Automatic Bash shell integration works by starting Bash in POSIX mode and using the ENV environment variable to load our integration script (bash/ghostty.bash). This prevents Bash from loading its normal startup files, which becomes our script's responsibility (along with disabling POSIX mode).

Bash shell integration can also be sourced manually from bash/ghostty.bash. This also works for older versions of Bash.

# Ghostty shell integration for Bash. This must be at the top of your bashrc!
if [ -n "${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}" ]; then
    builtin source "${GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR}/shell-integration/bash/ghostty.bash"
fi

Note

The version of Bash distributed with macOS (/bin/bash) does not support automatic shell integration. You'll need to manually source the shell integration script (as shown above). You can also install a standard version of Bash from Homebrew or elsewhere and set it as your shell.

Elvish

For Elvish, $GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR/src/shell-integration contains an ./elvish/lib/ghostty-integration.elv file.

Elvish, on startup, searches for paths defined in XDG_DATA_DIRS variable for ./elvish/lib/*.elv files and imports them. They are thus made available for use as modules by way of use <filename>.

Ghostty launches Elvish, passing the environment with XDG_DATA_DIRSprepended with $GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR/src/shell-integration. It contains ./elvish/lib/ghostty-integration.elv. The user can then import it by use ghostty-integration every time after shell startup or autostart integration in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/elvish/rc.elv, which will run the integration routines.

If you decide to autostart ghostty-integration with rc.elv, you should detect whether the terminal is Ghostty or not. To do this, add this to the end of your rc.elv file:

if (eq $E:TERM "xterm-ghostty") {
  use ghostty-integration
}

The Elvish shell integration is supported by the community and is not officially supported by Ghostty. We distribute it for ease of access and use but do not provide support for it. If you experience issues with the Elvish shell integration, I welcome any contributions to fix them. Thank you!

Fish

For Fish, Ghostty prepends to the XDG_DATA_DIRS directory. Fish automatically loads configuration files in <XDG_DATA_DIR>/fish/vendor_conf.d/*.fish on startup, allowing us to automatically integrate with the shell. For details on the Fish startup process, see the Fish documentation.

Zsh

For zsh, Ghostty sets ZDOTDIR so that it loads our configuration from the zsh directory. The existing ZDOTDIR is retained so that after loading the Ghostty shell integration the normal Zsh loading sequence occurs.

if [[ -n $GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR ]]; then
  source "$GHOSTTY_RESOURCES_DIR"/shell-integration/zsh/ghostty-integration
fi

Shared Resources

The shared/ directory contains utilities available to all shell integrations:

ghostty-ssh-cache: A standalone script that manages the SSH terminfo host cache for the ssh-terminfo shell integration feature. This script handles cache file operations (list, clear, check, add) and is called by all shell integrations when ssh-terminfo is enabled. It is also called by the +list-ssh-cache and +clear-ssh-cache CLI actions, providing users with direct cache management capabilities.

The shared approach maintains separation of concerns by keeping shell-specific integration files independent of secondary logic.