Ghostty

• Ghostty is a terminal emulator written in Zig that aims to be fast, feature-rich, and native on each platform
  • Created by Person/Mitchell Hashimoto and publicly released in December 2024
  • Ghostty/GitHub/ghostty
  • Notable for using platform-native UI toolkits (AppKit on macOS, GTK4 on Linux) rather than a cross-platform abstraction

  • Platform

    • macOS and Linux — no Windows support (intentional, at least initially)

  • Language

    • Zig for the core; platform-native UI (AppKit / GTK4)

  • Image Protocol

    • Supports the Kitty/Graphics/Protocol
    • Relevant for tools like yazi that display inline images

  • Nix

    • Not yet in the official nixpkgs channel (as of early 2026)
    • Binaries and Packages - Install
      • In Nixpkgs, Ghostty is available as a repackaging of the official .dmg under the package name ghostty-bin, not to be confused with ghostty, which is the GTK app available for Nix on Linux.
    • Official Nix flake provided in the Ghostty repo
      • Install: ghostty.packages.${system}.default
    • home-manager module available via the flake
      • nix

        programs.ghostty = {
          enable = true;
          settings = {
            font-family = "JetBrains Mono";
            theme = "catppuccin-mocha";
          };
        };

    • font-family uses JetBrains/Font/Mono Nerd.
    • theme uses a Catppuccin flavor; see Catppuccin for other flavors and wiring nvim, tmux, yazi, and other terminals.

  • Notable Features

    • Native UI on each platform (not electron / cross-platform widget toolkit)
    • Built-in tabs and splits
    • Fast startup and rendering
    • Config format is a simple key = value text file

  • Hyperlinks, tmux, and opening local paths in nvim

    • Context: question filed 2026_03_22 — want “click a file path in the terminal → open in nvim” alongside URL-style clicking
    • Ghostty supports OSC 8 hyperlinks (clickable regions emitted by programs). Linked text is visually distinct (e.g. dotted underline, hover underline)
      • On macOS, ⌘-click opens the link via the platform; on Linux, Ctrl-click is the usual pattern
      • copy_url_to_clipboard can copy the target from regex-detected URLs or OSC 8 hyperlinks
    • URLs vs file paths: https://… style links are the common case. A bare path in compiler output is not automatically clickable unless something wraps it in OSC 8 (or you rely on URL-shaped text Ghostty already recognizes — plain relative paths usually are not)
    • file://: if a tool emits OSC 8 with file:///…, Ghostty still delegates to the OS default for that path/type — often not nvim unless you change file associations or register a custom URL handler / wrapper scheme
    • tmux stack: use a recent tmux (about 3.4+) and declare hyperlink capability (e.g. hyperlinks via terminal-features) so OSC 8 sequences survive inside panes; Ghostty remains the emulator that actually handles the click
    • Reality check for “always nvim”: not a first-class “tmux feature”; you need emitters (build tools, grep wrappers, test runners) that print OSC 8, plus OS or app-level routing if you want nvim instead of the default app — otherwise copy-link / yank-path workflows or editor-native navigation (e.g. quickfix, LSP) stay the reliable path