f3d0c7c2ad
Fixes https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/4958
## Changes
1. Fixed documentation generation in `actions.mdx`:
- Fixed an issue where the last action's documentation was [not properly
generated](fe6c69263c/docs/config/keybind/reference.mdx (crash))
- Ensured all actions' documentation is correctly included in the output
2. Improved `ghostty +list-actions --docs` command output formatting:
- Grouped related actions together with shared documentation
- Added proper spacing between action groups
<details>
<summary>ghostty-dev +list-actions --docs</summary>
```
ignore:
Ignore this key combination, don't send it to the child process, just
black hole it.
unbind:
This action is used to flag that the binding should be removed from
the set. This should never exist in an active set and `set.put` has an
assertion to verify this.
csi:
Send a CSI sequence. The value should be the CSI sequence without the
CSI header (`ESC [` or `\x1b[`).
esc:
Send an `ESC` sequence.
text:
Send the given text. Uses Zig string literal syntax. This is currently
not validated. If the text is invalid (i.e. contains an invalid escape
sequence), the error will currently only show up in logs.
cursor_key:
Send data to the pty depending on whether cursor key mode is enabled
(`application`) or disabled (`normal`).
reset:
Reset the terminal. This can fix a lot of issues when a running
program puts the terminal into a broken state. This is equivalent to
when you type "reset" and press enter.
If you do this while in a TUI program such as vim, this may break
the program. If you do this while in a shell, you may have to press
enter after to get a new prompt.
copy_to_clipboard:
paste_from_clipboard:
paste_from_selection:
Copy and paste.
copy_url_to_clipboard:
Copy the URL under the cursor to the clipboard. If there is no
URL under the cursor, this does nothing.
increase_font_size:
decrease_font_size:
Increase/decrease the font size by a certain amount.
reset_font_size:
Reset the font size to the original configured size.
clear_screen:
Clear the screen. This also clears all scrollback.
select_all:
Select all text on the screen.
scroll_to_top:
scroll_to_bottom:
scroll_page_up:
scroll_page_down:
scroll_page_fractional:
scroll_page_lines:
Scroll the screen varying amounts.
adjust_selection:
Adjust an existing selection in a given direction. This action
does nothing if there is no active selection.
jump_to_prompt:
Jump the viewport forward or back by prompt. Positive number is the
number of prompts to jump forward, negative is backwards.
write_scrollback_file:
Write the entire scrollback into a temporary file. The action
determines what to do with the filepath. Valid values are:
- "paste": Paste the file path into the terminal.
- "open": Open the file in the default OS editor for text files.
The default OS editor is determined by using `open` on macOS
and `xdg-open` on Linux.
write_screen_file:
Same as write_scrollback_file but writes the full screen contents.
See write_scrollback_file for available values.
write_selection_file:
Same as write_scrollback_file but writes the selected text.
If there is no selected text this does nothing (it doesn't
even create an empty file). See write_scrollback_file for
available values.
new_window:
Open a new window. If the application isn't currently focused,
this will bring it to the front.
new_tab:
Open a new tab.
previous_tab:
Go to the previous tab.
next_tab:
Go to the next tab.
last_tab:
Go to the last tab (the one with the highest index)
goto_tab:
Go to the tab with the specific number, 1-indexed. If the tab number
is higher than the number of tabs, this will go to the last tab.
move_tab:
Moves a tab by a relative offset.
Adjusts the tab position based on `offset`. For example `move_tab:-1` for left, `move_tab:1` for right.
If the new position is out of bounds, it wraps around cyclically within the tab range.
toggle_tab_overview:
Toggle the tab overview.
This only works with libadwaita enabled currently.
new_split:
Create a new split in the given direction. The new split will appear in
the direction given. For example `new_split:up`. Valid values are left, right, up, down and auto.
goto_split:
Focus on a split in a given direction. For example `goto_split:up`.
