Ghostty

Our take

Ghostty is what happens when someone with deep systems experience decides to build a terminal emulator from first principles. Mitchell Hashimoto (HashiCorp co-founder) wrote the core in Zig, used Metal for macOS rendering and GTK4 for Linux, and the result is a terminal that's roughly 3× faster than iTerm2 on raw throughput benchmarks while feeling completely native on both platforms.

The speed difference isn't academic. If you tail large log files, run build output, or use TUI applications like Neovim or lazygit, you'll notice that Ghostty keeps up without frame drops or input lag. ProMotion support on MacBook Pro means 120Hz scrolling with adaptive sync, a small detail that makes the terminal feel as responsive as a native app should.

What Ghostty deliberately doesn't do is add AI features, team collaboration, or cloud sync. It's a terminal emulator, and it does that job exceptionally well. The configuration is a simple text file. The UI is clean and uncluttered. There's no account creation, no telemetry, no upsell.

The main limitations are platform coverage (no Windows yet), ecosystem maturity, and the still-minimal configuration UI. Kitty has a more powerful scripting system. Warp has AI built in. iTerm2 has deeper tmux integration. But for macOS and Linux developers who want the fastest, cleanest terminal available and are happy to pair it with tmux or Zellij for multiplexing, Ghostty is the current best-in-class.