GHOSTTY(1) Version 1.1.4-20250615git9e45da1 | Ghostty terminal emulator

NAME

ghostty - Ghostty terminal emulator

DESCRIPTION

Ghostty is a cross-platform, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator that aims to push the boundaries of what is possible with a terminal emulator by exposing modern, opt-in features that enable CLI tool developers to build more feature rich, interactive applications.

There are a number of excellent terminal emulator options that exist today. The unique goal of Ghostty is to have a platform for experimenting with modern, optional, non-standards-compliant features to enhance the capabilities of CLI applications. We aim to be the best in this category, and competitive in the rest.

While aiming for this ambitious goal, Ghostty is a fully standards compliant terminal emulator that aims to remain compatible with all existing shells and software. You can use this as a drop-in replacement for your existing terminal emulator.

COMMAND LINE ACTIONS

--version

The version command is used to display information about Ghostty. Recognized as either +version or --version.

--help

The help command shows general help about Ghostty. Recognized as either -h,–help, or like other actions+help`.

You can also specify --help or -h along with any action such as +list-themes to see help for a specific action.

+list-fonts

The list-fonts command is used to list all the available fonts for Ghostty. This uses the exact same font discovery mechanism Ghostty uses to find fonts to use.

When executed with no arguments, this will list all available fonts, sorted by family name, then font name. If a family name is given with --family, the sorting will be disabled and the results instead will be shown in the same priority order Ghostty would use to pick a font.

Flags:

+list-keybinds

The list-keybinds command is used to list all the available keybinds for Ghostty.

When executed without any arguments this will list the current keybinds loaded by the config file. If no config file is found or there aren’t any changes to the keybinds it will print out the default ones configured for Ghostty

Flags:

+list-themes

The list-themes command is used to preview or list all the available themes for Ghostty.

If this command is run from a TTY, a TUI preview of the themes will be shown. While in the preview, F1 will bring up a help screen and ESC will exit the preview. Other keys that can be used to navigate the preview are listed in the help screen.

If this command is not run from a TTY, or the output is piped to another command, a plain list of theme names will be printed to the screen. A plain list can be forced using the --plain CLI flag.

Two different directories will be searched for themes.

The first directory is the themes subdirectory of your Ghostty configuration directory. This is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/themes or ~/.config/ghostty/themes.

The second directory is the themes subdirectory of the Ghostty resources directory. Ghostty ships with a multitude of themes that will be installed into this directory. On macOS, this directory is the Ghostty.app/Contents/Resources/ghostty/themes. On Linux, this directory is the share/ghostty/themes (wherever you installed the Ghostty “share” directory). If you’re running Ghostty from the source, this is the zig-out/share/ghostty/themes directory.

You can also set the GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR environment variable to point to the resources directory.

Flags:

+list-colors

The list-colors command is used to list all the named RGB colors in Ghostty.

+list-actions

The list-actions command is used to list all the available keybind actions for Ghostty. These are distinct from the CLI Actions which can be listed via +help

Flags:

+show-config

The show-config command shows the current configuration in a valid Ghostty configuration file format.

When executed without any arguments this will output the current configuration that is different from the default configuration. If you’re using the default configuration this will output nothing.

If you are a new user and want to see all available options with documentation, run ghostty +show-config --default --docs.

The output is not in any specific order, but the order should be consistent between runs. The output is not guaranteed to be exactly match the input configuration files, but it will result in the same behavior. Comments, whitespace, and other formatting is not preserved from user configuration files.

Flags:

+validate-config

The validate-config command is used to validate a Ghostty config file.

When executed without any arguments, this will load the config from the default location.

Flags:

+show-face

The show-face command shows what font face Ghostty will use to render a specific codepoint. Note that this command does not take into consideration grapheme clustering or any other Unicode features that might modify the presentation of a codepoint, so this may show a different font face than Ghostty uses to render a codepoint in a terminal session.

Flags:

+crash-report

The crash-report command is used to inspect and send crash reports.

When executed without any arguments, this will list existing crash reports.

This command currently only supports listing crash reports. Viewing and sending crash reports is unimplemented and will be added in the future.

+boo

The boo command is used to display the animation from the Ghostty website in the terminal

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

--font-family

The font families to use.

You can generate the list of valid values using the CLI:

ghostty +list-fonts

This configuration can be repeated multiple times to specify preferred fallback fonts when the requested codepoint is not available in the primary font. This is particularly useful for multiple languages, symbolic fonts, etc.

Notes on emoji specifically: On macOS, Ghostty by default will always use Apple Color Emoji and on Linux will always use Noto Emoji. You can override this behavior by specifying a font family here that contains emoji glyphs.

The specific styles (bold, italic, bold italic) do not need to be explicitly set. If a style is not set, then the regular style (font-family) will be searched for stylistic variants. If a stylistic variant is not found, Ghostty will use the regular style. This prevents falling back to a different font family just to get a style such as bold. This also applies if you explicitly specify a font family for a style. For example, if you set font-family-bold = FooBar and “FooBar” cannot be found, Ghostty will use whatever font is set for font-family for the bold style.

Finally, some styles may be synthesized if they are not supported. For example, if a font does not have an italic style and no alternative italic font is specified, Ghostty will synthesize an italic style by applying a slant to the regular style. If you want to disable these synthesized styles then you can use the font-style configurations as documented below.

You can disable styles completely by using the font-style set of configurations. See the documentation for font-style for more information.

If you want to overwrite a previous set value rather than append a fallback, specify the value as "" (empty string) to reset the list and then set the new values. For example:

font-family = ""
font-family = "My Favorite Font"

Setting any of these as CLI arguments will automatically clear the values set in configuration files so you don’t need to specify --font-family="" before setting a new value. You only need to specify this within config files if you want to clear previously set values in configuration files or on the CLI if you want to clear values set on the CLI.

Changing this configuration at runtime will only affect new terminals, i.e. new windows, tabs, etc.

--font-family-bold

--font-family-italic

--font-family-bold-italic

--font-style

The named font style to use for each of the requested terminal font styles. This looks up the style based on the font style string advertised by the font itself. For example, “Iosevka Heavy” has a style of “Heavy”.

You can also use these fields to completely disable a font style. If you set the value of the configuration below to literal false then that font style will be disabled. If the running program in the terminal requests a disabled font style, the regular font style will be used instead.

These are only valid if its corresponding font-family is also specified. If no font-family is specified, then the font-style is ignored unless you’re disabling the font style.

--font-style-bold

--font-style-italic

--font-style-bold-italic

--font-synthetic-style

Control whether Ghostty should synthesize a style if the requested style is not available in the specified font-family.

Ghostty can synthesize bold, italic, and bold italic styles if the font does not have a specific style. For bold, this is done by drawing an outline around the glyph of varying thickness. For italic, this is done by applying a slant to the glyph. For bold italic, both of these are applied.

Synthetic styles are not perfect and will generally not look as good as a font that has the style natively. However, they are useful to provide styled text when the font does not have the style.

Set this to “false” or “true” to disable or enable synthetic styles completely. You can disable specific styles using “no-bold”, “no-italic”, and “no-bold-italic”. You can disable multiple styles by separating them with a comma. For example, “no-bold,no-italic”.

Available style keys are: bold, italic, bold-italic.

If synthetic styles are disabled, then the regular style will be used instead if the requested style is not available. If the font has the requested style, then the font will be used as-is since the style is not synthetic.

Warning: An easy mistake is to disable bold or italic but not bold-italic. Disabling only bold or italic will NOT disable either in the bold-italic style. If you want to disable bold-italic, you must explicitly disable it. You cannot partially disable bold-italic.

By default, synthetic styles are enabled.

--font-feature

Apply a font feature. To enable multiple font features you can repeat this multiple times or use a comma-separated list of feature settings.

The syntax for feature settings is as follows, where feat is a feature:

The syntax is fairly loose, but invalid settings will be silently ignored.

The font feature will apply to all fonts rendered by Ghostty. A future enhancement will allow targeting specific faces.

To disable programming ligatures, use -calt since this is the typical feature name for programming ligatures. To look into what font features your font has and what they do, use a font inspection tool such as fontdrop.info.

To generally disable most ligatures, use -calt, -liga, -dlig.

--font-size

Font size in points. This value can be a non-integer and the nearest integer pixel size will be selected. If you have a high dpi display where 1pt = 2px then you can get an odd numbered pixel size by specifying a half point.

For example, 13.5pt @ 2px/pt = 27px

Changing this configuration at runtime will only affect new terminals, i.e. new windows, tabs, etc. Note that you may still not see the change depending on your window-inherit-font-size setting. If that setting is true, only the first window will be affected by this change since all subsequent windows will inherit the font size of the previous window.

