Ghostty 1.0 is out.

If you told me two years ago that I would be releasing a terminal emulator, I wouldn't have believed you. I've always been a fan of the terminal, my entire career was built around shipping terminal-first software. But they're a solved problem, right? That's what I thought.

I started the project in 2022 merely as a way to play with Zig, do some graphics programming, and deepen my understanding of terminals. I never intended to release it. I didn't think there was innovation to be had. I thought I would learn a lot over a few months and move on.

But as I worked on it, I looked at other terminals differently. I saw tradeoffs that I didn't like. I saw features that I wanted. I saw performance that I could improve. I saw stagnation. There are many fantastic terminals out there and you should use them if they work for you. But I wanted something different and thought maybe others did too.

And so Ghostty was born. It's not perfect, it's not done, it's not for everyone. But it's mine. It's a reflection of my values and my vision for what a terminal could be.

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

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

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