Release notes for Ghostty 1.4.0, released on October 27, 2026.
\nGhostty 1.4.0 is a major release that includes large performance and\nmemory improvements, a 100% complete Kitty graphics implementation including\nanimation and relative placements (the first non-Kitty terminal to do so),\nSSH integration improvements, and hundreds more improvements and fixes\nacross all platforms.
\nThis release features 7 months of work with changes from\n172 contributors over 2,889 commits. Thank you to all the contributors,\nmaintainers, community moderators, translators, packagers, and users\nwho each helped make this release possible.
\nThese release notes are painstakingly and lovingly hand-crafted\nby human Ghostty maintainers, including the full changelog. They take\na combined 16+ hours to write, so please enjoy. 🥰
\nGhostty is non-profit. Support development.
\nPaste protection didn't treat carriage returns as line endings, so a\npaste could run a command without confirmation in programs that don't\nuse bracketed paste. This requires user interaction (copy-paste) to\ntrigger.
Malicious Kitty graphics commands could crash or hang Ghostty, force\nhuge allocations, or in limited cases read or delete files outside the\nallowed temporary directories. This only requires displaying malicious\noutput.
Malicious terminal output could crash Ghostty, closing every window,\nvia tmux control mode. tmux doesn't need to be installed. This affects\nGhostty 1.3.0 and 1.3.1.
The same impact as above, via a tmux control mode layout with a\nzero-sized or oversized pane. This affects Ghostty 1.3.0 and 1.3.1.
Clearing the screen into scrollback could corrupt memory if it deleted\nthe scrollback page holding a styled or hyperlinked cursor. This only\nrequires displaying malicious output, but only with a small\nscrollback-limit such as 0. The default isn't known to be affected.
A crafted directory name could make the zsh shell integration send\narbitrary escape sequences, such as silently replacing the clipboard via\nOSC 52. bash was affected in a more limited way. This only requires\ncd-ing into a directory from untrusted content, such as a cloned\nrepository.
macOS: GHSA-cw69-wm67-5pv8.
Cmd-clicking a crafted OSC 8 hyperlink could open unsafe local files or\ncustom URL schemes, leading to arbitrary command execution. Ghostty now\nblocks unsafe targets and confirms custom URL schemes. This requires\nuser interaction (cmd-click) to trigger.
macOS: GHSA-mfw9-xcr3-7gfp.
The same issue as above for links detected by the link configuration,\nincluding the default URL matcher. This requires user interaction\n(cmd-click) to trigger.
macOS: GHSA-v8cw-fg4j-jcc4.
Drag-and-drop text skipped paste protection, with the same impact as\nabove. This requires user interaction (drag-and-drop) to trigger.
macOS: GHSA-mxqx-236q-wrv7.
Opening a file whose name contains control characters could run a\ndifferent command than the one shown in the confirmation dialog. This\nrequires a crafted file on your system and confirming the dialog.
Note: I requested CVEs for the above advisories weeks ago, but GitHub\nhasn't assigned them yet. If/when they're assigned, I will update the\nabove with proper CVE numbers.
\nPRs: #12999 #13069 #13393 #14413 #14414
\nGhostty 1.4 supports macOS 27 (Golden Gate). Most of the work was\ncompatibility fixes:
\nTabs in the titlebar (macos-titlebar-style = tabs) lay out correctly
again.
The native tab bar no longer draws as a solid gray bar on top of your
theme. It now lets the new glass style blend with your terminal\nbackground.
macos-titlebar-style = hidden no longer covers the top lines of the
terminal when Reduce Transparency is on.
The Shortcuts "New Window" action no longer opens two windows when
Ghostty is running without any windows.
Ghostty 1.4 remains fully compatible with prior macOS versions back to\nand including macOS 13 (Ventura). See the\nsystem requirements for more details.
\n\nNote
\nGhostty 1.3.1 works on macOS 27, but it has some of the visual issues\nlisted above, such as the gray tab bar.
PRs: #13943 #13939 #13935 #13934 #13893 #13933 #13389 \n#13270 #13281
\nGhostty now supports Kitty graphics\nanimation\nand relative placements.\nThese were the last major features of the Kitty graphics protocol that\nGhostty didn't support.
\nPrograms that display animated images with the Kitty protocol, such as an\nanimated GIF shown with kitten icat, now animate in Ghostty instead of\nshowing a single still frame. Frame transmission, composition, and playback\ncontrol are all supported, and animations pause while the terminal isn't\nvisible. Relative placements let a program position one image relative to\nanother image's placement, so the child image moves along with its parent.
We also did a full conformance pass against the specification and Kitty\nitself, fixing dozens of behavioral differences. For example, images now\nscroll with text inside scroll regions (#4323 ), retransmitting an image\nID replaces the old image (#6711 ), and invalid image data now gets an\nerror response instead of silence, which could leave clients hanging. The\nfull list is in the terminal capabilities section.
\nKitty graphics are faster, too. Image payloads are now parsed in bulk\nwith SIMD instead of one byte at a time, making large image transfers\nabout 16x faster to parse in our benchmarks (64 MiB of image data,\nx86_64 Linux), and drawing images costs much less per frame.
\nOur Kitty graphics implementation now covers 100% of the published\nspecification, making Ghostty (and libghostty) the first terminal\nto do this outside of Kitty itself.
\nPRs: #13264 #13473 #13240 #13245 #14130 #14137 #14138 \n#14017
\nGhostty now transparently compresses scrollback that isn't visible,\nreducing the physical memory those pages use by 70% to 90% for typical\ntext-heavy history. Compression only runs while the terminal is idle and\npages are decompressed on demand when you scroll back or search, so it\nhas no measurable impact on I/O throughput.
\nThanks to compression, the default scrollback limit has been raised from\n10 MB to 50 MB per terminal. On platforms that support compression, a\nfull scrollback still generally uses less physical memory than the old\n10 MB limit did.
\n\nNote
\nCompression lowers resident (physical) memory, not virtual memory, so\nlook at resident memory when measuring it. It is currently available on\nmacOS and 64-bit Linux.
Beyond scrollback, memory usage is lower in many places:
\nA new, empty terminal now uses about 16 KiB of terminal page memory
on macOS, down from 128 KiB in Ghostty 1.3.1.
On macOS and Linux, memory freed by clearing or trimming scrollback is
now returned to the OS instead of being held until the terminal closes.
Hidden tabs release their GPU resources. On macOS, with one visible tab
and 20 hidden tabs, GPU memory dropped from about 385 MiB to 18 MiB.\nRebuilding them when a tab becomes visible again takes under a\nmillisecond.
PRs: #13209 #13220 #13226 #13227 #13537 #13827 #13587 \n#14011 #13722 #14035 #12760
\nThere are performance improvements across the board in Ghostty 1.4\nthat yield significant gains compared to prior Ghostty versions.
\nThe biggest win came from a surprising discovery: on macOS, the kernel\ncaps every read from a pty at about 1 KiB no matter how large the read\nbuffer is. Previously, Ghostty processed each read as it arrived, so per-read\noverhead was paid every kilobyte, and the program writing output sat\nblocked while we parsed. Ghostty now drains the pty on one thread while\nparsing on another, raising end-to-end I/O throughput by 25% to 55%\non macOS (M4 Max, plain and Unicode text) over Ghostty 1.3.x.
\nVT processing itself is also much faster. In parser benchmarks, plain\nASCII text went from 128 MB/s to 725 MB/s (5.7x), CJK text got 3.4x\nfaster, and a 2.6 GB dataset of real-world terminal recordings\nfrom asciinema is processed about 25% faster.\nTogether, these changes took cat-ing a 150 MB text file on macOS from\n1.5 seconds to 566 milliseconds.