On Linux with GTK, font size is scaled according to both display-wide and text-specific scaling factors, which are often managed by your desktop environment (e.g. the GNOME display scale and large text settings).

--font-variation

A repeatable configuration to set one or more font variations values for a variable font. A variable font is a single font, usually with a filename ending in -VF.ttf or -VF.otf that contains one or more configurable axes for things such as weight, slant, etc. Not all fonts support variations; only fonts that explicitly state they are variable fonts will work.

The format of this is id=value where id is the axis identifier. An axis identifier is always a 4 character string, such as wght. To get the list of supported axes, look at your font documentation or use a font inspection tool.

Invalid ids and values are usually ignored. For example, if a font only supports weights from 100 to 700, setting wght=800 will do nothing (it will not be clamped to 700). You must consult your font’s documentation to see what values are supported.

Common axes are: wght (weight), slnt (slant), ital (italic), opsz (optical size), wdth (width), GRAD (gradient), etc.

--font-variation-bold

--font-variation-italic

--font-variation-bold-italic

--font-codepoint-map

Force one or a range of Unicode codepoints to map to a specific named font. This is useful if you want to support special symbols or if you want to use specific glyphs that render better for your specific font.

The syntax is codepoint=fontname where codepoint is either a single codepoint or a range. Codepoints must be specified as full Unicode hex values, such as U+ABCD. Codepoints ranges are specified as U+ABCD-U+DEFG. You can specify multiple ranges for the same font separated by commas, such as U+ABCD-U+DEFG,U+1234-U+5678=fontname. The font name is the same value as you would use for font-family.

This configuration can be repeated multiple times to specify multiple codepoint mappings.

Changing this configuration at runtime will only affect new terminals, i.e. new windows, tabs, etc.

--font-thicken

Draw fonts with a thicker stroke, if supported. This is currently only supported on macOS.

--font-thicken-strength

Strength of thickening when font-thicken is enabled.

Valid values are integers between 0 and 255. 0 does not correspond to no thickening, rather it corresponds to the lightest available thickening.

Has no effect when font-thicken is set to false.

This is currently only supported on macOS.

--alpha-blending

What color space to use when performing alpha blending.

This affects the appearance of text and of any images with transparency. Additionally, custom shaders will receive colors in the configured space.

Valid values:

--adjust-cell-width

All of the configurations behavior adjust various metrics determined by the font. The values can be integers (1, -1, etc.) or a percentage (20%, -15%, etc.). In each case, the values represent the amount to change the original value.

For example, a value of 1 increases the value by 1; it does not set it to literally 1. A value of 20% increases the value by 20%. And so on.

There is little to no validation on these values so the wrong values (e.g. -100%) can cause the terminal to be unusable. Use with caution and reason.

Some values are clamped to minimum or maximum values. This can make it appear that certain values are ignored. For example, many *-thickness adjustments cannot go below 1px.

adjust-cell-height has some additional behaviors to describe:

--adjust-cell-height

--adjust-font-baseline

Distance in pixels or percentage adjustment from the bottom of the cell to the text baseline. Increase to move baseline UP, decrease to move baseline DOWN. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-underline-position

Distance in pixels or percentage adjustment from the top of the cell to the top of the underline. Increase to move underline DOWN, decrease to move underline UP. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-underline-thickness

Thickness in pixels of the underline. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-strikethrough-position

Distance in pixels or percentage adjustment from the top of the cell to the top of the strikethrough. Increase to move strikethrough DOWN, decrease to move strikethrough UP. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-strikethrough-thickness

Thickness in pixels or percentage adjustment of the strikethrough. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-overline-position

Distance in pixels or percentage adjustment from the top of the cell to the top of the overline. Increase to move overline DOWN, decrease to move overline UP. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-overline-thickness

Thickness in pixels or percentage adjustment of the overline. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-cursor-thickness

Thickness in pixels or percentage adjustment of the bar cursor and outlined rect cursor. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-cursor-height

Height in pixels or percentage adjustment of the cursor. Currently applies to all cursor types: bar, rect, and outlined rect. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--adjust-box-thickness

Thickness in pixels or percentage adjustment of box drawing characters. See the notes about adjustments in adjust-cell-width.

--grapheme-width-method

The method to use for calculating the cell width of a grapheme cluster. The default value is unicode which uses the Unicode standard to determine grapheme width. This results in correct grapheme width but may result in cursor-desync issues with some programs (such as shells) that may use a legacy method such as wcswidth.

Valid values are:

If a running program explicitly enables terminal mode 2027, then unicode width will be forced regardless of this configuration. When mode 2027 is reset, this configuration will be used again.

This configuration can be changed at runtime but will not affect existing terminals. Only new terminals will use the new configuration.

--freetype-load-flags

FreeType load flags to enable. The format of this is a list of flags to enable separated by commas. If you prefix a flag with no- then it is disabled. If you omit a flag, its default value is used, so you must explicitly disable flags you don’t want. You can also use true or false to turn all flags on or off.

This configuration only applies to Ghostty builds that use FreeType. This is usually the case only for Linux builds. macOS uses CoreText and does not have an equivalent configuration.

Available flags:

Example: hinting, no-hinting, force-autohint, no-force-autohint

--theme

A theme to use. This can be a built-in theme name, a custom theme name, or an absolute path to a custom theme file. Ghostty also supports specifying a different theme to use for light and dark mode. Each option is documented below.

If the theme is an absolute pathname, Ghostty will attempt to load that file as a theme. If that file does not exist or is inaccessible, an error will be logged and no other directories will be searched.

If the theme is not an absolute pathname, two different directories will be searched for a file name that matches the theme. This is case sensitive on systems with case-sensitive filesystems. It is an error for a theme name to include path separators unless it is an absolute pathname.

The first directory is the themes subdirectory of your Ghostty configuration directory. This is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/themes or ~/.config/ghostty/themes.

The second directory is the themes subdirectory of the Ghostty resources directory. Ghostty ships with a multitude of themes that will be installed into this directory. On macOS, this list is in the Ghostty.app/Contents/Resources/ghostty/themes directory. On Linux, this list is in the share/ghostty/themes directory (wherever you installed the Ghostty “share” directory.

To see a list of available themes, run ghostty +list-themes.

A theme file is simply another Ghostty configuration file. They share the same syntax and same configuration options. A theme can set any valid configuration option so please do not use a theme file from an untrusted source. The built-in themes are audited to only set safe configuration options.

Some options cannot be set within theme files. The reason these are not supported should be self-evident. A theme file cannot set theme or config-file. At the time of writing this, Ghostty will not show any warnings or errors if you set these options in a theme file but they will be silently ignored.

Any additional colors specified via background, foreground, palette, etc. will override the colors specified in the theme.

To specify a different theme for light and dark mode, use the following syntax: light:theme-name,dark:theme-name. For example: light:rose-pine-dawn,dark:rose-pine. Whitespace around all values are trimmed and order of light and dark does not matter. Both light and dark must be specified in this form. In this form, the theme used will be based on the current desktop environment theme.

There are some known bugs with light/dark mode theming. These will be fixed in a future update:

--background

Background color for the window. Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--foreground

Foreground color for the window. Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--selection-foreground

The foreground and background color for selection. If this is not set, then the selection color is just the inverted window background and foreground (note: not to be confused with the cell bg/fg). Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--selection-background

--selection-invert-fg-bg

Swap the foreground and background colors of cells for selection. This option overrides the selection-foreground and selection-background options.

If you select across cells with differing foregrounds and backgrounds, the selection color will vary across the selection.

--selection-clear-on-typing

Whether to clear selected text when typing. This defaults to true. This is typical behavior for most terminal emulators as well as text input fields. If you set this to false, then the selected text will not be cleared when typing.

“Typing” is specifically defined as any non-modifier (shift, control, alt, etc.) keypress that produces data to be sent to the application running within the terminal (e.g. the shell). Additionally, selection is cleared when any preedit or composition state is started (e.g. when typing languages such as Japanese).

If this is false, then the selection can still be manually cleared by clicking once or by pressing escape.

--minimum-contrast

The minimum contrast ratio between the foreground and background colors. The contrast ratio is a value between 1 and 21. A value of 1 allows for no contrast (e.g. black on black). This value is the contrast ratio as defined by the WCAG 2.0 specification.

If you want to avoid invisible text (same color as background), a value of 1.1 is a good value. If you want to avoid text that is difficult to read, a value of 3 or higher is a good value. The higher the value, the more likely that text will become black or white.

This value does not apply to Emoji or images.

--palette

Color palette for the 256 color form that many terminal applications use. The syntax of this configuration is N=COLOR where N is 0 to 255 (for the 256 colors in the terminal color table) and COLOR is a typical RGB color code such as #AABBCC or AABBCC, or a named X11 color.

