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Ghostty

MIT-licensed terminal with a real SwiftUI Mac app behind it

Price: Free

Open sourceNothing to buy; source published

Get it Website

Checked on github.com, the page Get it opens.

The catch

Support is GitHub issues, and some niche iTerm2 features are still missing

The full picture

Officially supported on macOS and Linux only; the Windows-compatible parts are library components, not a shippable Windows terminal. It is much younger than iTerm2, so niche features and third-party integrations are still filling in, and most configuration is done in a text file even though a settings GUI exists on macOS. Support means GitHub issues rather than a vendor, so check that the workflow you depend on works before switching wholesale.

Replaces
Paid terminal plans
Developer account
None needed

What it looks like

Ghostty: The Ghostty macOS window — traffic lights, centred '~' title — with the find bar open in the top right ('Ghostty', -/55, prev/next/close), and every match highlighted in yellow across a screen of crash-report documentation text.
The Ghostty macOS window — traffic lights, centred '~' title — with the find bar open in the top right ('Ghostty', -/55, prev/next/close), and every match highlighted in yellow across a screen of crash-report documentation text. Vendor site (ghostty.org, published by the project for its 1.3.0 release notes)
Ghostty: The Ghostty macOS window with the command palette open: a search field containing 'copy' and six matching commands listed beneath it (Copy Selection to Temporary File and Copy Path, Copy Terminal Title to Clipboard, Copy URL to Clipboard, …), one row hovered and one selected.
The Ghostty macOS window with the command palette open. Vendor site (ghostty.org, 1.2.0 release notes)
Ghostty: The Ghostty macOS window with a background image configured — a dimmed lakeside photo behind the terminal grid — showing the prompt 'Hello, Ghostty!', the right-aligned date, and a folder proxy icon in the titlebar.
The Ghostty macOS window with a background image configured — a dimmed lakeside photo behind the terminal grid — showing the prompt 'Hello, Ghostty!', the right-aligned date, and a folder proxy icon in the titlebar. Vendor site (ghostty.org, 1.2.0 release notes)

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

Fast terminals usually feel like ports. They draw their own tabs, their own title bars, their own approximation of a Mac window, and every shortcut is slightly wrong. Ghostty takes the other route: the rendering is GPU-accelerated through Metal, and the shell around it is an actual SwiftUI application, with real windows, a real menu bar, a settings screen, and AppleScript and Shortcuts support you would expect from a Mac app that was written for the Mac.

In daily use that means native tabs and splits, system text services that behave, and the speed you would otherwise go to Alacritty or Kitty for. Startup is quick and input latency is low enough that the difference against iTerm2 is noticeable when output floods.

It is MIT licensed with no paid tier, which is worth stating plainly in a category where several recent terminals arrived with an account and a subscription attached. Nothing is held back for a Pro plan because there is no Pro plan.

The honest limits: it is young. If you rely on a specific iTerm2 trigger, scripting hook or integration, check it works before you move over, because there is no support desk, only an issue tracker. And if you are on Windows, this is not for you.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Owners repeatedly bring up floods of output as the moment the speed becomes obvious, rather than any benchmark
  • People coming from iTerm2 repeatedly point out that the tabs and split panes are genuine native macOS controls

Criticised

  • Several users report a remote host rendering wrongly over SSH until Ghostty's terminfo is installed there or TERM is overridden
  • Daily users repeatedly ask for shorter gaps between stable releases, saying fixes otherwise sit in nightly builds

Details

Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
Mitchell Hashimoto and contributors
The Ghostty page at ghostty.org
The developer’s own page. ghostty.org, captured 22 Sep 2026

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