Other notable improvements:
\nResize: resizing a terminal with a large scrollback is about **6x
faster** (120x80 with 10,000 lines of scrollback), and 3x to 5x faster\nwith history full of CJK text or emoji.
Rendering: the renderer holds the terminal lock 2.7x to 11x
less per frame, leaving more time for the I/O thread during heavy\noutput.
Copy and search: formatting terminal contents as plain text, HTML,
or VT, which backs clipboard copy, write_screen_file, and scrollback\nsearch, is 1.5x to 8x faster.
Launch (macOS): about 15% faster from launch to visible window, and
27% faster to the first rendered frame.
Idle energy: on macOS, the renderer's display link now sleeps when
there's nothing to draw. On GTK, hidden tabs stop rendering, matching\nmacOS.
Large OSC sequences: OSC 52 clipboard payloads parse about **30x
faster**, and even short sequences like title changes are about 6x\nfaster.
The GTK app has a new rendering pipeline. It no longer uses GtkGLArea.\nInstead, the renderer draws with EGL on its own thread, exports each frame\nas a DMABUF, and hands it to GTK to display. Rendering is now\ntriple-buffered, which should greatly reduce tearing, and no OpenGL calls\nrun on the main thread anymore, which let us remove a number of\nworkarounds.
The most visible result is crisp text under fractional scaling. Text and\nbox-drawing characters are no longer blurry with fractional display\nscaling such as 125% or 150% (#1938 ). We fixed this once before, but it\ncame back after upstream GTK changes. Ghostty now renders at the window's\ntrue fractional scale, so every rendered pixel maps to exactly one pixel\non screen.
\nThe new render surface needs a system EGL library (see\nChanges for Package Maintainers).\nOn GPU drivers that can't export DMABUFs, Ghostty falls back to copying\nframes through the CPU, which is slower but works.
\nPRs: #13962 #13993 #13995 #13998 #14002 #14061
\nGhostty now implements the\nKitty clipboard protocol\n(OSC 5522) on both macOS and GTK. Ghostty 1.3 could parse the protocol\nbut didn't implement it.
\nOSC 52 can only read and write plain text. The Kitty clipboard protocol\nlets programs running in the terminal read and write any kind of clipboard\ndata, such as images or HTML, and lets them pick among the formats on the\nclipboard. Programs can also enable paste events (mode 5522), which tell\nthe program what formats a paste contains so it can read the one it\nwants. This is how a terminal program can accept a pasted image, for\nexample.
\nClipboard access follows the existing clipboard-read and\nclipboard-write configurations. By default, reads prompt for permission\nand writes are allowed. The permission prompt shows a preview of the\nclipboard contents, including images. Programs that send a password can\nhave your answer remembered for the rest of that terminal session. A new\nclipboard-write-limit-bytes configuration limits the size of a single\nwrite (default 64 MiB). A write over the limit fails and leaves the\nclipboard untouched.
You can now rearrange splits on GTK by dragging them, matching the macOS\nfeature introduced in Ghostty 1.3. When a tab has two or more splits, each\nsplit shows a drag handle at the top. Grab the handle and drop the split\nonto any other split, including splits in other tabs and windows. An\noverlay shows which side of the target split it will land on. The terminal\ncontents, working directory, and running processes all move with it.
\nA new drag-handle configuration controls when drag handles are shown on\nboth macOS and GTK: auto (default), always, or never. With never,\nsplits can't be rearranged with the mouse. Hiding the handles was a\ncommon request from users who found them in the way.
On GTK, splits can only be dropped onto other splits. Dragging a split out\nto create a new tab or window is macOS-only.
\nPRs: #14454 #13494 #14483 #14538 #14673 #14375 #14144
\nGhostty 1.4 includes dozens of improvements to core terminal emulation. We\nnow run esctest, Thomas Dickey's\nterminal conformance suite, against Ghostty's terminal core in CI.\nAlongside that, we fixed many differences from xterm in cursor movement\nwithin margins, tab stops, character sets, mode reports, and more. You\ncan find the full list of related changes in the\nterminal capabilities section.
\nGhostty also supports several new sequences, including soft terminal reset\n(DECSTR), extended cursor position reports (DECXCPR), backarrow key mode\n(DECBKM), and screen size reports in characters (CSI 19 t). Programs can\nalso now ask whether the terminal is visible using\nvisibility reports\n(mode 2033), so they can stop rendering while hidden.
Keyboard encoding also matches xterm more closely, with fixes for\nmodifyOtherKeys mode 2 and legacy Alt-as-Escape encoding of non-ASCII\nkeys.
Two new sequences are disabled by default because they can be abused by\nuntrusted programs, including ones running on a remote machine:
\n# Allow programs to resize the window (CSI 8 t)\nvt-window-resize-allowed = true\n\n# Allow programs to request screen checksums (DECRQCRA)\nvt-xt-checksum-report = trueghostty +sshPRs: #12582 #12814 #13533 #13844 #14472 #14854
\nGhostty 1.2 introduced SSH shell integration features\nas a work in progress. In Ghostty 1.4, they're backed by a new\nghostty +ssh CLI action: a drop-in ssh wrapper that prepares the\nremote session for Ghostty and then runs the real ssh with your\narguments forwarded unchanged.
ghostty +ssh user@example.com\n\n# Or alias it so every ssh invocation goes through it\nalias ssh='ghostty +ssh --'Before connecting, +ssh installs Ghostty's terminfo on the remote host\nso the proper xterm-ghostty TERM value can be used, and forwards\nCOLORTERM, TERM_PROGRAM, and TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION. If the terminfo\ninstall fails (for example, tic isn't available on the remote), it falls\nback to TERM=xterm-256color. Flags such as --terminfo=false,\n--forward-env=false, and --verbose control each step.
The ssh-env and ssh-terminfo shell integration features (still opt-in)\nnow call +ssh too. Previously, each shell integration carried its own copy\nof this logic, which made up roughly a third of our shell integration\nscripts. Now bash, zsh, fish, elvish, and Nushell all behave identically,\nand you can get the same behavior from scripts or anywhere else by calling\nghostty +ssh directly.
The terminfo install itself is also more reliable. Ghostty now always\ninstalls its own bundled terminfo rather than accepting whatever\nxterm-ghostty entry the remote already has, and it reinstalls\nautomatically when a Ghostty update changes the terminfo. It also no longer\nneeds infocmp or Ghostty's terminfo on the local machine. Installs are\ncached per host and port, so two machines behind one address no longer\nshare a cache entry. And ssh-env no longer silently overrides SetEnv\nentries in your ~/.ssh/config (#11518 ).
The +ssh-cache command that manages this cache now takes positional\ndestinations (ghostty +ssh-cache user@example.com) and has a new\n--prune=30d flag. See the breaking changes if you\nscript against +ssh-cache.
macOS: The minimum required macOS version for Ghostty 1.4 remains\nunchanged (macOS 13 Ventura). Ghostty is now compatible with macOS 27.
\nGTK: Ghostty 1.4 requires GTK 4.18 and libadwaita 1.7, up from\nGTK 4.14 and libadwaita 1.5 in Ghostty 1.3. This aligns with our\nGTK/Adwaita version policy.\nNotably, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS doesn't meet this requirement. Systems with\nolder GTK or Adwaita versions can work around this requirement by using an\nolder version of Ghostty or the Flatpak package. #14330
\nOpenGL (GTK): The minimum required OpenGL version remains 4.3, but\nGhostty now renders through EGL instead of GTK's OpenGL widget. This\nshould be invisible for nearly everyone, but if Ghostty fails to start\nwith an EGL error, please make sure your GPU driver provides a working\nEGL implementation.