The palette index can be in decimal, binary, octal, or hexadecimal. Decimal is assumed unless a prefix is used: 0b for binary, 0o for octal, and 0x for hexadecimal.

For definitions on the color indices and what they canonically map to, see this cheat sheet.

--cursor-color

The color of the cursor. If this is not set, a default will be chosen. Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--cursor-invert-fg-bg

Swap the foreground and background colors of the cell under the cursor. This option overrides the cursor-color and cursor-text options.

--cursor-opacity

The opacity level (opposite of transparency) of the cursor. A value of 1 is fully opaque and a value of 0 is fully transparent. A value less than 0 or greater than 1 will be clamped to the nearest valid value. Note that a sufficiently small value such as 0.3 may be effectively invisible and may make it difficult to find the cursor.

--cursor-style

The style of the cursor. This sets the default style. A running program can still request an explicit cursor style using escape sequences (such as CSI q). Shell configurations will often request specific cursor styles.

Note that shell integration will automatically set the cursor to a bar at a prompt, regardless of this configuration. You can disable that behavior by specifying shell-integration-features = no-cursor or disabling shell integration entirely.

Valid values are:

--cursor-style-blink

Sets the default blinking state of the cursor. This is just the default state; running programs may override the cursor style using DECSCUSR (CSI q).

If this is not set, the cursor blinks by default. Note that this is not the same as a “true” value, as noted below.

If this is not set at all (null), then Ghostty will respect DEC Mode 12 (AT&T cursor blink) as an alternate approach to turning blinking on/off. If this is set to any value other than null, DEC mode 12 will be ignored but DECSCUSR will still be respected.

Valid values are:

--cursor-text

The color of the text under the cursor. If this is not set, a default will be chosen. Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--cursor-click-to-move

Enables the ability to move the cursor at prompts by using alt+click on Linux and option+click on macOS.

This feature requires shell integration (specifically prompt marking via OSC 133) and only works in primary screen mode. Alternate screen applications like vim usually have their own version of this feature but this configuration doesn’t control that.

It should be noted that this feature works by translating your desired position into a series of synthetic arrow key movements, so some weird behavior around edge cases are to be expected. This is unfortunately how this feature is implemented across terminals because there isn’t any other way to implement it.

--mouse-hide-while-typing

Hide the mouse immediately when typing. The mouse becomes visible again when the mouse is used (button, movement, etc.). Platform-specific behavior may dictate other scenarios where the mouse is shown. For example on macOS, the mouse is shown again when a new window, tab, or split is created.

--mouse-shift-capture

Determines whether running programs can detect the shift key pressed with a mouse click. Typically, the shift key is used to extend mouse selection.

The default value of false means that the shift key is not sent with the mouse protocol and will extend the selection. This value can be conditionally overridden by the running program with the XTSHIFTESCAPE sequence.

The value true means that the shift key is sent with the mouse protocol but the running program can override this behavior with XTSHIFTESCAPE.

The value never is the same as false but the running program cannot override this behavior with XTSHIFTESCAPE. The value always is the same as true but the running program cannot override this behavior with XTSHIFTESCAPE.

If you always want shift to extend mouse selection even if the program requests otherwise, set this to never.

Valid values are:

--mouse-scroll-multiplier

Multiplier for scrolling distance with the mouse wheel. Any value less than 0.01 or greater than 10,000 will be clamped to the nearest valid value.

A value of “3” (default) scrolls 3 lines per tick.

--background-opacity

The opacity level (opposite of transparency) of the background. A value of 1 is fully opaque and a value of 0 is fully transparent. A value less than 0 or greater than 1 will be clamped to the nearest valid value.

On macOS, background opacity is disabled when the terminal enters native fullscreen. This is because the background becomes gray and it can cause widgets to show through which isn’t generally desirable.

On macOS, changing this configuration requires restarting Ghostty completely.

--background-blur

Whether to blur the background when background-opacity is less than 1.

Valid values are:

Supported on macOS and on some Linux desktop environments, including:

Warning: the exact blur intensity is ignored under KDE Plasma, and setting this setting to either true or any positive blur intensity value would achieve the same effect. The reason is that KWin, the window compositor powering Plasma, only has one global blur setting and does not allow applications to specify individual blur settings.

To configure KWin’s global blur setting, open System Settings and go to “Apps & Windows” > “Window Management” > “Desktop Effects” and select the “Blur” plugin. If disabled, enable it by ticking the checkbox to the left. Then click on the “Configure” button and there will be two sliders that allow you to set background blur and noise intensities for all apps, including Ghostty.

All other Linux desktop environments are as of now unsupported. Users may need to set environment-specific settings and/or install third-party plugins in order to support background blur, as there isn’t a unified interface for doing so.

--unfocused-split-opacity

The opacity level (opposite of transparency) of an unfocused split. Unfocused splits by default are slightly faded out to make it easier to see which split is focused. To disable this feature, set this value to 1.

A value of 1 is fully opaque and a value of 0 is fully transparent. Because “0” is not useful (it makes the window look very weird), the minimum value is 0.15. This value still looks weird but you can at least see what’s going on. A value outside of the range 0.15 to 1 will be clamped to the nearest valid value.

--unfocused-split-fill

The color to dim the unfocused split. Unfocused splits are dimmed by rendering a semi-transparent rectangle over the split. This sets the color of that rectangle and can be used to carefully control the dimming effect.

This will default to the background color.

Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--split-divider-color

The color of the split divider. If this is not set, a default will be chosen. Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--command

The command to run, usually a shell. If this is not an absolute path, it’ll be looked up in the PATH. If this is not set, a default will be looked up from your system. The rules for the default lookup are:

This can contain additional arguments to run the command with. If additional arguments are provided, the command will be executed using /bin/sh -c to offload shell argument expansion.

To avoid shell expansion altogether, prefix the command with direct:, e.g. direct:nvim foo. This will avoid the roundtrip to /bin/sh but will also not support any shell parsing such as arguments with spaces, filepaths with ~, globs, etc.

You can also explicitly prefix the command with shell: to always wrap the command in a shell. This can be used to ensure our heuristics to choose the right mode are not used in case they are wrong.

This command will be used for all new terminal surfaces, i.e. new windows, tabs, etc. If you want to run a command only for the first terminal surface created when Ghostty starts, use the initial-command configuration.

Ghostty supports the common -e flag for executing a command with arguments. For example, ghostty -e fish --with --custom --args. This flag sets the initial-command configuration, see that for more information.

--initial-command

This is the same as “command”, but only applies to the first terminal surface created when Ghostty starts. Subsequent terminal surfaces will use the command configuration.

After the first terminal surface is created (or closed), there is no way to run this initial command again automatically. As such, setting this at runtime works but will only affect the next terminal surface if it is the first one ever created.

If you’re using the ghostty CLI there is also a shortcut to set this with arguments directly: you can use the -e flag. For example: ghostty -e fish --with --custom --args. The -e flag automatically forces some other behaviors as well:

--env

Extra environment variables to pass to commands launched in a terminal surface. The format is env=KEY=VALUE.

env = foo=bar env = bar=baz

Setting env to an empty string will reset the entire map to default (empty).

env =

Setting a key to an empty string will remove that particular key and corresponding value from the map.

env = foo=bar env = foo=

will result in foo not being passed to the launched commands.

Setting a key multiple times will overwrite previous entries.

env = foo=bar env = foo=baz

will result in foo=baz being passed to the launched commands.

These environment variables will override any existing environment variables set by Ghostty. For example, if you set GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR then the value you set here will override the value Ghostty typically automatically injects.

These environment variables will not be passed to commands run by Ghostty for other purposes, like open or xdg-open used to open URLs in your browser.

--wait-after-command

If true, keep the terminal open after the command exits. Normally, the terminal window closes when the running command (such as a shell) exits. With this true, the terminal window will stay open until any keypress is received.

This is primarily useful for scripts or debugging.

--abnormal-command-exit-runtime

The number of milliseconds of runtime below which we consider a process exit to be abnormal. This is used to show an error message when the process exits too quickly.

On Linux, this must be paired with a non-zero exit code. On macOS, we allow any exit code because of the way shell processes are launched via the login command.

--scrollback-limit

The size of the scrollback buffer in bytes. This also includes the active screen. No matter what this is set to, enough memory will always be allocated for the visible screen and anything leftover is the limit for the scrollback.

When this limit is reached, the oldest lines are removed from the scrollback.

Scrollback currently exists completely in memory. This means that the larger this value, the larger potential memory usage. Scrollback is allocated lazily up to this limit, so if you set this to a very large value, it will not immediately consume a lot of memory.

