Ghostty Terminal: How to Install and Use

Ghostty is a fast, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator that delivers smooth scrolling, low latency, and crisp rendering for dense CLI output. Ghostty is most useful when your terminal must stay fast and clear when splitting panes, tailing rapid logs, or running noisy commands that flood the screen. It is a natural fit for dev work, remote servers, and log-heavy debugging.

This article shows how to install and use the Ghostty terminal.

Prerequisites

• A machine running Linux or macOS.
• A user account with root privileges for some Linux installations.

What Is Ghostty?

Ghostty is a lightweight terminal emulator built for people who treat the terminal as their primary workspace. It keeps the experience smooth when working with long scrollback, fast log streams, or commands that generate large bursts of text.

It is most useful when responsiveness is non-negotiable, i.e., for debugging live output, jumping between multiple panes, or reviewing dense command results without delay. Instead of adding complexity, it prioritizes defaults that perform well immediately.

Ghostty is the terminal of choice for engineers who multitask across panes and tabs, run remote SSH sessions, or inspect logs that update hundreds of lines per second. It supports modern typography and color capabilities so text stays clear, aligned, and easy to parse, especially in prompts, CLIs, and dashboards that rely on structured or colored output.

Ghostty Background and Philosophy

Ghostty was created to remove a common pain point of modern terminal emulators - the paradox of speed that requires endless configuration. The philosophy rejects "tuning as a lifestyle" and treats the terminal as infrastructure, i.e., something that should stay fast without user intervention, profile plugins, or dependency chains. By leveraging stable defaults and hardware-accelerated rendering, Ghostty avoids slowdowns that occur when terminals rely solely on the CPU for intensive text rendering.

Its design approach favors minimal UI, predictable behavior, and reliability under sustained workloads. It does not try to replace a shell, framework, or multiplexer. Instead, it complements them by staying stable when they struggle.

Ghostty Features

Ghostty is built around the idea that performance and readability should not break when terminal output scales. It supports first-class multitasking with native panes and tabs, remains stable with massive buffers, and offers modern text and graphics capabilities that reduce friction in daily CLI work.

The following table summarizes Ghostty's key features that significantly improve real terminal workflows:

How to Install Ghostty

Ghostty terminal is available for macOS and Linux. On Windows, Ghostty is not yet officially released as a binary by the project, but community builds and future official support are planned.

The sections below show how to install Ghostty on Linux and macOS.

Install Ghostty on macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon)

The official Ghostty project provides notarized macOS binaries. You can install the stable release via Homebrew using the following command:

brew install --cask ghostty

Alternatively, download the DMG from the official site and drag Ghostty into your Applications folder.

Install Ghostty on Linux

Linux packaging for Ghostty is not distributed directly by the Ghostty project as a universal standalone binary. Instead, it is available through distribution-specific packages maintained by distros or the community.

Official Packages

You can install Ghostty from the official repositories using the commands below for your Linux distribution:

• Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S ghostty

• Alpine Linux

sudo apk add ghostty

• Gentoo

sudo emerge -av ghostty

• openSUSE

sudo zypper install ghostty

• Solus

sudo eopkg install ghostty

• Void

sudo xbps-install ghostty

There is also a Snap package you can install universally on many distributions:

sudo snap install ghostty --classic

Community Packages

For distributions that do not yet have an official package, there are community options:

• Ubuntu / Debian

You can use a community .deb package or a script to install Ghostty from GitHub releases:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mkasberg/ghostty-ubuntu/HEAD/install.sh)"

This script downloads and installs the appropriate .deb for your version. To start Ghostty, start it from the terminal or find it in the application drawer, and the basic terminal window opens:

• AppImage

AppImages run without installation and work on almost any Linux distro. Download a universal AppImage from a community repo and make it executable:

chmod +x ghostty*.AppImage

Replace the file name with the actual name of the file you downloaded, and run the file:

./ghostty*.AppImage

Build from Source (All Platforms)

If no package is available for your distribution, you can compile Ghostty from source using zig, which provides the latest compatible binary for your system. Follow the official build guide on Ghostty's docs, install dependencies, and then build Ghostty with zig.

Ghostty builds on Linux may fail if the system uses Wayland without xwayland support, or if GPU drivers don't expose OpenGL 4.1+. Additionally, some minimal distros lack libglib2.0-dev, libgtk-4-dev, or libadwaita-1-dev, which are required for compilation.

Ghostty Configuration

Configuration matters because it controls how Ghostty looks, reacts, and handles input. Fonts, padding, themes, key behavior, and security prompts are all defined in the configuration files. A solid config improves readability, reduces accidental key signals, and keeps sessions predictable across machines.

Follow the steps below to configure Ghostty:

1. Create the config directory (if missing):

mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty

2. Create the config file (if missing):

nano ~/.config/ghostty/config

3. Add starter settings:

font-family = "JetBrains Mono"
font-size = 14
theme = "12-bit Rainbow"
window-padding-x = 10
window-padding-y = 10

These defaults tune clarity and spacing without adding noise:

• font-family - Sets the terminal font. Ligature-capable fonts improve the readability of symbol-heavy prompts and CLI output.
• font-size - Controls text scale for comfortable reading during long sessions.
• theme - Applies a color theme. You can install a new one or select a preinstalled one (usually located at ~/usr/share/ghostty/themes), or keep the default one.
• window-padding-x / y - Adds inner spacing so output does not stick to the edges, improving scanability.

Save the file and exit.

4. Restart Ghostty to apply changes:

In the example above, we see the effects of our configuration changes in the output.

Ghostty vs. Competitors

Ghostty outperforms classic system terminals during heavy scrolling, log bursts, and large buffers by staying visually smooth and input-fast. Compared to other accelerated terminals, it wins by combining strong performance with a cleaner default UX, avoiding the configuration upkeep that comes with extensible or multiplexer-heavy alternatives.

Refer to the table below to see how Ghostty compares to some prominent competitors:

Conclusion

This tutorial showed how to install and use the Ghostty terminal emulator. Ghostty proves its value when performance and readability matter more than tweaking, staying smooth in pane-heavy work and rapid log output.

Next, see which Linux terminal commands are dangerous or learn to clear the terminal in Linux.