Valid values are left, right, up, down, previous and next.
toggle_split_zoom:
zoom/unzoom the current split.
resize_split:
Resize the current split by moving the split divider in the given
direction. For example `resize_split:left,10`. The valid directions are up, down, left and right.
equalize_splits:
Equalize all splits in the current window
inspector:
Show, hide, or toggle the terminal inspector for the currently focused
terminal.
open_config:
Open the configuration file in the default OS editor. If your default OS
editor isn't configured then this will fail. Currently, any failures to
open the configuration will show up only in the logs.
reload_config:
Reload the configuration. The exact meaning depends on the app runtime
in use but this usually involves re-reading the configuration file
and applying any changes. Note that not all changes can be applied at
runtime.
close_surface:
Close the current "surface", whether that is a window, tab, split, etc.
This only closes ONE surface. This will trigger close confirmation as
configured.
close_tab:
Close the current tab, regardless of how many splits there may be.
This will trigger close confirmation as configured.
close_window:
Close the window, regardless of how many tabs or splits there may be.
This will trigger close confirmation as configured.
close_all_windows:
Close all windows. This will trigger close confirmation as configured.
This only works for macOS currently.
toggle_fullscreen:
Toggle fullscreen mode of window.
toggle_window_decorations:
Toggle window decorations on and off. This only works on Linux.
toggle_secure_input:
Toggle secure input mode on or off. This is used to prevent apps
that monitor input from seeing what you type. This is useful for
entering passwords or other sensitive information.
This applies to the entire application, not just the focused
terminal. You must toggle it off to disable it, or quit Ghostty.
This only works on macOS, since this is a system API on macOS.
toggle_quick_terminal:
Toggle the "quick" terminal. The quick terminal is a terminal that
appears on demand from a keybinding, often sliding in from a screen
edge such as the top. This is useful for quick access to a terminal
without having to open a new window or tab.
When the quick terminal loses focus, it disappears. The terminal state
is preserved between appearances, so you can always press the keybinding
to bring it back up.
To enable the quick terminally globally so that Ghostty doesn't
have to be focused, prefix your keybind with `global`. Example:
\```ini
keybind = global:cmd+grave_accent=toggle_quick_terminal
\```
The quick terminal has some limitations:
- It is a singleton; only one instance can exist at a time.
- It does not support tabs, but it does support splits.
- It will not be restored when the application is restarted
(for systems that support window restoration).
- It supports fullscreen, but fullscreen will always be a non-native
fullscreen (macos-non-native-fullscreen = true). This only applies
to the quick terminal window. This is a requirement due to how
the quick terminal is rendered.
See the various configurations for the quick terminal in the
configuration file to customize its behavior.
This currently only works on macOS.
toggle_visibility:
Show/hide all windows. If all windows become shown, we also ensure
Ghostty becomes focused. When hiding all windows, focus is yielded
to the next application as determined by the OS.
This currently only works on macOS.
quit:
Quit ghostty.
crash:
Crash ghostty in the desired thread for the focused surface.
WARNING: This is a hard crash (panic) and data can be lost.
The purpose of this action is to test crash handling. For some
users, it may be useful to test crash reporting functionality in
order to determine if it all works as expected.
The value determines the crash location:
- "main" - crash on the main (GUI) thread.
- "io" - crash on the IO thread for the focused surface.
- "render" - crash on the render thread for the focused surface.
```
</details>
## Testing
- Run `ghostty-dev +list-actions --docs` to verify the new output format
- Check generated _zig-out/share/ghostty/webdata/actions.mdx_ to ensure
all actions are properly documented
Ghostty
Fast, native, feature-rich terminal emulator pushing modern features.
About
·
Download
·
Documentation
·
Developing
About
Ghostty is a terminal emulator that differentiates itself by being fast, feature-rich, and native. While there are many excellent terminal emulators available, they all force you to choose between speed, features, or native UIs. Ghostty provides all three.
