Ghostty is Probably the Best Terminal Emulator I’ve Ever Used


When Mitchell Hashimoto, the creator of Terraform and Vagrant, builds something new, the tech world pays attention.

His latest creation, Ghostty, isn’t just another terminal emulator—it’s a reimagining the OS native aspects of terminal emulator which was quite missing until today.

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

For years, developers have struggled with terminal emulators that force compromises:
Choose performance or features.

Pick cross-platform compatibility or native feel.

Want window management?

Sacrifice speed, or multiplexing, or ligatures.

The existing solutions—from iTerm2 through Kitty, Alacritty and even Wezterm—each have their strong points, but they all demand these tradeoffs. And believe me, I went through long periods trying each, enjoying its features but at times suffering from lack of certain basic options.

I can still feel the irritation of Alacritty on MacOS not being able to handle multiple windows and CMD+~ leading to… nothing 🤦

What sets Ghostty apart is how it eliminates these compromises.
It brings native window management that actually feels native.

It handles text zooming without breaking your window layout—a seemingly small feature that becomes indispensable during screen sharing.

Most impressively, its split-pane terminal multiplexing is noticeably faster than tmux, starting new shells almost instantaneously.

Oh, and my favourite: a rolling shell, that can be set with a global key-combo (CMD+t for me) that rolls out a terminal from the top of my screen and rolls out immediately when you're done!

If you want Ghostty right now, you can find the discord server, ask for an invite, but just make sure you read the pins first, especially if you associate yourself with me 😅!

To try Ghostty when it becomes publicly available (expected in December 2025):

  1. Start with its basic configuration at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/config
  2. Used mine for reference or others on Github(hey i’m right there second on the list!)
  3. Use Command+Comma to quickly access and edit settings
  4. Read the list of configuration options on the repo, or using the CLI that comes with it, you’ll find LOTS of interesting stuff!

Mitchell’s deep understanding of developer workflows, combined with Ghostty’s implementation in Zig, has produced something special. While still in private beta, Ghostty is actively developed with new features appearing daily. Keep an eye on this project—it’s set to change how we interact with our terminals in 2025. I’ve personally configured Ghostty as my default emulator and I never looked back since.

If you got to try it out, or are looking to, please reply to this email directly and share!

Thanks for reading! See ya next week.

ESPRESSO FRIDAYS

Every once in a while I send hand picked things I've learned. Kind of like your filter to the tech internet. No spam, I promise!

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