\n\nImportant
\nWe previously announced that Ghostty 1.4 would require macOS 14.\nNothing forced our hand to do this in this release, so we kept macOS\n13 support. We still plan to drop macOS 13 in a future release. Apple\ndropped security support for macOS 13 in the fall of 2025, so we\nrecommend upgrading regardless.
The following behaviors have changed in 1.4.0:
\ncopy-on-select has been reworked and now accepts none, primary,
clipboard, or both. The meaning of clipboard has changed: it\npreviously copied to both the selection clipboard and the system\nclipboard, and now copies only to the system clipboard. If you set\ncopy-on-select = clipboard and want the old behavior, change it to\nboth. #12600 #12604
macOS: copy-on-select now defaults to none (previously true), so
selecting text no longer copies it anywhere and middle-click paste of the\nselection no longer works by default. To restore the 1.3 behavior, set\ncopy-on-select = primary. Note that an explicit copy-on-select = true\non macOS now copies selections to the system clipboard, which is\ndifferent from 1.3. #12600 #12604
macOS: cmd+arrow_up and cmd+arrow_down now run jump_to_prompt again,
matching Terminal.app and Ghostty 1.2. In 1.3, these keys were hardcoded\nto scroll to the top and bottom and couldn't be rebound. To keep the 1.3\nbehavior, set keybind = cmd+arrow_up=scroll_to_top and\nkeybind = cmd+arrow_down=scroll_to_bottom. #12245
GTK: The default ctrl+shift+page_up and ctrl+shift+page_down keybinds
now move the current tab left and right (move_tab), matching Firefox,\nGNOME Terminal, and VS Code. jump_to_prompt moved to\nctrl+shift+arrow_up and ctrl+shift+arrow_down, so programs running in\nthe terminal no longer receive those keys. If a program you use needs\nthem, unbind them with keybind = ctrl+shift+arrow_up=unbind and\nkeybind = ctrl+shift+arrow_down=unbind. #4998 #12458
The list below contains deprecations that remain compatible today through\na compatibility layer, but may break in a future release if they are\nignored:
\nscrollback-limit has been renamed to scrollback-limit-bytes, to make
room for the new scrollback-limit-lines. #13473
copy-on-select = true is replaced with copy-on-select = primary on
Linux and FreeBSD, or copy-on-select = clipboard on macOS.\ncopy-on-select = false is replaced with copy-on-select = none.\n#12600 #12604
There is no set timeline to remove these deprecations, but we recommend\nadapting to the new configurations sooner rather than later to avoid\nany possible disruptions in the future.
\nScrollback history is now transparently compressed while the terminal
is idle, reducing the physical memory used by compressed scrollback by\n70% to 90% for typical text. Compression is available on macOS and 64-bit\nLinux and can be disabled with the new scrollback-compression\nconfiguration. Because of this, the default scrollback limit has been\nraised from 10 MB to 50 MB, which on average still uses less memory than\na full scrollback did previously. #13264
A new configuration scrollback-limit-lines limits scrollback by number
of lines instead of bytes. The existing scrollback-limit configuration\nhas been renamed to scrollback-limit-bytes (the old name continues to\nwork). If both are set, the first limit reached applies, and both accept\nunlimited. #13473
copy-on-select now accepts none, primary, clipboard, and both
and no longer affects middle-click paste (see middle-click-action).\nclipboard now copies only to the system clipboard, so use both for the\nprevious behavior. The default on macOS is now none. See the\nbreaking changes for migration details. #12600
A new configuration middle-click-action configures the behavior of
middle-clicking: primary-paste (default) pastes from the selection\nclipboard, clipboard-paste pastes from the system clipboard, and\nignore does nothing. #12478
A new binding action move_tab_to_new_window moves the current tab into
a new window of its own. It is also available in the command palette.\n#2630
A new CLI command +explain-config prints the documentation for a
configuration option or binding action, e.g.\nghostty +explain-config font-size. #11546
The +explain-config and +show-config CLI commands now page their
output through $GHOSTTY_PAGER or $PAGER (falling back to less) when\nrun interactively. Paging can be disabled with --no-pager or by setting\nthe pager to an empty value. #11940
A new configuration drag-handle controls when the split drag handles
Scrollback search now wraps around when navigating past the first or
last match. #11449
A new configuration link-osc8 (default true) can be set to false to
disable OSC 8 hyperlinks entirely. Disabled OSC 8 hyperlinks are not\nhighlighted, previewed, copied, or opened. #13634
Processes running in Ghostty now receive a GHOSTTY_SURFACE_ID
environment variable that uniquely identifies the terminal they are\nrunning in. #12027
The right-click context menu now has a "Close Split" item. #11173
I/O throughput is 25% to 55% higher on macOS by reading from the pty
concurrently with parsing previously read output. #13209
VT processing is significantly faster across the board. Plain text is up
to ~6x faster, real-world output (measured against a large asciinema\ndataset) is ~24% faster, grapheme-heavy output is ~3x faster, and DEC\nspecial graphics (line drawing), repeated characters (REP),\nhyperlink-heavy output, and scroll regions are all faster. #13220 \n#13226 #13231 #13294 #13625 #13826 #14356
Large OSC sequences, such as OSC 52 clipboard writes, are parsed ~30x
faster and small OSC sequences, such as title changes, ~6x faster.\n#14011 #13565
Resizing with reflow is ~6x faster with large scrollback and 3x to 5x
faster with scrollback heavy in wide characters such as CJK or emoji.\n#13537 #13827
Terminals use significantly less memory. A new terminal now uses ~16 KiB
of physical memory for its screen instead of 128 KiB on macOS, every\nterminal page uses 30% less memory, and memory freed from scrollback\n(such as by clearing it) is now returned to the operating system.\n#13240 #13245 #14130 #14137 #14138
Kitty graphics are faster. Large image transfers are parsed in bulk using
SIMD, zlib-compressed images decompress ~17% faster, pixel format\nconversion avoids an extra copy, and the per-frame cost of drawing images\nis much lower, especially with Unicode placeholder images on screen or\nlong scrollback. #13270 #13281 #13987 #14422 #14780 #14789
Formatting terminal contents is 1.5x to 8x faster, which speeds up
clipboard copy (plain, HTML, and VT), write_screen_file and related\nactions, and scrollback search. #13587
The renderer holds the terminal lock 2.7x to 11x less time per frame,
and glyph and font lookups are faster. #13227 #14300 #14301 #14420 \n#14406 #13258
command-palette-entry = clear removes all command palette entries,
including the default entries. #12682
window-padding-balance has a new value equal that balances padding
equally on all four sides without capping the top padding. #11491
theme now expands ~ to the home directory in theme file paths,
including in separate light and dark themes. #13840
+list-themes now supports g and G to jump to the first and
last theme, and ctrl+d and ctrl+u to page down and up. #13681 \n#14607
The terminal inspector can now copy terminal I/O events or export them
to a file. #13519
Bundled themes updated to release-20261019-151001-86a776d.
This adds 356 new themes and renames or removes none. The colors of 10\nexisting themes changed upstream: Adwaita, Adwaita Dark, Atom One Light,\nCatppuccin Frappe, Catppuccin Latte, Catppuccin Macchiato, Catppuccin\nMocha, Cursor Dark, Dark Modern, and Electron Highlighter.