In all categories, I am not trying to claim that Ghostty is the best (i.e. the fastest, most feature-rich, or most native). But Ghostty is competitive in all three categories and Ghostty doesn't make you choose between them.
Ghostty also intends 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.
While aiming for this ambitious goal, our first step is to make Ghostty one of the best fully standards compliant terminal emulator, remaining compatible with all existing shells and software while supporting all of the latest terminal innovations in the ecosystem. You can use Ghostty as a drop-in replacement for your existing terminal emulator.
For more details, see About Ghostty.
Download
See the download page on the Ghostty website.
Documentation
See the documentation on the Ghostty website.
Roadmap and Status
The high-level ambitious plan for the project, in order:
| # | Step | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Standards-compliant terminal emulation | ✅ |
| 2 | Competitive performance | ✅ |
| 3 | Basic customizability -- fonts, bg colors, etc. | ✅ |
| 4 | Richer windowing features -- multi-window, tabbing, panes | ✅ |
| 5 | Native Platform Experiences (i.e. Mac Preference Panel) | ⚠️ |
| 6 | Cross-platform libghostty for Embeddable Terminals |
⚠️ |
| 7 | Windows Terminals (including PowerShell, Cmd, WSL) | ❌ |
| N | Fancy features (to be expanded upon later) | ❌ |
Additional details for each step in the big roadmap below:
Standards-Compliant Terminal Emulation
Ghostty implements enough control sequences to be used by hundreds of testers daily for over the past year. Further, we've done a comprehensive xterm audit comparing Ghostty's behavior to xterm and building a set of conformance test cases.
We believe Ghostty is one of the most compliant terminal emulators available.
Terminal behavior is partially a de jure standard (i.e. ECMA-48) but mostly a de facto standard as defined by popular terminal emulators worldwide. Ghostty takes the approach that our behavior is defined by (1) standards, if available, (2) xterm, if the feature exists, (3) other popular terminals, in that order. This defines what the Ghostty project views as a "standard."
Competitive Performance
We need better benchmarks to continuously verify this, but Ghostty is generally in the same performance category as the other highest performing terminal emulators.
For rendering, we have a multi-renderer architecture that uses OpenGL on Linux and Metal on macOS. As far as I'm aware, we're the only terminal emulator other than iTerm that uses Metal directly. And we're the only terminal emulator that has a Metal renderer that supports ligatures (iTerm uses a CPU renderer if ligatures are enabled). We can maintain around 60fps under heavy load and much more generally -- though the terminal is usually rendering much lower due to little screen changes.
For IO, we have a dedicated IO thread that maintains very little jitter
under heavy IO load (i.e. cat <big file>.txt). On benchmarks for IO,
we're usually within a small margin of other fast terminal emulators.
For example, reading a dump of plain text is 4x faster compared to iTerm and
Kitty, and 2x faster than Terminal.app. Alacritty is very fast but we're still
around the same speed (give or take) and our app experience is much more
feature rich.
Note
Despite being very fast, there is a lot of room for improvement here.
Richer Windowing Features
The Mac and Linux (build with GTK) apps support multi-window, tabbing, and splits.
Native Platform Experiences
Ghostty is a cross-platform terminal emulator but we don't aim for a least-common-denominator experience. There is a large, shared core written in Zig but we do a lot of platform-native things:
- The macOS app is a true SwiftUI-based application with all the things you would expect such as real windowing, menu bars, a settings GUI, etc.
- macOS uses a true Metal renderer with CoreText for font discovery.
- The Linux app is built with GTK.
There are more improvements to be made. The macOS settings window is still a work-in-progress. Similar improvements will follow with Linux.
Cross-platform libghostty for Embeddable Terminals
In addition to being a standalone terminal emulator, Ghostty is a
C-compatible library for embedding a fast, feature-rich terminal emulator
in any 3rd party project. This library is called libghostty.
This goal is not hypothetical! The macOS app is a libghostty consumer.
