What is Ghostty?
👻Ghostty is a GPU-based terminal emulator developed by Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp. It utilizes Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux for GPU rendering and takes advantage of this architecture to support custom shader functionality.
ghostty-org
/
ghostty
👻 Ghostty is a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration.
Ghostty
Fast, native, feature-rich terminal emulator pushing modern features
A native GUI or embeddable library via libghostty
About
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Download
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Documentation
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Contributing
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Developing
About
Ghostty is a terminal emulator that differentiates itself by being fast, feature-rich, and native. While there are many excellent terminal emulators available, they all force you to choose between speed, features, or native UIs. Ghostty provides all three.
libghostty is a cross-platform, zero-dependency C and Zig library
for building terminal emulators or utilizing terminal functionality
(such as style parsing). Anyone can use libghostty to build a terminal
emulator or embed a terminal into their own applications. See
Ghostling for a minimal complete project
example or the examples directory
for smaller examples of using libghostty in C and Zig.
For more details, see About Ghostty.
Download
See the download page on the Ghostty website.
Documentation
See the documentation on the Ghostty website.
How to run a Shader as the terminal background?
Step1 Create Ghostty config
mkdir ~/.config/ghostty
touch ~/.config/ghostty/config
Configuration
Ghostty supports hundreds of configuration options to make it look and behave exactly how you want.
ghostty.org
Step2 Create or download a Shader
mkdir shaders
noise.glsl
float random(in vec2 st) {
return fract(sin(dot(st.xy, vec2(12.9898, 78.233))) * 43758.5453123);
}
vec2 random_gradient(in vec2 i) {
float r = 2.0 * 3.1415926535 * random(i);
return vec2(cos(r), sin(r));
}
float perlin_noise(in vec2 st) {
vec2 i = floor(st);
vec2 f = fract(st);
vec2 g00 = random_gradient(i + vec2(0.0, 0.0));
vec2 g10 = random_gradient(i + vec2(1.0, 0.0));
vec2 g01 = random_gradient(i + vec2(0.0, 1.0));
vec2 g11 = random_gradient(i + vec2(1.0, 1.0));
vec2 p00 = f - vec2(0.0, 0.0);
vec2 p10 = f - vec2(1.0, 0.0);
vec2 p01 = f - vec2(0.0, 1.0);
vec2 p11 = f - vec2(1.0, 1.0);
float n00 = dot(g00, p00);
float n10 = dot(g10, p10);
float n01 = dot(g01, p01);
float n11 = dot(g11, p11);
vec2 u = f * f * (3.0 - 2.0 * f);
float nx0 = mix(n00, n10, u.x);
float nx1 = mix(n01, n11, u.x);
float nxy = mix(nx0, nx1, u.y);
return (nxy + 1.0) / 2.0;
}
void mainImage( out vec4 fragColor, in vec2 fragCoord )
{
vec2 uv = fragCoord / iResolution.xy;
vec2 noiseUV = uv * 4.0;
noiseUV += iTime * 0.5;
vec3 col = 0.5 + 0.5 * cos(iTime + noiseUV.xyx + vec3(0.0, 2.0, 4.0));
float noise_val = perlin_noise(noiseUV);
col *= noise_val;
vec4 terminalColor = texture(iChannel0, uv);
vec3 blendedColor = terminalColor.rgb + col.rgb * 0.7;
fragColor = vec4(blendedColor,1.0);
}
custom-shader
If you don't have any Shader you want to use as the background, you can find out something cool in the following repo.
0xhckr
/
ghostty-shaders
A repository containing many free shaders to use with ghostty (the terminal)
Installation
Clone the repository:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hackr-sh/ghostty-shaders
cd ghostty-shaders
Copy your preferred shader file to the Ghostty config directory:
cp <your-choice>.glsl ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/shader.glsl
Add the following line to your ~/.config/ghostty/config file to enable the custom shader:
custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/shader.glsl
Step3 Add the Shader to the config
I downloaded water.glsl from the above repo. The nice thing is that Ghostty allows us to use multiple shaders.
custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/noise.glsl
custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/water.glsl
custom-shader-animation = true
After saving config, hit Cmd + Shift + , to apply the change to Ghostty.
Troubleshooting
If the background doesn’t change, check ‎custom-shader path exists and the Shader itself.
Happy hacking with Ghostty and shaders!
My Ghostty config
#==================================
# appearance
#==================================
# color theme
theme = Calamity
# shaders
#custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/gears-and-belts.glsl
custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/noise.glsl
custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/water.glsl
#custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/fern.glsl
#custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/cell.glsl
custom-shader-animation = true
#-----------------------------------
# Resize panes with arrow keys
#-----------------------------------
keybind = ctrl+shift+arrow_left=resize_split:left,10
keybind = ctrl+shift+arrow_right=resize_split:right,10
keybind = ctrl+shift+arrow_down=resize_split:down,10
keybind = ctrl+shift+arrow_up=resize_split:up,10
#-----------------------------------
# Split panes
#-----------------------------------
keybind = ctrl+shift+v=new_split:right
keybind = ctrl+shift+h=new_split:down
#-----------------------------------
# Move panes
#-----------------------------------
keybind = shift+arrow_left=goto_split:left
keybind = shift+arrow_right=goto_split:right
keybind = shift+arrow_up=goto_split:up
keybind = shift+arrow_down=goto_split:down
#-----------------------------------
# Control panes
#-----------------------------------
keybind = ctrl+x=close_surface
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