libghostty
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 3 terminal emulator libraries
Free, reusable terminal emulation core that developers embed in their own terminals and tools, praised for speed and easy integration.
Free, reusable terminal emulation core that developers embed in their own terminals and tools, praised for speed and easy integration.
42 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 39
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 93%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 39 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 13 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 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
Powers many third-party terminals
“libghostty is stellar! I'm using it for my session persistence for terminal processes tool”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty compiled to WASM with xterm.js API compatibility” “I rewrote text viewer applications, and a terminal emulator chrome that uses libghostty.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Software may be getting worse, but it used to be horrible” “It's powered by libghostty so it has support for all the stuff a modern terminal can do”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Headless terminal - Allow agents to run any interactive TUI or CLI” - Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Ghostling”
- Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Ghostty-based terminal with vertical tabs and notifications”
- Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
- Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
- Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Chuchu – an Android SSH Client powered by libghostty”
- Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
- Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Herdr has released native app”
Easy to embed and integrate
“Having incorporated libghostty into my current web-based project, I can't say enough thanks.”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator” “It was so easy to get the terminal functionality going with libghostty.”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator” “which will probably be fairly easy to integrate with C apps”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “Returning to Zig” - Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Superlogical Pre-Alpha Demo [video]”
- Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
- Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Warp is now open-source”
Full terminal features and fast rendering
“libghostty will have excellent compatibility and features rather than an elisp implementation that maybe half baked.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt” “It's powered by libghostty so it has support for all the stuff a modern terminal can do”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Headless terminal - Allow agents to run any interactive TUI or CLI” “libghostty supports a lot of features I don't foresee making their way into Alacritty.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” - Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
- Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Herdr: One terminal to rule them all”
Valued contribution to the ecosystem
“And that is an amazing contribution to the ecosystem!”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty” “Excited to see libghostty enabling projects like this”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “Ghostling” “libghostty is brilliant and I'm very glad it exists”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” - Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Cruller: Bun's Zig Runtime, Continued on Zig 0.16”
- Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit”
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| libghosttyThis page | 39 | 3 | 93% | 9 | — | Approved |
| ghostty-web | 13 | 5 | 72% | 5 | — | Approved |
| libghostty-vt | 6 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 49 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I even use libghostty for the HW accelerated GUI I built”
“libghostty is brilliant and I'm very glad it exists”
“I'm using it for my own terminal on Windows. I'm quite pleased with it”
“thanks to libghostty, ghostel.el is the nicest terminal for emacs going”
“I've put libghostty in my bespoke IDEs and it's fantastic”
“libghostty supports a lot of features I don't foresee making their way into Alacritty.”
“So easy to embed, nice bindings, and it's so fast.”
“Thanks for the work on getting libghostty 1.4 out! :D”
“I also get to enjoy some of the benefits of libghostty, via ghostel in Emacs”
“replace those with a common component where long term development can better support the needs of all terminals”
“a free, high qualty, lightweight, reusable terminal emulation core”
“I rewrote text viewer applications, and a terminal emulator chrome that uses libghostty.”
“The original plan was to support both WebKit and SDL frontends (like how libghostty works)”
“There are already multiple libghostty clients for mobile.”
“Ghostty -> libghostty -> terminal multiplexing -> ???”
“libghostty is more impactful than Bun IMO.”
“There are solid production software which is already using Zig, like TigerBeetle and Ghostty/libghostty.”
“And that is an amazing contribution to the ecosystem!”
“excellent quality terminal rendering”
“which will probably be fairly easy to integrate with C apps”
“using libghostty for the terminals”
“it can be considered a light-weight wrapper around libghostty”
“Very cool to see third party projects start using libghostty”
“The work Mitchell is doing with Ghostty and the approach Zed has taken seem super aligned.”
“It's a fully-featured library to build off of”
“libghostty makes it pretty easy to do”
“It's powered by libghostty so it has support for all the stuff a modern terminal can do”
“libghostty will have excellent compatibility and features rather than an elisp implementation that maybe half baked.”
“Excited to see libghostty enabling projects like this”
“It really is quite an amazing piece of software. I just wrapped it in a useful GUI”
“Shows the power of the ghosttty library very well.”
“libghostty would still be useful for traditional terminal emulators to replatform on”
“It is an exciting project in this new world of being able to develop your own agentic development environments rather effortlessly.”
“Having incorporated libghostty into my current web-based project, I can't say enough thanks.”
“It was so easy to get the terminal functionality going with libghostty.”
“libghostty is _way more exciting_ nowadays”
“libghostty should help to a certain extent”
“It's mighty cool to see it being used more and more to build cool new terminals”
“Libghostty is a pretty huge contribution.”
“libghostty is stellar! I'm using it for my session persistence for terminal processes tool”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.