This size is per terminal surface, not for the entire application.

It is not currently possible to set an unlimited scrollback buffer. This is a future planned feature.

This can be changed at runtime but will only affect new terminal surfaces.

--link

Match a regular expression against the terminal text and associate clicking it with an action. This can be used to match URLs, file paths, etc. Actions can be opening using the system opener (e.g. open or xdg-open) or executing any arbitrary binding action.

Links that are configured earlier take precedence over links that are configured later.

A default link that matches a URL and opens it in the system opener always exists. This can be disabled using link-url.

TODO: This can’t currently be set!

--link-url

Enable URL matching. URLs are matched on hover with control (Linux) or command (macOS) pressed and open using the default system application for the linked URL.

The URL matcher is always lowest priority of any configured links (see link). If you want to customize URL matching, use link and disable this.

--maximize

Whether to start the window in a maximized state. This setting applies to new windows and does not apply to tabs, splits, etc. However, this setting will apply to all new windows, not just the first one.

--fullscreen

Start new windows in fullscreen. This setting applies to new windows and does not apply to tabs, splits, etc. However, this setting will apply to all new windows, not just the first one.

On macOS, this setting does not work if window-decoration is set to “false”, because native fullscreen on macOS requires window decorations to be set.

--title

The title Ghostty will use for the window. This will force the title of the window to be this title at all times and Ghostty will ignore any set title escape sequences programs (such as Neovim) may send.

If you want a blank title, set this to one or more spaces by quoting the value. For example, title = " ". This effectively hides the title. This is necessary because setting a blank value resets the title to the default value of the running program.

This configuration can be reloaded at runtime. If it is set, the title will update for all windows. If it is unset, the next title change escape sequence will be honored but previous changes will not retroactively be set. This latter case may require you to restart programs such as Neovim to get the new title.

--class

The setting that will change the application class value.

This controls the class field of the WM_CLASS X11 property (when running under X11), and the Wayland application ID (when running under Wayland).

Note that changing this value between invocations will create new, separate instances, of Ghostty when running with gtk-single-instance=true. See that option for more details.

The class name must follow the requirements defined in the GTK documentation.

The default is com.mitchellh.ghostty.

This only affects GTK builds.

--x11-instance-name

This controls the instance name field of the WM_CLASS X11 property when running under X11. It has no effect otherwise.

The default is ghostty.

This only affects GTK builds.

--working-directory

The directory to change to after starting the command.

This setting is secondary to the window-inherit-working-directory setting. If a previous Ghostty terminal exists in the same process, window-inherit-working-directory will take precedence. Otherwise, this setting will be used. Typically, this setting is used only for the first window.

The default is inherit except in special scenarios listed next. On macOS, if Ghostty can detect it is launched from launchd (double-clicked) or open, then it defaults to home. On Linux with GTK, if Ghostty can detect it was launched from a desktop launcher, then it defaults to home.

The value of this must be an absolute value or one of the special values below:

--keybind

Key bindings. The format is trigger=action. Duplicate triggers will overwrite previously set values. The list of actions is available in the documentation or using the ghostty +list-actions command.

Trigger: +-separated list of keys and modifiers. Example: ctrl+a, ctrl+shift+b, up.

If the key is a single Unicode codepoint, the trigger will match any presses that produce that codepoint. These are impacted by keyboard layouts. For example, a will match the a key on a QWERTY keyboard, but will match the q key on a AZERTY keyboard (assuming US physical layout).

For Unicode codepoints, matching is done by comparing the set of modifiers with the unmodified codepoint. The unmodified codepoint is sometimes called an “unshifted character” in other software, but all modifiers are considered, not only shift. For example, ctrl+a will match a but not ctrl+shift+a (which is A on a US keyboard).

Further, codepoint matching is case-insensitive and the unmodified codepoint is always case folded for comparison. As a result, ctrl+A configured will match when ctrl+a is pressed. Note that this means some key combinations are impossible depending on keyboard layout. For example, ctrl+_ is impossible on a US keyboard because _ is shift+- and ctrl+shift+- is not equal to ctrl+_ (because the modifiers don’t match!). More details on impossible key combinations can be found at this excellent source written by Qt developers: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qkeysequence.html#keyboard-layout-issues

Physical key codes can be specified by using any of the key codes as specified by the W3C specification. For example, KeyA will match the physical a key on a US standard keyboard regardless of the keyboard layout. These are case-sensitive.

For aesthetic reasons, the w3c codes also support snake case. For example, key_a is equivalent to KeyA. The only exceptions are function keys, e.g. F1 is f1 (no underscore). This is a consequence of our internal code using snake case but is purposely supported and tested so it is safe to use. It allows an all-lowercase binding which I find more aesthetically pleasing.

Function keys such as insert, up, f5, etc. are also specified using the keys as specified by the previously linked W3C specification.

Physical keys always match with a higher priority than Unicode codepoints, so if you specify both a and KeyA, the physical key will always be used regardless of what order they are configured.

Valid modifiers are shift, ctrl (alias: control), alt (alias: opt, option), and super (alias: cmd, command). You may use the modifier or the alias. When debugging keybinds, the non-aliased modifier will always be used in output.

Note: The fn or “globe” key on keyboards are not supported as a modifier. This is a limitation of the operating systems and GUI toolkits that Ghostty uses.

Some additional notes for triggers:

You may also specify multiple triggers separated by > to require a sequence of triggers to activate the action. For example, ctrl+a>n=new_window will only trigger the new_window action if the user presses ctrl+a followed separately by n. In other software, this is sometimes called a leader key, a key chord, a key table, etc. There is no hardcoded limit on the number of parts in a sequence.

Warning: If you define a sequence as a CLI argument to ghostty, you probably have to quote the keybind since > is a special character in most shells. Example: ghostty –keybind=‘ctrl+a>n=new_window’

A trigger sequence has some special handling:

Action is the action to take when the trigger is satisfied. It takes the format action or action:param. The latter form is only valid if the action requires a parameter.

Some notes for the action:

There are some additional special values that can be specified for keybind:

The keybind trigger can be prefixed with some special values to change the behavior of the keybind. These are:

Keybind triggers are not unique per prefix combination. For example, ctrl+a and global:ctrl+a are not two separate keybinds. The keybind set later will overwrite the keybind set earlier. In this case, the global: keybind will be used.

Multiple prefixes can be specified. For example, global:unconsumed:ctrl+a=reload_config will make the keybind global and not consume the input to reload the config.

Note: global: is only supported on macOS and certain Linux platforms.

On macOS, this feature requires accessibility permissions to be granted to Ghostty. When a global: keybind is specified and Ghostty is launched or reloaded, Ghostty will attempt to request these permissions. If the permissions are not granted, the keybind will not work. On macOS, you can find these permissions in System Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Accessibility.

On Linux, you need a desktop environment that implements the Global Shortcuts protocol as a part of its XDG desktop protocol implementation. Desktop environments that are known to support (or not support) global shortcuts include:

--window-padding-x

Horizontal window padding. This applies padding between the terminal cells and the left and right window borders. The value is in points, meaning that it will be scaled appropriately for screen DPI.

If this value is set too large, the screen will render nothing, because the grid will be completely squished by the padding. It is up to you as the user to pick a reasonable value. If you pick an unreasonable value, a warning will appear in the logs.

Changing this configuration at runtime will only affect new terminals, i.e. new windows, tabs, etc.

To set a different left and right padding, specify two numerical values separated by a comma. For example, window-padding-x = 2,4 will set the left padding to 2 and the right padding to 4. If you want to set both paddings to the same value, you can use a single value. For example, window-padding-x = 2 will set both paddings to 2.

--window-padding-y

Vertical window padding. This applies padding between the terminal cells and the top and bottom window borders. The value is in points, meaning that it will be scaled appropriately for screen DPI.

If this value is set too large, the screen will render nothing, because the grid will be completely squished by the padding. It is up to you as the user to pick a reasonable value. If you pick an unreasonable value, a warning will appear in the logs.

Changing this configuration at runtime will only affect new terminals, i.e. new windows, tabs, etc.

To set a different top and bottom padding, specify two numerical values separated by a comma. For example, window-padding-y = 2,4 will set the top padding to 2 and the bottom padding to 4. If you want to set both paddings to the same value, you can use a single value. For example, window-padding-y = 2 will set both paddings to 2.

--window-padding-balance

The viewport dimensions are usually not perfectly divisible by the cell size. In this case, some extra padding on the end of a column and the bottom of the final row may exist. If this is true, then this extra padding is automatically balanced between all four edges to minimize imbalance on one side. If this is false, the top left grid cell will always hug the edge with zero padding other than what may be specified with the other window-padding options.

