Ghostty is a terminal emulator from HashiCorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto that implements GPU acceleration while maintaining a native look on each supported platform.On Linux, the app uses GTK, whereas on macOS, the app uses Swift.The project claims it has millions of daily users, and many other terminal emulators have already adopted libghostty-vt, the C-based virtual terminal emulator library it offers.The latest release, v1.4, is a major one with over 170 contributors and 2,800+ commits behind it. We will mostly focus on what Linux users get with a few changes from other platforms to get you up to speed.What's new?The reason why Ubuntu 24.04 LTS can't run native builds is that Ghostty 1.4 requires GTK 4.18 and libadwaita 1.7, causing an exit at startup if older libraries are loaded. The developers say that users can opt for an older build to get Ghostty running on their systems.Anyhow, coming back to the release, the GTK app gets sharp text at fractional scaling, such as 125% or 150%, after it appeared blurry due to some upstream changes, and the rebuilt, triple-buffered renderer is expected to cut tearing.Then you have the drag and drop ability for split windows, which macOS has had since 1.3, where a split can be dropped onto any other one, even in a different tab or window, with its running processes and working directory moving along with it.Global keybinds on Wayland now use the vicinae-hotkey-v1 protocol on compositors like Hyprland 0.56 and newer and go through the desktop portal on the rest. This should improve hotkey behavior across different Wayland compositors.Background blur now works on Niri, and a new +toggle-quick-terminal command helps window managers that can't register global shortcuts.A few keyboard shortcuts have also been reworked in the GTK app:Ctrl+Shift+PageUp and Ctrl+Shift+PageDown can be used to move the current tab sideways.Jumping between the previous and next prompts can be done via Ctrl+Shift+Arrow-Up and Ctrl+Shift+Arrow-Down instead of only being handled by the jump_to_prompt action.The clipboard value of copy-on-select now behaves differently, and anyone who relied on the old behavior is being told to switch to both. Off-screen scrollback is now compressed while the terminal sits idle, with the memory savings being estimated at 70% to 90%.The compression has also made room for a higher default scrollback limit of 50MB, up from 10MB.Some additional changesGhostty now implements the full Kitty graphics protocol, with the project claiming that no terminal besides Kitty itself has done that. There's also the new ghostty +ssh command that stands in for⁣ sshand installs Ghostty’s terminfo on the remote host before connecting.Ten security issues were fixed, four of which affected macOS only, and the rest include a paste protection gap and a specially named directory that could get the zsh integration to send escape sequences, including ones that quietly replace your clipboard.Mac users get support for macOS 27, while those with older Macs get macOS 13 support, which has been kept intact until the project drops it in a future release.On Windows, the project has decided to drop GUI support from its roadmap and points downstream projects to libghostty and libghostty-vt, which are already built for Windows.Get Ghostty 1.4The Ghostty project only ships official binaries for macOS. On Linux, the various distributions package it themselves, with Arch Linux, NixOS, Alpine Linux, Gentoo, openSUSE and Ubuntu 26.04 being the ones that have it.Community DEB, AppImage and Snap builds exist too, but building from source is recommended.GhosttyYou can build Ghostty from the source tarball with zig build. The build guide has the steps you will need.