Fix configuration parsing silently ignoring all settings after a comment
or blank line that happened to end at an internal buffer boundary. This\ntypically only affected long configuration files. #13638
Fix a performance degradation where, after a long uptime, the renderer
rebuilt its full terminal state on every frame. #13585
Fix the automatically created configuration file being empty instead of
containing the configuration template. #13774
+edit-config works when $EDITOR or $VISUAL contains arguments,
such as zed --new. #11897
adjust-cursor-height works again. #13225Mouse selection improvements: dragging after a ctrl/cmd triple-click
output selection now extends the selection by command output, autoscroll\nstops when the screen switches (e.g. to the alternate screen), a force\ntouch on macOS selects the word at the press location without starting a\ndrag, and releasing a drag no longer activates a link or prompt click.\n#12830
Double-click word selection no longer continues across hard line breaks,
and double-clicking either half of a wide character (such as CJK) selects\nthe whole word. #14354 #14391
Wide characters at the edges of a selection are now consistently rendered
as selected and included when copying, including when the wide character\nwraps onto a new internal page. #14632 #14651
Triple-click line selection no longer pulls in neighboring prompt text
when clicking blank cells between OSC 133 prompt boundaries. #14553
Link detection and double-click selection no longer merge prompt text
with the command text next to it when shell integration is active.\n#12435
File paths opened with cmd/ctrl-click no longer include trailing
spaces, which broke opening paths printed by some TUIs. #13505
Mouse releases are now reported to the program that received the mouse
press when clicking at a shell prompt with click-to-move enabled. This\nfixes double-click selection in programs like fzf's ctrl+r history\nsearch. #14710
Shell redraws after a resize are no longer processed at the old terminal
size. This fixes one cause of duplicated or misplaced prompts after\nresizing. #14706
Scrolling, such as clicking in the scrollbar, now works with very large
scrollback (millions of lines). #13048
Custom command-palette-entry actions with string parameters, such as
set_tab_title, no longer have their parameters escaped when run from\nthe command palette. #13609
HTML clipboard copies no longer include a superfluous trailing newline.
Copying as VT (copy_to_clipboard:vt) and VT screen files now preserve
OSC 8 hyperlinks, empty gaps between text, and cells that only have\na background color, such as colored status bars. VT screen files also\nkeep trailing blank rows. #14711 #14725 #14766
The mouse pointer now restores the shape set by the running program
(OSC 22) after releasing modifier keys instead of resetting to the\ndefault. #14128
Custom shaders no longer receive swapped selection foreground and
background color uniforms. #14460
Ghostty no longer floods the logs with "adjusting page capacity"
messages during output with many styles, graphemes, or hyperlinks.\n#14631
Fix stale wrap and prompt state on rows reused after scrolling or
erasing, which could cause incorrect copy, search, selection, and reflow\nresults. #14010
Fix stale rendering of the previous row after erasing or deleting a
wrapped wide character. #14054
Fix a freeze when reloading the configuration while a program is flooding
the terminal with queries, such as color queries. #14833
+list-themes no longer crashes on some keys when the search
matches no themes, and the keypad down key now moves one row instead of
\nFix crashes in scrollback search after clearing the scrollback, resizing,
Fix crashes and viewport corruption when resizing with scrolled-back
history or with the cursor near the bottom of the screen. #12300 \n#12907 #12935
Fix a use-after-free crash when clicking or selecting text during heavy
output. #12463
Fix possible crashes or memory corruption when scrolling or erasing rows
across a page boundary that needed more capacity. #13394 #13397
Fix possible crashes and memory corruption found via fuzzing when
printing causes a page to grow, or after clearing the screen into\nscrollback. #11261 #13997
Fix many latent crashes and undefined behavior in selection, pins,
search, title and working directory updates, and resize error handling.\n#12894 #13275 #13278 #13367
Fix a possible crash or corrupted input when many pty writes are queued,
such as during large pastes. #13659
Fix an out-of-bounds access when IME preedit text with wide characters
is composed between existing wide characters, such as with Korean input.\n#12479
Fix the write_screen_file, write_scrollback_file, and
write_selection_file actions leaking two file descriptors on each use,\nwhich could eventually prevent opening new terminals. #13644
Fix memory and file descriptor leaks in terminal I/O, including for writes
in read-only mode and files read via the input configuration.\n#13574 #13579 #13931
vt: Kitty graphics animation is now fully supported: frame transmission,
vt: Kitty graphics relative placements (P=, Q=, H=, V=) are now
supported, allowing images to be positioned relative to other images.\n#13939
vt: Support the Kitty graphics transient image usage hint. Transient
images are evicted first when image storage is full. #13389
vt: The Kitty clipboard protocol (OSC 5522) is now implemented on macOS
and GTK, including paste events (mode 5522). Reads and writes follow\nclipboard-read and clipboard-write, and a new\nclipboard-write-limit-bytes configuration limits the size of a single\nwrite. #10549 #13962 #13993 #13995 #13998 #14002 #14061
vt: Support visibility reports (mode 2033 and CSI ? 998 n), which tell
programs when the terminal is not visible, such as in a background tab\nor on another workspace, so they can stop rendering. #13494
vt: Programs can resize the window with the xterm CSI 8 ; rows ; cols t
sequence if the new vt-window-resize-allowed configuration is enabled\n(default off). The request is ignored in splits, windows with multiple\ntabs, the quick terminal, and fullscreen, maximized, or tiled windows.\n#1115 #14375
vt: Support OSC 133 click_events=2, which reports prompt clicks with
vt: Support soft terminal reset (DECSTR, CSI ! p), which resets
modes, margins, and text attributes without clearing the screen.\n#14538
vt: Support backarrow key mode (DECBKM, mode 67), which lets programs
choose whether backspace sends DEL (0x7f, the default) or BS\n(0x08). #12226
vt: Support the DECRQCRA and XTCHECKSUM screen checksum reports, which
are mostly used by terminal test suites. Because a program can use these\nto read the screen contents, they are disabled unless the new\nvt-xt-checksum-report configuration is enabled. The new\nvt-xt-checksum-extension configuration controls how the checksum is\ncalculated. #14483
vt: Respond to CSI 19 t (report screen size in characters) and to
DECXCPR (CSI ? 6 n) extended cursor position requests. #14633 \n#14673
vt: DECRQM now answers ANSI mode queries (CSI Ps $ p), reports DECECM
and other unimplemented ANSI modes as permanently reset like xterm, and\nno longer truncates mode numbers above 32767 in its reply. #12505 \n#14236 #14237 #14672
vt: Ghostty terminfo now advertises overline support (Smol/Rmol),
which lets tmux pass overlines through. DECRQSS SGR replies now include\noverline and curly, double, dotted, and dashed underline styles.\n#13649 #13653 #13470
vt: The terminfo Se capability now resets the cursor to the configured
cursor-style instead of a steady block. This fixes programs like Neovim\nleaving a block cursor behind on exit. #12482
vt: OSC payloads are now limited to 8 MiB, Kitty graphics payloads to
65 MiB, and each cell to 64 combining codepoints, so terminal output\ncan't easily exhaust memory. This also fixes a memory leak on invalid\nKitty graphics data. #12349 #13633
vt: Experimental support for the
Glyph Protocol\n(APC 25a1), which lets programs register custom glyphs. Ghostty parses\nand answers requests but doesn't render registered glyphs yet.\n#12352 #12930 #12937
vt: Parse the new program status protocol (OSC 7501), which lets programs
report whether they are idle, working, done, blocked, or failed. This is\nthe first terminal specification pioneered by the Ghostty project.\nlibghostty can parse it all, but the Ghostty GUI ignores it for now.\n#14560
vt: Parse (but do not implement) the Kitty desktop notification protocol
(OSC 99). #10467
vt: Parse (but do not implement) the Kitty drag and drop protocol
(OSC 72). #13029
vt: More tmux control mode fixes, including crashes that running
tmux -CC could trigger. tmux control mode is still not hooked up to\nthe GUI. #11395 #11935 #14262 #14680
vt: Clearing the screen at a prompt (e.g. ctrl+l in bash or zsh) now
moves prior output into scrollback even when the prompt is not on the\nlast row. Previously, the output was erased. #14660 #14668
vt: Kitty graphics: transmitting an image with an existing ID now
replaces the image and removes its old placements, as the spec requires.\nInterrupted or failed retransmissions no longer leave stale images on\nscreen. #6711 #13723 #13893
vt: Kitty graphics: images now move with the text when a program scrolls
with CSI S, CSI T, or scroll margins, and are clipped to the scroll\nregion. #4323 #13935
vt: Kitty graphics: automatically assigned image IDs no longer collide
vt: Kitty graphics: delete commands now match the spec and Kitty. Point
deletes (d=p, d=c) only remove placements at that cell, d=a only\nremoves placements on the visible screen, range deletes accept empty\nranges, and deleting a missing placement no longer frees the image.\n#13652 #13895 #13898 #13932
vt: Kitty graphics: command validation and responses now match Kitty.
