I’ve spent years exploring different terminal emulators. As a long-time KDE user, Konsole was my home for a long time. However, when the “new wave” of GPU-accelerated terminals arrived, I started chasing performance. I moved to Alacritty, then Kitty, and finally discovered Ghostty in early 2025. I haven’t looked back since.
What makes Ghostty special is how it balances raw power with extreme simplicity. While it works perfectly out of the box, I’m a firm believer in personalizing the tools I use every day.
Some features
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GPU Acceleration: Uses Metal (macOS) or OpenGL (Linux) for near-zero input lag and buttery-smooth scrolling.
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Native UI: Unlike other cross-platform terminals, it uses platform-native tabs and windows (GTK4 on Linux, SwiftUI on macOS) for a seamless look.
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GPU Ligatures: One of the few terminals that renders complex font ligatures (like
=>or!=) directly on the GPU for maximum speed. -
Secure Entry: Includes a “Secure Keyboard Entry” mode to prevent other apps from “sniffing” sensitive data like passwords.
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Embeddable Core: Built as a library (
libghostty), meaning its engine can be tucked inside other applications or IDEs.
One of the coolest features I found is its native support for shaders.
What is a Shader?
In the context of a terminal, a shader (specifically a GLSL fragment shader) is a small program that runs directly on your GPU. Instead of your computer just “printing text,” the shader calculates how every single pixel should look in real-time. This allows you to add visual effects—like CRT scanlines, retro grain, or even falling snow—without slowing down your CPU.
You can find a nice collection of shaders here: https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders
My Minimalist Setup
I love that I can achieve a beautiful, functional setup with just five lines of code. Here is my current ~/.config/ghostty/config:
Bash
theme = Ayu
font-family = "Hack Nerd Font Mono"
font-size = 14
custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/shaders/just-snow.glsl
background-opacity = 0.85
That’s it. Just five lines to go from a standard prompt to a hardware-accelerated, snow-dusted workspace.