If other window-padding fields are set and this is true, this will still apply. The other padding is applied first and may affect how many grid cells actually exist, and this is applied last in order to balance the padding given a certain viewport size and grid cell size.

--window-padding-color

The color of the padding area of the window. Valid values are:

The “extend” value will be disabled in certain scenarios. On primary screen applications (e.g. not something like Neovim), the color will not be extended vertically if any of the following are true:

--window-vsync

Synchronize rendering with the screen refresh rate. If true, this will minimize tearing and align redraws with the screen but may cause input latency. If false, this will maximize redraw frequency but may cause tearing, and under heavy load may use more CPU and power.

This defaults to true because out-of-sync rendering on macOS can cause kernel panics (macOS 14.4+) and performance issues for external displays over some hardware such as DisplayLink. If you want to minimize input latency, set this to false with the known aforementioned risks.

Changing this value at runtime will only affect new terminals.

This setting is only supported currently on macOS.

--window-inherit-working-directory

If true, new windows and tabs will inherit the working directory of the previously focused window. If no window was previously focused, the default working directory will be used (the working-directory option).

--window-inherit-font-size

If true, new windows and tabs will inherit the font size of the previously focused window. If no window was previously focused, the default font size will be used. If this is false, the default font size specified in the configuration font-size will be used.

--window-decoration

Configure a preference for window decorations. This setting specifies a preference; the actual OS, desktop environment, window manager, etc. may override this preference. Ghostty will do its best to respect this preference but it may not always be possible.

Valid values:

The default value is auto.

For the sake of backwards compatibility and convenience, this setting also accepts boolean true and false values. If set to true, this is equivalent to auto. If set to false, this is equivalent to none. This is convenient for users who live primarily on systems that don’t differentiate between client and server-side decorations (e.g. macOS and Windows).

The “toggle_window_decorations” keybind action can be used to create a keybinding to toggle this setting at runtime.

macOS: To hide the titlebar without removing the native window borders or rounded corners, use macos-titlebar-style = hidden instead.

--window-title-font-family

The font that will be used for the application’s window and tab titles.

If this setting is left unset, the system default font will be used.

Note: any font available on the system may be used, this font is not required to be a fixed-width font.

--window-subtitle

The text that will be displayed in the subtitle of the window. Valid values:

This feature is only supported on GTK.

--window-theme

The theme to use for the windows. Valid values:

On macOS, if macos-titlebar-style is “tabs”, the window theme will be automatically set based on the luminosity of the terminal background color. This only applies to terminal windows. This setting will still apply to non-terminal windows within Ghostty.

This is currently only supported on macOS and Linux.

--window-colorspace

The color space to use when interpreting terminal colors. “Terminal colors” refers to colors specified in your configuration and colors produced by direct-color SGR sequences.

Valid values:

This setting is currently only supported on macOS.

--window-height

The initial window size. This size is in terminal grid cells by default. Both values must be set to take effect. If only one value is set, it is ignored.

We don’t currently support specifying a size in pixels but a future change can enable that. If this isn’t specified, the app runtime will determine some default size.

Note that the window manager may put limits on the size or override the size. For example, a tiling window manager may force the window to be a certain size to fit within the grid. There is nothing Ghostty will do about this, but it will make an effort.

Sizes larger than the screen size will be clamped to the screen size. This can be used to create a maximized-by-default window size.

This will not affect new tabs, splits, or other nested terminal elements. This only affects the initial window size of any new window. Changing this value will not affect the size of the window after it has been created. This is only used for the initial size.

BUG: On Linux with GTK, the calculated window size will not properly take into account window decorations. As a result, the grid dimensions will not exactly match this configuration. If window decorations are disabled (see window-decoration), then this will work as expected.

Windows smaller than 10 wide by 4 high are not allowed.

--window-width

--window-position-x

The starting window position. This position is in pixels and is relative to the top-left corner of the primary monitor. Both values must be set to take effect. If only one value is set, it is ignored.

Note that the window manager may put limits on the position or override the position. For example, a tiling window manager may force the window to be a certain position to fit within the grid. There is nothing Ghostty will do about this, but it will make an effort.

Also note that negative values are also up to the operating system and window manager. Some window managers may not allow windows to be placed off-screen.

Invalid positions are runtime-specific, but generally the positions are clamped to the nearest valid position.

On macOS, the window position is relative to the top-left corner of the visible screen area. This means that if the menu bar is visible, the window will be placed below the menu bar.

Note: this is only supported on macOS and Linux GLFW builds. The GTK runtime does not support setting the window position, as windows are only allowed position themselves in X11 and not Wayland.

--window-position-y

--window-save-state

Whether to enable saving and restoring window state. Window state includes their position, size, tabs, splits, etc. Some window state requires shell integration, such as preserving working directories. See shell-integration for more information.

There are three valid values for this configuration:

If you change this value to never while Ghostty is not running, the next Ghostty launch will NOT restore the window state.

If you change this value to default while Ghostty is not running and the previous exit saved state, the next Ghostty launch will still restore the window state. This is because Ghostty cannot know if the previous exit was due to a forced save or not (macOS doesn’t provide this information).

If you change this value so that window state is saved while Ghostty is not running, the previous window state will not be restored because Ghostty only saves state on exit if this is enabled.

The default value is default.

This is currently only supported on macOS. This has no effect on Linux.

--window-step-resize

Resize the window in discrete increments of the focused surface’s cell size. If this is disabled, surfaces are resized in pixel increments. Currently only supported on macOS.

--window-new-tab-position

The position where new tabs are created. Valid values:

--window-titlebar-background

Background color for the window titlebar. This only takes effect if window-theme is set to ghostty. Currently only supported in the GTK app runtime.

Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--window-titlebar-foreground

Foreground color for the window titlebar. This only takes effect if window-theme is set to ghostty. Currently only supported in the GTK app runtime.

Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--resize-overlay

This controls when resize overlays are shown. Resize overlays are a transient popup that shows the size of the terminal while the surfaces are being resized. The possible options are:

The default is after-first.

--resize-overlay-position

If resize overlays are enabled, this controls the position of the overlay. The possible options are:

The default is center.

--resize-overlay-duration

If resize overlays are enabled, this controls how long the overlay is visible on the screen before it is hidden. The default is ¾ of a second or 750 ms.

The duration is specified as a series of numbers followed by time units. Whitespace is allowed between numbers and units. Each number and unit will be added together to form the total duration.

The allowed time units are as follows:

Examples: * 1h30m * 45s

Units can be repeated and will be added together. This means that 1h1h is equivalent to 2h. This is confusing and should be avoided. A future update may disallow this.

The maximum value is 584y 49w 23h 34m 33s 709ms 551µs 615ns. Any value larger than this will be clamped to the maximum value.

--focus-follows-mouse

If true, when there are multiple split panes, the mouse selects the pane that is focused. This only applies to the currently focused window; e.g. mousing over a split in an unfocused window will not focus that split and bring the window to front.

Default is false.

--clipboard-read

Whether to allow programs running in the terminal to read/write to the system clipboard (OSC 52, for googling). The default is to allow clipboard reading after prompting the user and allow writing unconditionally.

Valid values are:

--clipboard-write

--clipboard-trim-trailing-spaces

Trims trailing whitespace on data that is copied to the clipboard. This does not affect data sent to the clipboard via clipboard-write.

--clipboard-paste-protection

Require confirmation before pasting text that appears unsafe. This helps prevent a “copy/paste attack” where a user may accidentally execute unsafe commands by pasting text with newlines.

--clipboard-paste-bracketed-safe

If true, bracketed pastes will be considered safe. By default, bracketed pastes are considered safe. “Bracketed” pastes are pastes while the running program has bracketed paste mode enabled (a setting set by the running program, not the terminal emulator).

--title-report

Enables or disabled title reporting (CSI 21 t). This escape sequence allows the running program to query the terminal title. This is a common security issue and is disabled by default.

Warning: This can expose sensitive information at best and enable arbitrary code execution at worst (with a maliciously crafted title and a minor amount of user interaction).

--image-storage-limit

The total amount of bytes that can be used for image data (e.g. the Kitty image protocol) per terminal screen. The maximum value is 4,294,967,295 (4GiB). The default is 320MB. If this is set to zero, then all image protocols will be disabled.

This value is separate for primary and alternate screens so the effective limit per surface is double.

--copy-on-select

Whether to automatically copy selected text to the clipboard. true will prefer to copy to the selection clipboard, otherwise it will copy to the system clipboard.

The value clipboard will always copy text to the selection clipboard as well as the system clipboard.

Middle-click paste will always use the selection clipboard. Middle-click paste is always enabled even if this is false.

The default value is true on Linux and macOS.

