# Ghostty Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghostty/ 292 people recommended Ghostty in Hacker News comments, 85 had mixed feelings and 138 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. People who said how long they have used it report a median of 3 months, among 20 people. It was recommended in 12 of 12 months, in 130 threads. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A fast, polished, native-feeling terminal for macOS and Linux that works well with little configuration, though critics cite weak search and scrollback and terminfo trouble over SSH. Summary written by Claude from 55 comments. Claude agents reviewed it against the quotes on 2 Nov 2026. ## Why people recommend it - Fast and snappy (7 comments in the sample): "Ghostty just feels really polished and ‘native’ and it’s obviously faster than, say, iterm or the stock term on macOS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48888759)) "I like how snappy Ghostty is. I do not like how it starts lagging after a few alt-tabs to Chrome and back on Linux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47207802)) "I think the jump in performance and usability put it on the map before the narrative could help push it further." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369406)) - Trusted maintainer and non-profit (5 comments in the sample): "Ghostty is a great piece of software, with a stellar maintainer who has a very pragmatic and measured take on using AI to develop software." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615843)) "It's a technically excellent terminal built with an incredibly rigorous and well thought out guiding philosophy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266386)) "Recently Ghostty is a non profit, which means that it is guaranteed not to turn into a for profit and rugpull" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46143602)) - Polished, native feel (3 comments in the sample): "It had nicer fonts by default, better tab switching that was consistent with the keyboard shortcut to switch to any tab on Mac" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861958)) "ghostty is the sanest terminal emulator currently available for MacOS where you can just install and start using it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212543)) "Keybindings with the CMD key works right away without having to send any escape sequence or similar." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139141)) - Excellent font and text rendering (2 comments in the sample): "I really appreciate the font rendering, but I keep going back to iTerm2 and Terminal.app mostly because of lack of scroll back & CMD-F" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209078)) "I personally like how I barely had to configure it, how nerd fonts just worked, and how nicely it renders text" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632207)) ## What people warn about - Remote shell and terminfo problems (4 comments in the sample): "Apparently changing $TERM from `screen-256color` to `tmux-256color` in tmux to try and get italics working in nvim totally mangled ghostty." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219160)) "sometimes something about the TERM internally breaks anyway and I'm back to seeing ESC codes when I press an arrow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208440)) "Which is why I’m also wary of the ghostty’s integration that is supposed to inject its terminfo when you ssh in." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815245)) - Weak search and scrollback (2 comments in the sample): "still does not fix the one bug I care about: being able to quickly ⌘+F, ⌘+V - the find textbox does not respect keyboard shortcuts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50275535)) "Lack of search and lack of scrollbars make me wonder why this project got so much attention in the first place." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214377)) - Lag and slowness on Linux (2 comments in the sample): "The other day I was able to click on Ghostty, then open Gnome Terminal, type a command and run it before Ghostty had finished loading." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263635)) "It's like being stuck in mud but it's not just ghostty, all GPU accelerated terminals on Linux I tried have this muddy feel." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212785)) ## Other terminal emulators people recommend - [Termux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/termux/): 152 recommend, 23 mixed, 24 criticize - [iTerm2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iterm2/): 66 recommend, 24 mixed, 66 criticize - [Kitty terminal emulator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kitty/): 66 recommend, 10 mixed, 27 criticize - [WezTerm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wezterm/): 41 recommend, 15 mixed, 10 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Ghostty", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghostty/ (292 recommend, 85 mixed, 138 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.