libghostty-vt
Ranked 3 of 3 terminal emulator libraries by recommenders
A free, embeddable terminal emulation library from Ghostty that other terminal projects build on, praised for handling modern escape codes and for a smooth experience.
A free, embeddable terminal emulation library from Ghostty that other terminal projects build on, praised for handling modern escape codes and for a smooth experience.
6 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 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
Handles modern escape codes
“It's backed by libghostty-vt so supports all the new fangled escape codes.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving” “The vast majority of your complaints are handled by libghostty-vt itself”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt” Good base for other projects
“ghost.el was made thanks to the well-made libghostty-vt library”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Rio-vt and librio: Rio's terminal engine, now embeddable” “boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Boo – screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty”
Other terminal emulator libraries people recommend
The two most recommended other terminal emulator libraries, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| libghostty | 39 | 3 | 93% | 9 | — | Approved |
| ghostty-web | 13 | 5 | 72% | 5 | — | Approved |
| libghostty-vtThis page | 6 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
5 of the 6 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's been a quite smooth experience, and I remain very excited about the lib.”
“ghost.el was made thanks to the well-made libghostty-vt library”
“It's backed by libghostty-vt so supports all the new fangled escape codes.”
“boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core”
“The vast majority of your complaints are handled by libghostty-vt itself”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.