Why Ghostty, a Free, Fast, Cross-Platform Terminal Emulator, Is Appealing

Ghostty is a fast, cross-platform terminal emulator written in Zig that uses GPU acceleration for low-latency rendering.

Version 1.3 was released in March 2026 with scrollback search, native scrollbars, and other GUI and VT improvements.

The macOS build records about 1 million downloads per week, and libghostty serves as a shared core intended for other terminal projects.

A nonprofit now supports Ghostty, with four contracted contributors and public project finances.