Foot terminal emulator
Hacker ApprovedRanked 15 of 40 terminal emulators by recommenders
Fast, lightweight terminal that launches quickly and stays stable, well suited to tiling window managers. Restarting its daemon can kill open terminals.
Fast, lightweight terminal that launches quickly and stays stable, well suited to tiling window managers. Restarting its daemon can kill open terminals.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 24
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 24 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Very fast startup
“Foot launches way faster without all that fuss, and allows you to go the daemon route if you want it even faster.”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Life is too short for a slow terminal” “It's the only terminal I've ever seen that starts up in sub-50ms cold, without a service already running.”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator” “Foot, which as far as I've tested is the fastest to launch”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” - Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions”
- Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator”
- Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop”
Works well with tiling window managers
“Foot is lightweight, fast and perfect for use in combination with a tiling window manager”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “I ported foot terminal to macOS” “Sway + foot with keybinds to provision each workspace to your liking is pretty nice.”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Linux Is an Interpreter” “Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it's perfect for the way my brain works.”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Herdr: One terminal to rule them all” - Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?”
Stable with no performance issues
“Foot has been rock solid, even though it lacks some of Ghostty's niceties.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)” “Fast, extremely stable, and (most importantly) barely noticed.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit” “I've seen zero performance issues with foot.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” Keyboard-driven search and link features
“I love that foot's scrollback search, selection expansive, and copy can be entirely keyboard driven.”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit” “Love ctrl-shift-o to open up links”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Daemon restarts kill open terminals
“eventually some weird state affected the daemon and had to restart it killing all my terminals”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Life is too short for a slow terminal”
Other terminal emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | 401 | 158 | 72% | 12 | 3 mo22 owners | Approved |
| Termux | 188 | 31 | 86% | 12 | 1 yr6 owners | Approved |
| iTerm2 | 95 | 69 | 58% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
| Warp terminal | 84 | 86 | 49% | 11 | 1 yr5 owners | — |
| Foot terminal emulatorThis page | 24 | 3 | 89% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
31 of the 38 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I've stuck to Foot since.”
“Foot, which as far as I've tested is the fastest to launch”
“Foot is lightweight, fast and perfect for use in combination with a tiling window manager”
“Foot terminal opens in sub-ms.”
“foot and st felt as fast when I was using them.”
“Fedora + Niri + Foot + Podman + Neovim is better with each release.”
“Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it's perfect for the way my brain works.”
“foot is great, I have yet to use anything better”
“+1 for Foot, truly a joy to use.”
“Foot launches way faster without all that fuss, and allows you to go the daemon route if you want it even faster.”
“eventually some weird state affected the daemon and had to restart it killing all my terminals”
“Luckily there are better terminal emulators out there, such as foot”
“Sway + foot with keybinds to provision each workspace to your liking is pretty nice.”
“such as urxvt, st, and now foot, without issues.”
“highly recommended terminal”
“Foot/Alacritty also feel amazing”
“Foot instances start up very fast due to this”
“i have been using foot so far”
“It's the only terminal I've ever seen that starts up in sub-50ms cold, without a service already running.”
“Foot has been rock solid, even though it lacks some of Ghostty's niceties.”
“Until a few months ago I used to use tmux + foot (tiny terminal), and I enjoyed the setup”
“I love that foot's scrollback search, selection expansive, and copy can be entirely keyboard driven.”
“the edit is not true. footclient is, like, right there.”
“Alacritty and Foot do not support ligatures”
“foot's support for windows and tabs is limited to starting an entirely new process”
“Fast, extremely stable, and (most importantly) barely noticed.”
“Foot is a great terminal.”
“I've seen zero performance issues with foot.”
“Love ctrl-shift-o to open up links”
“this is my current favorite too”
“it is very fast to launch, and uses few resources”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.