The macOS app is a native Swift app developed in Xcode and main() is
within Swift. The Swift app links to libghostty and uses the C API to
render terminals.
This step encompasses expanding libghostty support to more platforms
and more use cases. At the time of writing this, libghostty is very
Mac-centric -- particularly around rendering -- and we have work to do to
expand this to other platforms.
Crash Reports
Ghostty has a built-in crash reporter that will generate and save crash
reports to disk. The crash reports are saved to the $XDG_STATE_HOME/ghostty/crash
directory. If $XDG_STATE_HOME is not set, the default is ~/.local/state.
Crash reports are not automatically sent anywhere off your machine.
Crash reports are only generated the next time Ghostty is started after a crash. If Ghostty crashes and you want to generate a crash report, you must restart Ghostty at least once. You should see a message in the log that a crash report was generated.
Note
Use the
ghostty +crash-reportCLI command to get a list of available crash reports. A future version of Ghostty will make the contents of the crash reports more easily viewable through the CLI and GUI.
Crash reports end in the .ghosttycrash extension. The crash reports are in
Sentry envelope format. You can
upload these to your own Sentry account to view their contents, but the format
is also publicly documented so any other available tools can also be used.
The ghostty +crash-report CLI command can be used to list any crash reports.
A future version of Ghostty will show you the contents of the crash report
directly in the terminal.
To send the crash report to the Ghostty project, you can use the following CLI command using the Sentry CLI:
SENTRY_DSN=https://e914ee84fd895c4fe324afa3e53dac76@o4507352570920960.ingest.us.sentry.io/4507850923638784 sentry-cli send-envelope --raw <path to ghostty crash>
Warning
The crash report can contain sensitive information. The report doesn't purposely contain sensitive information, but it does contain the full stack memory of each thread at the time of the crash. This information is used to rebuild the stack trace but can also contain sensitive data depending when the crash occurred.
Developing Ghostty
See the documentation on the Ghostty website for
building Ghostty from source.
For development, omit the -Doptimize flag to build a debug build.
On Linux or macOS, you can use zig build -Dapp-runtime=glfw run for a quick
GLFW-based app for a faster development cycle while developing core
terminal features. Note that this app is missing many features and is also
known to crash in certain scenarios, so it is only meant for development
tasks.
Other useful commands:
zig build testfor running unit tests.zig build test -Dtest-filter=<filter>for running a specific subset of those unit testszig build run -Dconformance=<name>runs a conformance test case from theconformancedirectory. Thenameis the name of the file. This runs in the current running terminal emulator so if you want to check the behavior of this project, you must run this command in Ghostty.
Linting
Prettier
Ghostty's docs and resources (not including Zig code) are linted using Prettier with out-of-the-box settings. A Prettier CI check will fail builds with improper formatting. Therefore, if you are modifying anything Prettier will lint, you may want to install it locally and run this from the repo root before you commit:
prettier --write .
Make sure your Prettier version matches the version of Prettier in devShell.nix.
Nix users can use the following command to format with Prettier:
nix develop -c prettier --write .
Alejandra
Nix modules are formatted with Alejandra. An Alejandra CI check will fail builds with improper formatting.
Nix users can use the following command to format with Alejanda:
nix develop -c alejandra .
Non-Nix users should install Alejandra and use the following command to format with Alejandra:
alejandra .
Make sure your Alejandra version matches the version of Alejandra in devShell.nix.
Updating the Zig Cache Fixed-Output Derivation Hash
The Nix package depends on a fixed-output derivation that manages the Zig package cache. This allows the package to be built in the Nix sandbox.
Occasionally (usually when build.zig.zon is updated), the hash that
identifies the cache will need to be updated. There are jobs that monitor the
hash in CI, and builds will fail if it drifts.
To update it, you can run the following in the repository root:
./nix/build-support/check-zig-cache-hash.sh --update
This will write out the nix/zigCacheHash.nix file with the updated hash
that can then be committed and pushed to fix the builds.