Libghostty is coming

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction to Ghostty / libghostty

  • Many commenters are enthusiastic about Ghostty and the announcement of libghostty, seeing it as a high‑quality, modern terminal core with strong attention to detail and performance.
  • Several users report having switched from iTerm2/wezterm/other terminals to Ghostty and “not looking back,” especially on macOS.
  • Others tried Ghostty and found it underwhelming or too immature for daily use, keeping their existing terminals.

Perceived strengths

  • Very fast rendering and low latency, especially with heavy TUI apps or long scrollback; often contrasted with “laggy” iTerm2.
  • Reliable text reflow and scrollback behavior, fixing issues some had with previous terminals.
  • Simple, text‑file configuration, good theming, split-pane management, shaders/visual effects, and good support for modern protocols (Kitty graphics/keyboard, tmux control mode parsing).
  • Written in Zig with a zero‑dependency C API (no libc), which some see as evidence Zig is “ready” and as a good embedding story.

Pain points and missing features in Ghostty

  • Most‑cited blocker: no built‑in scrollback search / Cmd+F and no scrollbars yet. Workarounds include piping to less/grep, dumping scrollback to a file, or using tmux/zellij search. Many find this acceptable; others call it a dealbreaker.
  • Some macOS users complain about font rendering (especially on external monitors) and lack of Terminal.app‑like polish.
  • Keyboard/UX rough edges: difficulty selecting/copying via keyboard alone, cmd+. not sending Ctrl‑C by default, and terminfo/ssh friction (remote hosts not knowing xterm-ghostty).
  • A few Linux users report GTK4 quirks, clipboard inconsistencies, and specific bugs that make Ghostty unusable for them under load.

libghostty use cases and ecosystem comparisons

  • Developers are excited about embedding Ghostty’s VT core in editors (Neovim/Emacs), pagers, debuggers, custom apps, hobby OSes, and potentially web/WASM and mobile frontends.
  • Compared with vte/libvterm/libtmt, libghostty is described as more feature‑complete (scrollback, resize reflow, modern escape sequences) and cross‑toolkit.
  • Some worry about “yet another VT parser,” others argue a well‑designed, shared core could actually reduce fragmentation.

Workflows, platforms, and philosophy

  • Strong side‑discussion on tmux vs Neovim terminals vs vterm: tmux praised for session and scrollback management; Neovim/Emacs users eye libghostty to fix rendering/flicker and reflow issues.
  • Platform complaints: Ghostty’s macOS ≥13 requirement alienates users who intentionally stay on older macOS; others counter that supporting outdated systems is an undue burden.
  • Licensing debate: whether a core infra library like this should be copyleft (GPL/LGPL) vs MIT, with concerns about closed‑source forks adding telemetry vs practicality/adoption.