This fixes missing responses for invalid image data that could hang\nclients, false positive query replies, lost IDs in chunked transfer\nreplies, file transfers with an exact S size, and loads interrupted by\na non-chunk transmission. #13889 #13892 #13896 #13897 #13933 \n#14811
vt: Kitty graphics: cropped source rectangles are no longer stretched,
and X/Y offsets are kept within the first cell. #13890 #13891
vt: Kitty graphics: the cursor moves after tall images like Kitty does,
so consecutive images no longer overlap. #13887
vt: Full reset (RIS) no longer resets image-storage-limit to the
default. #13951
vt: OSC and APC sequences (such as Kitty graphics commands) canceled by
CAN or SUB, or aborted by another control character, are now discarded\ninstead of executed, matching xterm. #14453 #14812
vt: With modifyOtherKeys level 2, control keys, keypad keys, and
alt+escape now encode like xterm. F13 to F25, Help, and Menu now send\nxterm's function key sequences in all legacy encoding modes. #14144 \n#14145
vt: Legacy alt-as-escape encoding now sends the full UTF-8 sequence for
non-ASCII keys. #14146
vt: Kitty keyboard protocol release events no longer repeat the typed
text for dead keys or level 5 keys on GTK, which caused duplicated\ncharacters in programs like Neovim. #13861
vt: ctrl+alt+shift+backspace now sends ESC BS in legacy key encoding,
matching xterm. #14508
vt: UTF-8 mouse mode (1005) now encodes the button correctly, fixing
invalid reports for the back and forward mouse buttons. #14532
vt: Foreground, background, and cursor colors reset with OSC 110, 111,
or 112 now follow later configuration changes, such as a light/dark\ntheme switch. #13650
vt: Full reset (RIS) now restores palette colors changed with OSC 4.
vt: An empty OSC 22 now resets the mouse pointer shape to the default.
vt: Long desktop notifications (OSC 9 and OSC 777) with multibyte UTF-8
text are no longer dropped or shown as invalid UTF-8 when truncated.\n#13795 #13811
vt: DCS strings now carry UTF-8 data. Previously, some UTF-8 bytes were
dropped, ended the string early, or started a new control sequence.\n#14016
vt: C0 controls 0x10 to 0x1F are now executed instead of printed
as text, and UTF-8 encoded C1 controls are ignored, matching xterm.\n#14022 #14023
vt: Erasing a full line (CSI 2 K) now clears its soft-wrap state, so
erased rows no longer join together when the window is resized. #13637
vt: The cursor and saved cursor keep the correct position when a resize
reflows text, fixing an extra line wrap or overwritten text after\nresizing. #12598 #14458 #14478
vt: Variation selectors (VS15/VS16) now apply to the preceding codepoint,
fixing the rendering of some ZWJ emoji such as the pirate flag. #12596
vt: Combining marks printed after a character in the last column now
attach to that character. #12581
vt: Characters above U+00FF, such as emoji, now print as-is instead of as
a blank while a non-UTF-8 character set such as DEC line drawing is\nactive. #14554
vt: Single shifts (SS2/SS3) now apply only to the next printed character.
vt: Tab clear (TBC) fixes: CSI 0 g no longer sets a tab stop where
there wasn't one, and CSI g with no parameter clears the tab stop at\nthe cursor. #13900 #14644
vt: Printing with autowrap (DECAWM) disabled clears the pending wrap, so
re-enabling autowrap doesn't cause a spurious line wrap. #14652
vt: With reverse wrap enabled, moving left after restoring a cursor with
a pending wrap no longer jumps the cursor. #14390
vt: Cursor movement respects margins and origin mode: CUB and backspace
stop at the left margin, and CHA, HPA, VPA, HPR, and VPR no longer apply\nthe margin offset twice in origin mode. #14761 #14762
vt: Fix a crash when VS15 narrows a wide character under the cursor.
vt: Fix a crash or memory corruption after narrowing the terminal cuts a
wide character in half on the alternate screen or with wraparound\ndisabled. #14509
vt: Fix a crash when a grapheme cluster widens in the last column and
wraps inside or below a scroll region with grapheme clustering (mode
\nvt: Fix a slow memory and performance leak in graphics-heavy sessions
where evicted Kitty images left their placements' tracked positions\nbehind. #13656
vt: Fix a memory leak when an OSC color sequence contains more than two
requests. #13239
A new ghostty +ssh CLI action wraps ssh and sets up Ghostty on remote
hosts: it forwards Ghostty's environment and installs Ghostty's terminfo\non the first connection to each host, caching successful installs. It can\nbe used directly (ghostty +ssh user@example.com) or as an alias\n(alias ssh='ghostty +ssh --') without shell integration. The ssh-env\nand ssh-terminfo shell integration features now use it for every\nshell. #12582
ssh-terminfo now always installs Ghostty's bundled terminfo on remote
hosts instead of keeping an existing, possibly outdated, xterm-ghostty\nentry, and reinstalls it when a newer Ghostty changes its terminfo.\n#13844
ghostty +ssh-cache has been reworked with positional destinations, a
new --prune option, consistent output and exit codes, and error\nmessages that name the cache file. See the\nbreaking changes above. #12814 #13533
ssh-terminfo now tells apart the same host on different ports, so
terminfo is installed on each of them. ghostty +ssh-cache accepts\nhost:port destinations. #14472
ssh-env no longer overrides SetEnv entries in your ~/.ssh/config.
