# Foot terminal emulator

24 Hacker News commenters recommended Foot terminal emulator and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, lightweight terminal that launches quickly and stays stable, well suited to tiling window managers. Restarting its daemon can kill open terminals.

## Why people recommend it

- Very fast startup (6 comments): "Foot launches way faster without all that fuss, and allows you to go the daemon route if you want it even faster." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48448972)) "It's the only terminal I've ever seen that starts up in sub-50ms cold, without a service already running." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208468)) "Foot, which as far as I've tested is the fastest to launch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263687))
- Works well with tiling window managers (4 comments): "Foot is lightweight, fast and perfect for use in combination with a tiling window manager" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219615)) "Sway + foot with keybinds to provision each workspace to your liking is pretty nice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557800)) "Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it's perfect for the way my brain works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826863))
- Stable with no performance issues (3 comments): "Foot has been rock solid, even though it lacks some of Ghostty's niceties." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461108)) "Fast, extremely stable, and (most importantly) barely noticed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139452)) "I've seen zero performance issues with foot." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45808540))
- Keyboard-driven search and link features (2 comments): "I love that foot's scrollback search, selection expansive, and copy can be entirely keyboard driven." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46147091)) "Love ctrl-shift-o to open up links" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45808536))

## What people warn about

- Daemon restarts kill open terminals (1 comments): "eventually some weird state affected the daemon and had to restart it killing all my terminals" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447173))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ghostty](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghostty.md): 401 recommend
- [Termux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/termux.md): 188 recommend
- [iTerm2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iterm2.md): 95 recommend
- [Warp terminal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/warp-terminal.md): 84 recommend
- [Kitty terminal emulator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kitty.md): 79 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Foot terminal emulator", https://hackerapproved.com/p/foot/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).