmare (2023)"}, {"id": 801411184, "item_id": 50088199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50088199", "by": "ilvez", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Switched to Jetbrains Mono when Ghostty came out nearly 2 years ago", "excerpt": "Yep. :waves: to ones on similar path.. Switching off from Terminus was hard, but eventually unavoidable. Switched to Jetbrains Mono when Ghostty came out nearly 2 years ago..", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 801011937, "item_id": 50063246, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50063246", "by": "spudlyo", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "this was also right about the time I migrated to Ghostty so that also made a big difference", "excerpt": "I've been using Pi nearly every day for 4-5 months now, and even though it is still very much in development with new updates arriving nearly every week, it has to my mind never regressed. I've never lamented that a Pi update ever broke anything I depend on or made anything worse. I immediately adopted the new tuiMode \"fullscreen\" feature the moment it landed, and it's been exceptional. I love the way it now manages ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default"}, {"id": 799008944, "item_id": 49938059, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49938059", "by": "moecables", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Ghostty (fine, it's my terminal)", "excerpt": "IMHO, it's good to add more specific controls for this. After reading this, I went and checked my list of app with full disk access: - Ghostty (fine, it's my terminal) - Alfred (fine, I use it for searching everywhere) Then I have a few turned off: - Spotify (why does it need full disk access) ?? - Gemini (nope, don't need it to know everything about my computer)", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS"}, {"id": 782120528, "item_id": 48882533, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48882533", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using Ghostty for a few months, very intensively, all day long, and I have not seen any crash or other suspicious behavior.", "excerpt": "I am running Ghostty 1.1.3, on Gentoo Linux. I have opened right now about a dozen Ghostty windows and about 20 tabs in each window, i.e. more than 100 shell instances. I have started in as many of them as I could, before becoming too bored, a \"ls -lR\" on a file system with many millions of files. I could not see any problem, much less any crash. I have been using Ghostty for a few months, very intensively, all day l", "context": "Gentoo Linux user", "use_case": "daily terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty"}, {"id": 778115392, "item_id": 48632212, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632212", "by": "zemnl", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I definitely spent way less time configuring it to suit my needs that I did with any other terminal I used before.", "excerpt": "Same for me. My config is a couple lines longer, but other than font-family, font-size, color theme and a couple of other settings I didn't need to change anything else. I definitely spent way less time configuring it to suit my needs that I did with any other terminal I used before.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 778111776, "item_id": 48631986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631986", "by": "hack1312", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults", "excerpt": "i switched from iTerm 2 on macOS because it would get bogged down sometimes or occasionally lag. it\u2019s been noticeably faster and i appreciate the file-based config as well as the defaults, leading to my config being under 5 lines. on linux i use the default terminal in gnome which is ptyxis now iirc and haven\u2019t felt any need to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator on macOS", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 759434688, "item_id": 47464668, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47464668", "by": "lzhgusapp", "date": "2026-03-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close.", "excerpt": "I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close. The rendering speed is noticeably better than iTerm2, especially with large log outputs. Excited to see libghostty enabling projects like this \u2014 the idea of packaging TUIs as native desktop apps is really compelling for indie developers.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "iTerm2", "story": "Ghostling"}, {"id": 755332704, "item_id": 47208294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208294", "by": "thallavajhula", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "without the CMD+F, it's of no use to me.", "excerpt": "When Ghostty was publicly announced, I used it for a few months and gave up on it due to the lack of support for the CMD+F feature that I use Terminal.app. This is a critical feature for me while tailing logs on my local. I tried the workaround of capturing the text into a text file and then searching it. It just didn't work for my workflow and dropped it. Ghostty is great otherwise. But, without the CMD+F, it's of n", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}]}