bash: Failed commands now report their real exit status on Bash 4.4+,
so command finished notifications no longer report every command as\nsuccessful. #14247 #14250
nu: Tab completion for ssh and sudo now works with external
completers such as carapace. #13310
bash: The bundled bash-preexec, used only for Bash versions older than
4.4 such as macOS's /bin/bash, has been updated to 0.7.0. #14120
zsh: Fix a stray { in the prompt and broken prompt marking when PS1
or PS2 ends with a bare %. #11832
bash: Fix "command not found" errors in subshells that inherit
PROMPT_COMMAND. #11690
bash: Fix a syntax error when an existing PROMPT_COMMAND ends with a
newline. #11621
bash: Fix the shell integration hook being added twice when it is
sourced again with an array PROMPT_COMMAND. #14266
macOS: Support macOS 27. This fixes the layout and background color of
titlebar tabs, a thin border around the app icon, hidden titlebars\ncovering the top lines of the terminal with Reduce Transparency enabled,\nand the Shortcuts "New Window" action opening two windows. #13001 \n#13390 #14107 #14411 #12999 #13069
macOS: When a terminal's process exits, a native bar now appears at the
bottom of the terminal instead of text being written into the terminal.\nCommands that fail or exit faster than abnormal-command-exit-runtime\nare highlighted in red. #7649 #12251
macOS: Quitting, or closing a window, when multiple windows or tabs have
running processes now offers "Review Windows...", which steps through\neach one so you can decide what to close. #12742 #14062
macOS: The command palette now highlights matching text, matches
initials, searches action descriptions, and ranks results by where they\nmatched. #12264 #13610 #13624
macOS: The search bar now remembers the last search and shares it with
other apps through the system find pasteboard, like Safari and\nTerminal.app. #12516 #12712
macOS: Screen readers such as VoiceOver are now notified when the
selection changes instead of reading a stale selection. #12902
macOS: The AppleScript terminal class and the Shortcuts terminal entity
now expose pid (of the foreground process) and tty. #11592 \n#10756 #11922
macOS: AppleScript tabs and terminals have a new read-write
name override property to set or clear a custom title. #12048 \n#14733
macOS: Middle-clicking a tab closes it with
macOS: The version in the About window now links to the release notes
for that version. #11964
macOS: Updates that are downloaded and installed automatically no longer
prompt you to restart. Checking for updates manually still offers to\nrestart. #13623
macOS: toggle_background_opacity now applies to every tab in the
window, and new windows inherit the current state. #11583
macOS: cmd+arrow_up and cmd+arrow_down now run their configured
keybinds, which default to jump_to_prompt. Ghostty 1.3 always scrolled\nto the top or bottom of the scrollback instead, ignoring the\nconfiguration. To scroll to the top or bottom, use cmd+home and\ncmd+end. #12245
macOS: In the configuration errors window, Return reloads the
configuration and Escape ignores the errors. #12601
macOS: Ghostty launches about 15% faster to a visible window and draws
its first frame about 27% sooner. #13722
macOS: Terminals that aren't visible, such as background tabs, now
release their GPU resources and rebuild them when shown again. With 20\nbackground tabs, GPU memory drops from about 385 MiB to 18 MiB. Metal\nbuffers also no longer over-allocate when they grow. #14017 #13490
macOS: Lower idle CPU and energy use. The display link now pauses when
there is nothing to draw, and unfocused terminals that are animating\ndraw at most once per display refresh instead of once per write.\n#14035 #14068
macOS: Update Sparkle to 2.9.6, which fixes several security advisories
in Sparkle, including CVE-2026-47121 and CVE-2026-47122. #14072 #14082
macOS: Global keybinds no longer stop working after macOS disables
macOS: Fix IME composition issues. Korean text being composed is now
committed instead of lost when pressing an arrow key, and control-key\nIME shortcuts such as Japanese input's ctrl+j no longer send control\ncharacters to the terminal. #11461 #12447 #12518 #12547
macOS: Text from input methods, dictation, and the emoji picker is now
sent as typed input instead of pasted text. Programs no longer treat\ndictation as a paste, and switching input sources mid-composition sends\nthe pending text as keys, matching Terminal.app. #13195 #13222 \n#13817
macOS: Unicode Hex Input can now enter characters outside the Basic
Multilingual Plane, such as emoji, typed as surrogate pairs. #13733 \n#13737
font-thicken now also applies to IME preedit text. #14230macOS: option+backspace and other modified Backspace keys now report
their modifiers with the Kitty keyboard protocol instead of sending a\nbare DEL. #13871
macOS: Pasting and dropping text now prefer plain text over URLs, so a
path copied from apps like Transmit pastes as a path instead of an\nsftp:// URL. #13152 #13170 #13212
macOS: The search bar keeps focus when you click in it or on the
next/previous buttons, and the terminal's focus state is now correct\nwhile search is open. #11872 #11978
macOS: The Find Next and Find Previous menu items and the
navigate_search and end_search keybinds now work correctly,\nincluding while the search field is focused. #12070 #12492
macOS: Pressing Enter in the search bar no longer blocks confirming an
IME candidate. #12781
macOS: Clicking a command palette entry with the mouse now runs it
instead of closing the palette. #11665
macOS: The command palette now gets focus and paste when opened from the
inline tab title editor. #12524
macOS: Holding cmd+t to create many tabs now leaves the newest tab
macOS: Fix an empty "ghost" tab or window that could appear when a tab
was closed right after it was opened. #12119
macOS: Titlebar tabs no longer disappear after creating a tab from
macOS: Double-clicking the window title now zooms the window with
macos-titlebar-style = tabs. #12219
macOS: Moving a tab with macos-titlebar-style = tabs on macOS 26 no
longer briefly shows the neighboring tab. #14847
macOS: The inline tab title editor stays in place while the window is
resized. #12220
macOS: Fix tabs flashing when switching tabs after a program changed the
background color with OSC 11, and the window chrome keeping the old\ncolor after a light/dark theme switch. #12825 #12828 #12822
macOS: The macos-glass-regular and macos-glass-clear options for
background-blur now layer the glass over the background color, and\nfocused windows are no longer less transparent than unfocused ones.\n#13914 #13928
macOS: The native titlebar no longer cuts off the end of the title when
macOS: Fix terminals rendering at a stale size under heavy system load or
during rapid resizes from window managers. #12143
macOS: Splits dragged into another tab or window now render immediately,
macOS: The split zoom indicator no longer stays visible after the other
splits of a zoomed split are closed, such as with AppleScript. #14703
macOS: The split divider now uses the standard row and column resize
pointers. #13433
macOS: window-save-state = never now also stops macOS from taking
window restoration snapshots, which could stall focus changes between\nwindows. #14506
macOS: Window state saved by Ghostty 1.2 or later is now migrated, so
windows and tabs are restored after updating Ghostty. #12461
macOS: Tabs created while the screen is locked now initialize correctly.
macOS: Quitting now asks for confirmation when windows with running
processes are minimized or the quick terminal is hidden. #13686
macOS: OSC 52 clipboard read confirmations no longer steal focus. If the
terminal is unfocused, Ghostty rings the bell and shows the prompt when\nyou return to it. #13744
macOS: Splits in the quick terminal now also set
macOS: The quick terminal no longer reopens at a stale size after a
display is reconnected at a different resolution. #13250
macOS: The "New Ghostty Tab Here" and "New Ghostty Window Here" services
now open the correct directory when given a plain-text path. #12727 \n#12731
macOS: Working directories passed from Services, Shortcuts, and
AppleScript are now normalized, fixing Nushell and zsh %1~ prompts.\n#12614 #14051
macOS: ghostty -e no longer opens the command's file arguments as
extra terminals, e.g. ghostty -e vim file.txt. #13748
macOS: Opening a .command file from Finder no longer corrupts
non-ASCII characters in its path. #13862
macOS: The Shortcuts terminal entity now reports the correct kind,
title, working directory, and screenshot for new terminals. #13007
macOS: The Shortcuts "New Terminal" action now works with commands that
have arguments and with a command field that was cleared. #12391 \n#12392
macOS: AppleScript send key now works for character keys, not only
special keys like enter, and respects macos-option-as-alt. #13205
macOS: Update pill fixes: update errors are now shown, "Install and
Relaunch" no longer asks for confirmation, and the cancel option is\nhidden once an update can no longer be canceled. #13540 #13562 \n#13612
macOS: The default app icon follows the system icon style again after
changing it in System Settings, and custom icons now apply to the app in\nFinder. #12180 #12344
macOS: The dock icon bell badge now appears when notification permission
was granted earlier without badge permission. #12133
macOS: Menu items now show the correct shortcut for keybinds on physical
keys (e.g. super+backquote), uppercase letters, forward delete, and\nthe scroll_to_selection and search_selection actions. #13888 \n#12039 #12011 #12281
macOS: The secure input indicator's popover arrow now points at the
icon. #12249
macOS: Fix a rare permanent freeze after waking from sleep or changing
displays. macOS did not mark the app as "Not Responding", so it could\nonly be killed. #14691
macOS: Fix a crash when closing a tab, most easily triggered with
macOS: Fix a crash when opening a new tab from a native fullscreen
window. #13636
macOS: Fix a crash caused by a data race when reading cached terminal
contents. #13646
macOS: Fix a crash when OSC 52 clipboard confirmation prompts overlap.