--click-repeat-interval

The time in milliseconds between clicks to consider a click a repeat (double, triple, etc.) or an entirely new single click. A value of zero will use a platform-specific default. The default on macOS is determined by the OS settings. On every other platform it is 500ms.

--config-file

Additional configuration files to read. This configuration can be repeated to read multiple configuration files. Configuration files themselves can load more configuration files. Paths are relative to the file containing the config-file directive. For command-line arguments, paths are relative to the current working directory.

Prepend a ? character to the file path to suppress errors if the file does not exist. If you want to include a file that begins with a literal ? character, surround the file path in double quotes (“).

Cycles are not allowed. If a cycle is detected, an error will be logged and the configuration file will be ignored.

Configuration files are loaded after the configuration they’re defined within in the order they’re defined. THIS IS A VERY SUBTLE BUT IMPORTANT POINT. To put it another way: configuration files do not take effect until after the entire configuration is loaded. For example, in the configuration below:

config-file = "foo"
a = 1

If “foo” contains a = 2, the final value of a will be 2, because foo is loaded after the configuration file that configures the nested config-file value.

--config-default-files

When this is true, the default configuration file paths will be loaded. The default configuration file paths are currently only the XDG config path ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/config).

If this is false, the default configuration paths will not be loaded. This is targeted directly at using Ghostty from the CLI in a way that minimizes external effects.

This is a CLI-only configuration. Setting this in a configuration file will have no effect. It is not an error, but it will not do anything. This configuration can only be set via CLI arguments.

--confirm-close-surface

Confirms that a surface should be closed before closing it.

This defaults to true. If set to false, surfaces will close without any confirmation. This can also be set to always, which will always confirm closing a surface, even if shell integration says a process isn’t running.

--quit-after-last-window-closed

Whether or not to quit after the last surface is closed.

This defaults to false on macOS since that is standard behavior for a macOS application. On Linux, this defaults to true since that is generally expected behavior.

On Linux, if this is true, Ghostty can delay quitting fully until a configurable amount of time has passed after the last window is closed. See the documentation of quit-after-last-window-closed-delay.

--quit-after-last-window-closed-delay

Controls how long Ghostty will stay running after the last open surface has been closed. This only has an effect if quit-after-last-window-closed is also set to true.

The minimum value for this configuration is 1s. Any values lower than this will be clamped to 1s.

The duration is specified as a series of numbers followed by time units. Whitespace is allowed between numbers and units. Each number and unit will be added together to form the total duration.

The allowed time units are as follows:

Examples: * 1h30m * 45s

Units can be repeated and will be added together. This means that 1h1h is equivalent to 2h. This is confusing and should be avoided. A future update may disallow this.

The maximum value is 584y 49w 23h 34m 33s 709ms 551µs 615ns. Any value larger than this will be clamped to the maximum value.

By default quit-after-last-window-closed-delay is unset and Ghostty will quit immediately after the last window is closed if quit-after-last-window-closed is true.

Only implemented on Linux.

--initial-window

This controls whether an initial window is created when Ghostty is run. Note that if quit-after-last-window-closed is true and quit-after-last-window-closed-delay is set, setting initial-window to false will mean that Ghostty will quit after the configured delay if no window is ever created. Only implemented on Linux and macOS.

--undo-timeout

The duration that undo operations remain available. After this time, the operation will be removed from the undo stack and cannot be undone.

The default value is 5 seconds.

This timeout applies per operation, meaning that if you perform multiple operations, each operation will have its own timeout. New operations do not reset the timeout of previous operations.

A timeout of zero will effectively disable undo operations. It is not possible to set an infinite timeout, but you can set a very large timeout to effectively disable the timeout (on the order of years). This is highly discouraged, as it will cause the undo stack to grow indefinitely, memory usage to grow unbounded, and terminal sessions to never actually quit.

The duration is specified as a series of numbers followed by time units. Whitespace is allowed between numbers and units. Each number and unit will be added together to form the total duration.

The allowed time units are as follows:

Examples: * 1h30m * 45s

Units can be repeated and will be added together. This means that 1h1h is equivalent to 2h. This is confusing and should be avoided. A future update may disallow this.

This configuration is only supported on macOS. Linux doesn’t support undo operations at all so this configuration has no effect.

--quick-terminal-position

The position of the “quick” terminal window. To learn more about the quick terminal, see the documentation for the toggle_quick_terminal binding action.

Valid values are:

On macOS, changing this configuration requires restarting Ghostty completely.

Note: There is no default keybind for toggling the quick terminal. To enable this feature, bind the toggle_quick_terminal action to a key.

--quick-terminal-size

The size of the quick terminal.

The size can be specified either as a percentage of the screen dimensions (height/width), or as an absolute size in pixels. Percentage values are suffixed with % (e.g. 20%) while pixel values are suffixed with px (e.g. 300px). A bare value without a suffix is a config error.

When only one size is specified, the size parameter affects the size of the quick terminal on its primary axis, which depends on its position: height for quick terminals placed on the top or bottom, and width for left or right. The primary axis of a centered quick terminal depends on the monitor’s orientation: height when on a landscape monitor, and width when on a portrait monitor.

The secondary axis would be maximized for non-center positioned quick terminals unless another size parameter is specified, separated from the first by a comma (,). Percentage and pixel sizes can be mixed together: for instance, a size of 50%,500px for a top-positioned quick terminal would be half a screen tall, and 500 pixels wide.

--quick-terminal-screen

The screen where the quick terminal should show up.

Valid values are:

The default value is main because this is the recommended screen by the operating system.

Only implemented on macOS.

--quick-terminal-animation-duration

Duration (in seconds) of the quick terminal enter and exit animation. Set it to 0 to disable animation completely. This can be changed at runtime.

Only implemented on macOS.

--quick-terminal-autohide

Automatically hide the quick terminal when focus shifts to another window. Set it to false for the quick terminal to remain open even when it loses focus.

Defaults to true on macOS and on false on Linux. This is because global shortcuts on Linux require system configuration and are considerably less accessible than on macOS, meaning that it is more preferable to keep the quick terminal open until the user has completed their task. This default may change in the future.

--quick-terminal-space-behavior

This configuration option determines the behavior of the quick terminal when switching between macOS spaces. macOS spaces are virtual desktops that can be manually created or are automatically created when an application is in full-screen mode.

Valid values are:

The default value is move.

Only implemented on macOS. On Linux the behavior is always equivalent to move.

--quick-terminal-keyboard-interactivity

Determines under which circumstances that the quick terminal should receive keyboard input. See the corresponding Wayland documentation for a more detailed explanation of the behavior of each option.

[!NOTE] The exact behavior of each option may differ significantly across compositors – experiment with them on your system to find one that suits your liking!

Valid values are:

Only has an effect on Linux Wayland. On macOS the behavior is always equivalent to on-demand.

--shell-integration

Whether to enable shell integration auto-injection or not. Shell integration greatly enhances the terminal experience by enabling a number of features:

Allowable values are:

The default value is detect.

--shell-integration-features

Shell integration features to enable. These require our shell integration to be loaded, either automatically via shell-integration or manually.

The format of this is a list of features to enable separated by commas. If you prefix a feature with no- then it is disabled. If you omit a feature, its default value is used, so you must explicitly disable features you don’t want. You can also use true or false to turn all features on or off.

Available features:

Example: cursor, no-cursor, sudo, no-sudo, title, no-title

--osc-color-report-format

Sets the reporting format for OSC sequences that request color information. Ghostty currently supports OSC 10 (foreground), OSC 11 (background), and OSC 4 (256 color palette) queries, and by default the reported values are scaled-up RGB values, where each component are 16 bits. This is how most terminals report these values. However, some legacy applications may require 8-bit, unscaled, components. We also support turning off reporting altogether. The components are lowercase hex values.

Allowable values are:

The default value is 16-bit.

--vt-kam-allowed

If true, allows the “KAM” mode (ANSI mode 2) to be used within the terminal. KAM disables keyboard input at the request of the application. This is not a common feature and is not recommended to be enabled. This will not be documented further because if you know you need KAM, you know. If you don’t know if you need KAM, you don’t need it.

--custom-shader

Custom shaders to run after the default shaders. This is a file path to a GLSL-syntax shader for all platforms.

Warning: Invalid shaders can cause Ghostty to become unusable such as by causing the window to be completely black. If this happens, you can unset this configuration to disable the shader.

On Linux, this requires OpenGL 4.2. Ghostty typically only requires OpenGL 3.3, but custom shaders push that requirement up to 4.2.

The shader API is identical to the Shadertoy API: you specify a mainImage function and the available uniforms match Shadertoy. The iChannel0 uniform is a texture containing the rendered terminal screen.