macOS: Fix crashes when CoreText returns null, such as for fonts without
a display name or under severe memory pressure. #13642 #13679
macOS: Fix closed windows leaking with transparent titlebars (the
default), which made Ghostty and WindowServer use more CPU and memory\nover time. #13601
macOS: Fix a memory leak each time Ghostty reads terminal text, such as
macOS: Fix an IOSurface memory leak when scripts rapidly create and close
terminals. #13640
macOS: Fix a Mach port leak, and a gradual slowdown, while global
keybinds wait for Accessibility permission. #13590
GTK: Splits can now be rearranged with drag and drop, matching macOS.
Drag a split by its handle and drop it onto another split, including\nsplits in other tabs and windows. #10224 #10423
GTK: Ghostty now renders at the true fractional scale (e.g. 125% or
150%), so text and box-drawing characters are sharp instead of blurry\nunder fractional scaling. #1938 #14269
GTK: The renderer no longer uses GtkGLArea. Ghostty now renders with
EGL entirely on the render thread and hands finished frames to GTK as\nDMABUFs, so the main thread no longer does any OpenGL work. #14052 \n#14636
GTK: Windows can now be renamed using the menu, command palette, or the
new prompt_window_title and set_window_title binding actions.\n#10469 #10999
GTK: A new +new-tab CLI command opens a new tab in a running Ghostty
instance. When run from inside Ghostty, the tab opens in the same\nwindow. It accepts the same -e, --working-directory, and --title\nflags as +new-window. #11762
GTK: A new +toggle-quick-terminal CLI command toggles the quick
terminal of a running Ghostty instance, useful for binding in window\nmanagers without global shortcut support. #12661
GTK: Global keybinds now use the vicinae-hotkey-v1 Wayland protocol
when the compositor supports it (e.g. Hyprland 0.56+), falling back to\nthe XDG desktop portal otherwise. Ghostty shows a desktop notification if\na global keybind can't be registered. #13464
GTK: quick-terminal-screen is now supported on Wayland. The default,
main, places the quick terminal on the compositor's primary output\n(or the first monitor if the compositor doesn't report one). Set it to\nmouse to let the compositor choose, which was the previous behavior.\n#11117
GTK: On Wayland, background-blur now uses the compositor-agnostic
ext-background-effect-v1 protocol instead of KDE's blur protocol,\nenabling blur on compositors such as Niri. The blur region also no longer\ncovers the window's client-side shadows. #10721 #10720 #10727
GTK: On GTK 4.23.3 and newer, background-blur uses GTK's built-in
background blur, which covers the window more accurately. #13581 \n#13586
GTK: The open_config binding action now accepts new_window to
edit the configuration in $VISUAL or $EDITOR in a new Ghostty\nwindow. The default, os_open, keeps the previous behavior. #11905
GTK: A new configuration gtk-horizontal-tab-scroll (default true)
can be set to false to stop two-finger horizontal scrolling from\nswitching tabs, passing the scroll to the terminal application instead.\n#12659
GTK: A new configuration gtk-tabs-inverted moves the close button to
the start of each tab, in both the tab bar and the tab overview.\n#14657
GTK: The embedded Noto emoji fonts were updated, so newer emoji and ZWJ
sequences such as the head-shaking faces render as one glyph instead of\noverlapping neighboring cells. #14047
GTK: ctrl+shift+page_up and ctrl+shift+page_down now move the current
tab left and right (move_tab), matching Firefox, GNOME Terminal, and\nVS Code. jump_to_prompt moved to ctrl+shift+arrow_up and\nctrl+shift+arrow_down. #4998 #12458
GTK: URLs now open through the XDG desktop portal, falling back to
xdg-open if the portal is unavailable. Ghostty passes an activation\ntoken so the opened application, such as your browser, can come to the\nfront on compositors that require one. #5991 #11754 #14785 \n#14787
GTK: Desktop notifications are now withdrawn when their terminal is
focused or closed, and repeated notifications with the same text\nreplace each other, matching macOS. #14108
GTK: Tabs that aren't visible no longer render, saving CPU and GPU.
This matches macOS. #12760
GTK: The Dolphin "Open Ghostty Here" action now opens a new window in
the running Ghostty instance instead of launching a separate one.\n#11614
GTK: Fix Ghostty sometimes failing to launch with systemd 262, which
refused to start the service because Ghostty reported readiness before\nit could handle reload signals. #14398 #14399
GTK: Fix deeply nested splits sometimes becoming invisible or losing
GTK: Resizing splits, especially with resize_split keybinds, no
longer flickers. #13414
GTK: resize_split on nested splits no longer causes large jumps in
size. #12699
GTK: Splits can no longer be resized smaller than one cell, by dragging
the divider or with resize_split. #14476
GTK: High-resolution scroll wheels no longer scroll much faster than
standard scroll wheels. #12483
GTK: Disable unwanted kinetic scrolling on trackpads with GTK versions
older than 4.20.1. #11793
GTK: Middle clicks are once again sent to terminal applications using
mouse reporting when gtk-enable-primary-paste is disabled in\nGSettings. #12940 #13108
GTK: The quick terminal no longer breaks when toggled off manually
GTK: Opening the right-click context menu no longer hides the quick
terminal when quick-terminal-autohide is enabled. #12843
GTK: The resize overlay no longer keeps reappearing when the scrollbar
is visible and no longer blocks mouse input while shown. #11970 \n#11972
GTK: The maximum window size is now based on the monitor the window is
currently on, not the monitor it was opened on. #13171
GTK: +new-window -e now works when shell-integration is set to a
specific shell. +new-window and +new-tab also accept a new\n--shell-integration flag. #12378 #13741
GTK: Keys remapped to modifiers with XKB (e.g. Delete remapped to
ISO_Level3_Shift) no longer also send the original key. #13967
GTK: On Wayland, the IME candidate window now follows the cursor while
composing and no longer covers the line being edited. #14729
GTK: Splits in a tab that was moved to another window now act on the
new window (e.g. toggle_fullscreen). #14474
GTK: The mouse cursor keeps its text shape while selecting text.
GTK: The command palette now uses the terminal colors when
window-theme = ghostty. #14662
GTK: Opening URLs no longer fails when the fallback opener (xdg-open)
produces large output. #12797
GTK: Clicking a desktop notification no longer focuses the wrong
terminal when the one that sent it has since been closed. #12028
GTK: A bell in the focused terminal no longer leaves the bell
indicator set. #13597
GTK: Fix the window continuously redrawing in the background after an
indeterminate progress bar (OSC 9;4) was removed. #14704 #14738
GTK: Log missing or invalid gtk-xft-dpi values once instead of
GTK: Fix a crash when closing tabs or splits on GTK 4.20 (GNOME 49).
GTK: Fix a crash with global keybinds or on configuration reload when
no D-Bus connection is available. #13101
GTK: Fix a possible crash when Fontconfig reports a font's language as a
plain string instead of a language set. #14853
GTK: Fix a leak where every audio bell started a new GStreamer pipeline
and threads that were never cleaned up, slowly raising CPU usage.\n#13647 #12815 #13657
Snap: Link the system FreeType, Fontconfig, HarfBuzz, libpng, and zlib
instead of bundled copies, fixing frequent crashes caused by two copies\nof the same library in one process. #14392 #14682
Snap: The snap's own GIO modules and XDG data directories now take
priority over the host's. #12045
Snap: Programs running inside Ghostty, such as clear, now find the
xterm-ghostty terminfo entry. #12662
Flatpak: Commands started by Ghostty on the host are now terminated if
Ghostty crashes. #12427
Ghostty 1.4 introduces full localization for the command palette and adds\nsupport for 4 new languages:
\nLocalization is maintained by volunteer contributors. If you want to\nhelp localize Ghostty in your language, please open a discussion on the\nGitHub repo. Thank you to all the volunteers who contributed to Ghostty's\nlocalization!
\nGTK builds now require GTK 4.18 and libadwaita 1.7, up from
GTK 4.14 and libadwaita 1.5. Builds against older headers fail at\ncompile time, and Ghostty exits at startup if older libraries are\nloaded at runtime. #14330
GTK builds now link the system EGL library (pkg-config egl, usually
provided by libglvnd or Mesa) for the new renderer. At runtime, Ghostty\nuses GTK's EGL display when it can, and otherwise needs an EGL driver\nthat supports the surfaceless platform. #14052 #14636
A new -Dinstalled-exe-path build option sets the absolute executable
path written into the desktop file, D-Bus services, and systemd user\nservice. Previously this path came from the install prefix. Without the\noption, these files now name ghostty alone, which systemd only finds in\n/usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, so set it for any other prefix.\n#14805 #14806
When linking the system gtk4-layer-shell (-fsys=gtk4-layer-shell),
version 1.0.4 or newer is now required. Ghostty no longer disables the\nquick terminal on older versions, which can crash on some compositors.\n#11559
As with 1.3, libghostty isn't directly part of the Ghostty 1.4 release.\nBut a large part of the 1.4 development cycle went into libghostty, so\nhere's an update.
\nOver the past 6 months, the C API for libghostty-vt has grown from a\nparser and a few encoders into a complete terminal emulator API, adopted\nby dozens of free and commercial terminal emulators used by millions of\npeople. It's hard to quantify exactly, but the number of people using a\nlibghostty-based terminal is confidently several times the number of\npeople using the Ghostty GUI.
\nlibghostty-vt now builds for macOS, Linux, Windows (MSVC and GNU), FreeBSD,\nAndroid, iOS, and WebAssembly, and CI continuously verifies every one of\nthese targets. The goal is for libghostty-vt to be generally usable everywhere,\nwithin reason, so if you want more target support, let us know!
\nIt's also easier to integrate libghostty-vt into existing build systems.\nThere's CMake support, Nix packaging, an xcframework, and a source\ntarball, in addition to the existing pkg-config file. libghostty-vt no\nlonger needs libc++, and it can build freestanding.
\nThe API is still marked as a work in progress and broke compatibility\nseveral times during this cycle, so expect more breaking changes before\na tagged release. The API documentation\nand the Zig, C, C++, Swift, and WebAssembly examples\n(now over 30) are kept up to date with main.
We're going to do a final pass over the C API, break ABI one more time,\nand then likely tag a libghostty 1.0 release very soon.
\nGhostty is a non-profit project, fiscally sponsored\nby Hack Club.\nAll of our finances are public on HCB,\nso you can see exactly where every dollar goes.
\nDuring the 1.4 cycle, we paid $41,820 to contributors under contract and\nspent about $1,260 on infrastructure such as website hosting.
\nI'm happy to share that we've now signed our first two 12-month contracts,\nwhich give contributors stable, long-term paid work on Ghostty and help\nensure the ongoing stability and sustainability of the project:
\n@trag1c is Ghostty's head of operations.
He manages the community on GitHub and Discord, coordinates our\nvolunteer translators, and maintains various other important project\nsystems.
@vancluever works on various Ghostty
subsystems. In this cycle, he led the upgrade to Zig 0.16, moved the\nbuild off Zig's deprecated @cImport, updated the bundled Fontconfig,\nand more. He's also the author of\nz2d, the 2D graphics library Ghostty\nuses to draw box-drawing characters and other sprite glyphs.
If you'd like to support Ghostty, please visit our sponsorship page.
\nThe primary focus of the roadmap continues to be libghostty functionality,\nstability, and portability. During the last release cycle, I said I aimed to\ntag a libghostty release. We haven't done that yet, but I'm confident we will\ndo so before Ghostty 1.5.
\nlibghostty is a project that continues to be the tide that lifts all boats.\nlibghostty improvements tie directly to Ghostty GUI improvements as well as\ndozens of other large projects in the ecosystem. As more large projects adopt\nlibghostty, libghostty tends to get more testing and attention, and this\ncreates a cycle that yields the most gain for terminal emulators everywhere.
\nmacOS and GTK builds of Ghostty have talented, capable maintainer teams that\nare continuing to improve them, so they're not neglected by any means!\nAs a project, we've decided to drop any roadmap for Windows support in the\nGhostty GUI. libghostty fully supports Windows (and we test it in CI), and the\nofficial stance now is that downstream projects should use that.
\nOur release cycle remains 6 months. This release was delayed by one month,\nbut Ghostty 1.5 is planned for March 2027. libghostty will have a separate\nrelease cycle.
\nOriginally published at ghostty.org.
","headings":[{"level":1,"text":"Ghostty 1.4.0","id":"ghostty-1-4-0"},{"level":2,"text":"Security","id":"security"},{"level":2,"text":"Highlights","id":"highlights"},{"level":3,"text":"macOS 27 Support","id":"macos-27-support"},{"level":3,"text":"Kitty Graphics Animation and Relative Placements","id":"kitty-graphics-animation-and-relative-placements"},{"level":3,"text":"Scrollback Compression and Lower Memory Usage","id":"scrollback-compression-and-lower-memory-usage"},{"level":3,"text":"Performance Improvements","id":"performance-improvements"},{"level":3,"text":"New OpenGL Renderer (Linux, FreeBSD)","id":"new-opengl-renderer-linux-freebsd"},{"level":3,"text":"Kitty Clipboard Protocol","id":"kitty-clipboard-protocol"},{"level":3,"text":"Split Drag and Drop (GTK)","id":"split-drag-and-drop-gtk"},{"level":3,"text":"Terminal Emulation Accuracy","id":"terminal-emulation-accuracy"},{"level":3,"text":"SSH Integration with ghostty +ssh","id":"ssh-integration-with-ghostty-ssh"},{"level":2,"text":"System Requirements","id":"system-requirements"},{"level":2,"text":"Breaking Changes","id":"breaking-changes"},{"level":3,"text":"Deprecations","id":"deprecations"},{"level":2,"text":"Full Changelog","id":"full-changelog"},{"level":3,"text":"Terminal Capabilities","id":"terminal-capabilities"},{"level":3,"text":"Shell Integration","id":"shell-integration"},{"level":3,"text":"macOS","id":"macos"},{"level":3,"text":"GTK (Linux, FreeBSD)","id":"gtk-linux-freebsd"},{"level":3,"text":"Localization","id":"localization"},{"level":3,"text":"Changes for Package Maintainers","id":"changes-for-package-maintainers"},{"level":2,"text":"Libghostty","id":"libghostty"},{"level":2,"text":"Financial Update","id":"financial-update"},{"level":2,"text":"Roadmap","id":"roadmap"}]}}