If the shader fails to compile, the shader will be ignored. Any errors related to shader compilation will not show up as configuration errors and only show up in the log, since shader compilation happens after configuration loading on the dedicated render thread. For interactive development, use shadertoy.com.

This can be repeated multiple times to load multiple shaders. The shaders will be run in the order they are specified.

Changing this value at runtime and reloading the configuration will only affect new windows, tabs, and splits.

--custom-shader-animation

If true (default), the focused terminal surface will run an animation loop when custom shaders are used. This uses slightly more CPU (generally less than 10%) but allows the shader to animate. This only runs if there are custom shaders and the terminal is focused.

If this is set to false, the terminal and custom shader will only render when the terminal is updated. This is more efficient but the shader will not animate.

This can also be set to always, which will always run the animation loop regardless of whether the terminal is focused or not. The animation loop will still only run when custom shaders are used. Note that this will use more CPU per terminal surface and can become quite expensive depending on the shader and your terminal usage.

This value can be changed at runtime and will affect all currently open terminals.

--bell-features

Bell features to enable if bell support is available in your runtime. Not all features are available on all runtimes. The format of this is a list of features to enable separated by commas. If you prefix a feature with no- then it is disabled. If you omit a feature, its default value is used.

Valid values are:

Example: audio, no-audio, system, no-system

--bell-audio-path

If audio is an enabled bell feature, this is a path to an audio file. If the path is not absolute, it is considered relative to the directory of the configuration file that it is referenced from, or from the current working directory if this is used as a CLI flag. The path may be prefixed with ~/ to reference the user’s home directory. (GTK only)

--bell-audio-volume

If audio is an enabled bell feature, this is the volume to play the audio file at (relative to the system volume). This is a floating point number ranging from 0.0 (silence) to 1.0 (as loud as possible). The default is 0.5. (GTK only)

--app-notifications

Control the in-app notifications that Ghostty shows.

On Linux (GTK), in-app notifications show up as toasts. Toasts appear overlaid on top of the terminal window. They are used to show information that is not critical but may be important.

Possible notifications are:

To specify a notification to enable, specify the name of the notification. To specify a notification to disable, prefix the name with no-. For example, to disable clipboard-copy, set this configuration to no-clipboard-copy. To enable it, set this configuration to clipboard-copy.

Multiple notifications can be enabled or disabled by separating them with a comma.

A value of “false” will disable all notifications. A value of “true” will enable all notifications.

This configuration only applies to GTK.

--macos-non-native-fullscreen

If anything other than false, fullscreen mode on macOS will not use the native fullscreen, but make the window fullscreen without animations and using a new space. It’s faster than the native fullscreen mode since it doesn’t use animations.

Important: tabs DO NOT WORK in this mode. Non-native fullscreen removes the titlebar and macOS native tabs require the titlebar. If you use tabs, you should not use this mode.

If you fullscreen a window with tabs, the currently focused tab will become fullscreen while the others will remain in a separate window in the background. You can switch to that window using normal window-switching keybindings such as command+tilde. When you exit fullscreen, the window will return to the tabbed state it was in before.

Allowable values are:

Changing this option at runtime works, but will only apply to the next time the window is made fullscreen. If a window is already fullscreen, it will retain the previous setting until fullscreen is exited.

--macos-window-buttons

Whether the window buttons in the macOS titlebar are visible. The window buttons are the colored buttons in the upper left corner of most macOS apps, also known as the traffic lights, that allow you to close, miniaturize, and zoom the window.

This setting has no effect when window-decoration = false or macos-titlebar-style = hidden, as the window buttons are always hidden in these modes.

Valid values are:

The default value is visible.

Changing this option at runtime only applies to new windows.

--macos-titlebar-style

The style of the macOS titlebar. Available values are: “native”, “transparent”, “tabs”, and “hidden”.

The “native” style uses the native macOS titlebar with zero customization. The titlebar will match your window theme (see window-theme).

The “transparent” style is the same as “native” but the titlebar will be transparent and allow your window background color to come through. This makes a more seamless window appearance but looks a little less typical for a macOS application and may not work well with all themes.

The “transparent” style will also update in real-time to dynamic changes to the window background color, e.g. via OSC 11. To make this more aesthetically pleasing, this only happens if the terminal is a window, tab, or split that borders the top of the window. This avoids a disjointed appearance where the titlebar color changes but all the topmost terminals don’t match.

The “tabs” style is a completely custom titlebar that integrates the tab bar into the titlebar. This titlebar always matches the background color of the terminal. There are some limitations to this style: On macOS 13 and below, saved window state will not restore tabs correctly. macOS 14 does not have this issue and any other macOS version has not been tested.

The “hidden” style hides the titlebar. Unlike window-decoration = false, however, it does not remove the frame from the window or cause it to have squared corners. Changing to or from this option at run-time may affect existing windows in buggy ways.

When “hidden”, the top titlebar area can no longer be used for dragging the window. To drag the window, you can use option+click on the resizable areas of the frame to drag the window. This is a standard macOS behavior and not something Ghostty enables.

The default value is “transparent”. This is an opinionated choice but its one I think is the most aesthetically pleasing and works in most cases.

Changing this option at runtime only applies to new windows.

--macos-titlebar-proxy-icon

Whether the proxy icon in the macOS titlebar is visible. The proxy icon is the icon that represents the folder of the current working directory. You can see this very clearly in the macOS built-in Terminal.app titlebar.

The proxy icon is only visible with the native macOS titlebar style.

Valid values are:

The default value is visible.

This setting can be changed at runtime and will affect all currently open windows but only after their working directory changes again. Therefore, to make this work after changing the setting, you must usually cd to a different directory, open a different file in an editor, etc.

--macos-option-as-alt

macOS doesn’t have a distinct “alt” key and instead has the “option” key which behaves slightly differently. On macOS by default, the option key plus a character will sometimes produce a Unicode character. For example, on US standard layouts option-b produces “∫”. This may be undesirable if you want to use “option” as an “alt” key for keybindings in terminal programs or shells.

This configuration lets you change the behavior so that option is treated as alt.

The default behavior (unset) will depend on your active keyboard layout. If your keyboard layout is one of the keyboard layouts listed below, then the default value is “true”. Otherwise, the default value is “false”. Keyboard layouts with a default value of “true” are:

Note that if an Option-sequence doesn’t produce a printable character, it will be treated as Alt regardless of this setting. (e.g. alt+ctrl+a).

Explicit values that can be set:

If true, the Option key will be treated as Alt. This makes terminal sequences expecting Alt to work properly, but will break Unicode input sequences on macOS if you use them via the Alt key.

You may set this to false to restore the macOS Alt key unicode sequences but this will break terminal sequences expecting Alt to work.

The values left or right enable this for the left or right Option key, respectively.

This does not work with GLFW builds.

--macos-window-shadow

Whether to enable the macOS window shadow. The default value is true. With some window managers and window transparency settings, you may find false more visually appealing.

--macos-hidden

If true, the macOS icon in the dock and app switcher will be hidden. This is mainly intended for those primarily using the quick-terminal mode.

Note that setting this to true means that keyboard layout changes will no longer be automatic.

Control whether macOS app is excluded from the dock and app switcher, a “hidden” state. This is mainly intended for those primarily using quick-terminal mode, but is a general configuration for any use case.

Available values:

Note: When the macOS application is hidden, keyboard layout changes will no longer be automatic. This is a limitation of macOS.

--macos-auto-secure-input

If true, Ghostty on macOS will automatically enable the “Secure Input” feature when it detects that a password prompt is being displayed.

“Secure Input” is a macOS security feature that prevents applications from reading keyboard events. This can always be enabled manually using the Ghostty > Secure Keyboard Entry menu item.

Note that automatic password prompt detection is based on heuristics and may not always work as expected. Specifically, it does not work over SSH connections, but there may be other cases where it also doesn’t work.

A reason to disable this feature is if you find that it is interfering with legitimate accessibility software (or software that uses the accessibility APIs), since secure input prevents any application from reading keyboard events.

--macos-secure-input-indication

If true, Ghostty will show a graphical indication when secure input is enabled. This indication is generally recommended to know when secure input is enabled.

Normally, secure input is only active when a password prompt is displayed or it is manually (and typically temporarily) enabled. However, if you always have secure input enabled, the indication can be distracting and you may want to disable it.

--macos-icon

Customize the macOS app icon.

This only affects the icon that appears in the dock, application switcher, etc. This does not affect the icon in Finder because that is controlled by a hardcoded value in the signed application bundle and can’t be changed at runtime. For more details on what exactly is affected, see the NSApplication.icon Apple documentation; that is the API that is being used to set the icon.

Valid values:

WARNING: The custom-style option is experimental. We may change the format of the custom styles in the future. We’re still finalizing the exact layers and customization options that will be available.

Other caveats:

--macos-icon-frame

The material to use for the frame of the macOS app icon.

Valid values:

Note: This configuration is required when macos-icon is set to custom-style.

--macos-icon-ghost-color

The color of the ghost in the macOS app icon.

Note: This configuration is required when macos-icon is set to custom-style.

Specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or a named X11 color.

--macos-icon-screen-color

The color of the screen in the macOS app icon.

The screen is a linear gradient so you can specify multiple colors that make up the gradient. Up to 64 comma-separated colors may be specified as either hex (#RRGGBB or RRGGBB) or as named X11 colors. The first color is the bottom of the gradient and the last color is the top of the gradient.

Note: This configuration is required when macos-icon is set to custom-style.

--linux-cgroup

Put every surface (tab, split, window) into a dedicated Linux cgroup.

This makes it so that resource management can be done on a per-surface granularity. For example, if a shell program is using too much memory, only that shell will be killed by the oom monitor instead of the entire Ghostty process. Similarly, if a shell program is using too much CPU, only that surface will be CPU-throttled.

This will cause startup times to be slower (a hundred milliseconds or so), so the default value is “single-instance.” In single-instance mode, only one instance of Ghostty is running (see gtk-single-instance) so the startup time is a one-time cost. Additionally, single instance Ghostty is much more likely to have many windows, tabs, etc. so cgroup isolation is a big benefit.

This feature requires systemd. If systemd is unavailable, cgroup initialization will fail. By default, this will not prevent Ghostty from working (see linux-cgroup-hard-fail).

Valid values are:

--linux-cgroup-memory-limit

Memory limit for any individual terminal process (tab, split, window, etc.) in bytes. If this is unset then no memory limit will be set.

Note that this sets the “memory.high” configuration for the memory controller, which is a soft limit. You should configure something like systemd-oom to handle killing processes that have too much memory pressure.

--linux-cgroup-processes-limit

Number of processes limit for any individual terminal process (tab, split, window, etc.). If this is unset then no limit will be set.

Note that this sets the “pids.max” configuration for the process number controller, which is a hard limit.

--linux-cgroup-hard-fail

If this is false, then any cgroup initialization (for linux-cgroup) will be allowed to fail and the failure is ignored. This is useful if you view cgroup isolation as a “nice to have” and not a critical resource management feature, because Ghostty startup will not fail if cgroup APIs fail.

If this is true, then any cgroup initialization failure will cause Ghostty to exit or new surfaces to not be created.

Note: This currently only affects cgroup initialization. Subprocesses must always be able to move themselves into an isolated cgroup.

--gtk-opengl-debug

Enable or disable GTK’s OpenGL debugging logs. The default is true for debug builds, false for all others.

--gtk-single-instance

If true, the Ghostty GTK application will run in single-instance mode: each new ghostty process launched will result in a new window if there is already a running process.

If false, each new ghostty process will launch a separate application.

The default value is desktop which will default to true if Ghostty detects that it was launched from the .desktop file such as an app launcher (like Gnome Shell) or by D-Bus activation. If Ghostty is launched from the command line, it will default to false.

Note that debug builds of Ghostty have a separate single-instance ID so you can test single instance without conflicting with release builds.

--gtk-titlebar

When enabled, the full GTK titlebar is displayed instead of your window manager’s simple titlebar. The behavior of this option will vary with your window manager.

This option does nothing when window-decoration is false or when running under macOS.

--gtk-tabs-location

Determines the side of the screen that the GTK tab bar will stick to. Top, bottom, and hidden are supported. The default is top.

When hidden is set, a tab button displaying the number of tabs will appear in the title bar. It has the ability to open a tab overview for displaying tabs. Alternatively, you can use the toggle_tab_overview action in a keybind if your window doesn’t have a title bar, or you can switch tabs with keybinds.

--gtk-titlebar-hide-when-maximized

If this is true, the titlebar will be hidden when the window is maximized, and shown when the titlebar is unmaximized. GTK only.

--gtk-toolbar-style

Determines the appearance of the top and bottom bars tab bar.

Valid values are:

--gtk-wide-tabs

If true (default), then the Ghostty GTK tabs will be “wide.” Wide tabs are the new typical Gnome style where tabs fill their available space. If you set this to false then tabs will only take up space they need, which is the old style.

--gtk-custom-css

Custom CSS files to be loaded.

GTK CSS documentation can be found at the following links:

Launch Ghostty with env GTK_DEBUG=interactive ghostty to tweak Ghostty’s CSS in real time using the GTK Inspector. Errors in your CSS files would also be reported in the terminal you started Ghostty from. See https://developer.gnome.org/documentation/tools/inspector.html for more information about the GTK Inspector.

This configuration can be repeated multiple times to load multiple files. Prepend a ? character to the file path to suppress errors if the file does not exist. If you want to include a file that begins with a literal ? character, surround the file path in double quotes (“). The file size limit for a single stylesheet is 5MiB.

--desktop-notifications

If true (default), applications running in the terminal can show desktop notifications using certain escape sequences such as OSC 9 or OSC 777.

--bold-is-bright

If true, the bold text will use the bright color palette.

--term

This will be used to set the TERM environment variable. HACK: We set this with an xterm prefix because vim uses that to enable key protocols (specifically this will enable modifyOtherKeys), among other features. An option exists in vim to modify this: :set keyprotocol=ghostty:kitty, however a bug in the implementation prevents it from working properly. https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/13211 fixes this.

--enquiry-response

String to send when we receive ENQ (0x05) from the command that we are running. Defaults to an empty string if not set.

--launched-from

The mechanism used to launch Ghostty. This should generally not be set by users, see the warning below.

WARNING: This is a low-level configuration that is not intended to be modified by users. All the values will be automatically detected as they are needed by Ghostty. This is only here in case our detection logic is incorrect for your environment or for developers who want to test Ghostty’s behavior in different, forced environments.

This is set using the standard no-[value], [value] syntax separated by commas. Example: “no-desktop,systemd”. Specific details about the available values are documented on LaunchProperties in the code. Since this isn’t intended to be modified by users, the documentation is lighter than the other configurations and users are expected to refer to the code for details.

--async-backend

Configures the low-level API to use for async IO, eventing, etc.

Most users should leave this set to auto. This will automatically detect scenarios where APIs may not be available (for example io_uring on certain hardened kernels) and fall back to a different API. However, if you want to force a specific backend for any reason, you can set this here.

Based on various benchmarks, we haven’t found a statistically significant difference between the backends with regards to memory, CPU, or latency. The choice of backend is more about compatibility and features.

Available options:

If the selected backend is not available on the platform, Ghostty will fall back to an automatically chosen backend that is available.

Changing this value requires a full application restart to take effect.

This is only supported on Linux, since this is the only platform where we have multiple options. On macOS, we always use kqueue.

--auto-update

Control the auto-update functionality of Ghostty. This is only supported on macOS currently, since Linux builds are distributed via package managers that are not centrally controlled by Ghostty.

Checking or downloading an update does not send any information to the project beyond standard network information mandated by the underlying protocols. To put it another way: Ghostty doesn’t explicitly add any tracking to the update process. The update process works by downloading information about the latest version and comparing it client-side to the current version.

Valid values are:

If unset, we defer to Sparkle’s default behavior, which respects the preference stored in the standard user defaults (defaults(1)).

Changing this value at runtime works after a small delay.

--auto-update-channel

The release channel to use for auto-updates.

The default value of this matches the release channel of the currently running Ghostty version. If you download a pre-release version of Ghostty then this will be set to tip and you will receive pre-release updates. If you download a stable version of Ghostty then this will be set to stable and you will receive stable updates.

Valid values are:

Changing this configuration requires a full restart of Ghostty to take effect.

This only works on macOS since only macOS has an auto-update feature.

FILES

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/config

Location of the default configuration file.

$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config

On macOS, location of the default configuration file. This location takes precedence over the XDG environment locations.

$LOCALAPPDATA/ghostty/config

On Windows, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, $LOCALAPPDATA will be searched for configuration files.

ENVIRONMENT

TERM

Defaults to xterm-ghostty. Can be configured with the term configuration option.

GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR

Where the Ghostty resources can be found.

XDG_CONFIG_HOME

Default location for configuration files.

$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty

MACOS ONLY default location for configuration files. This location takes precedence over the XDG environment locations.

LOCALAPPDATA

WINDOWS ONLY: alternate location to search for configuration files.

BUGS

See GitHub issues: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues

AUTHOR

Mitchell Hashimoto m@mitchellh.com Ghostty contributors https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/graphs/contributors

SEE ALSO

ghostty(5)