Quake Terminal always 100% transparent ("Quake Background Opacity" has no effect)

[jemayer]

I'm using OmniWM - coming from a Niri/Noctalia setup on Linux - for a few hours now and already fell in love with it. 😍 One thing I can't get sorted out:

I'm not able to adjust the "Quake Background Opacity" via its slider using the OmniWM settings pane. It doesn't have any effect, and so my Quake Terminal is always 100% transparent (and thus not usable).

Since I can't find any relevant discussions or recent issues, I suspect the problem existing on my side.

Here's my current current GhosTTY configuration (I learned that some of it is being used by OmniWM):

❯ cat .config/ghostty/config
font-family = "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font"
# Good themes are: "Bluloco Dark", "Catppuccin Mocha"
# Get a list via: `ghostty +list-themes`
theme = "Bluloco Dark"
background-opacity = 0.5
macos-titlebar-style = "transparent"
shell-integration-features = ssh-terminfo,ssh-env

Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong? I'm using OmniWM 0.5.9 installed via Homebrew, MacOS 26.5.2.

[BarutSRB]

Thank you for the kind words ❤️

I traced the opacity path through OmniWM 0.5.9. Your pasted Ghostty settings should not pin the Quake opacity as OmniWM loads the Ghostty files and then applies the slider value as the final background opacity override. I also tested your exact config with OmniWM’s embedded Ghostty parser, and a later opacity override resolves correctly. Macos-titlebar-style controls Ghostty’s own windows, whereas Quake uses an OmniWM-owned borderless panel.

The main difference may therefore be macOS 26.5.2 compositing as I'm on macOS 27, but I need two cold-start checks to distinguish that from live reload:

1. Set Quake Background Opacity to 100%, fully quit OmniWM, relaunch it, open Quake, and attach a screenshot.
2. Repeat at 10%, again fully quitting and relaunching OmniWM.
3. Paste the [quakeTerminal] section from ~/.config/omniwm/settings.toml.
4. Tell me whether terminal text/cursor remain visible or whether the entire panel is invisible, and test from a plain shell rather than tmux/Neovim.
5. Please also paste:
   pgrep -fl OmniWM
   ghostty +validate-config
   ghostty +show-config --changes-only | grep -E '^(background|background-opacity|background-opacity-cells|background-blur|custom-shader|theme|macos-titlebar-style|config-file)'
   ls -la ~/.config/ghostty/ "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/"

A standalone Ghostty config report cannot describe OmniWM’s embedded renderer completely, but it will expose duplicate config files, custom shaders, or other relevant settings.

There are also two similar issues posted in Ghostty's own repo but none have an approved fix so far and at least one is related to your macos version.

[jemayer]

Thank you for coming back to me, @BarutSRB! 🫶🏻

This is the screenshot for step 1 (100% opacity):

This is the screenshot for step 2 (10% opacity):

This is the [quakeTerminal] section from ~/.config/omniwm/settings.toml:

[quakeTerminal]
animationDuration = 0.30000000000000004
autoHide = false
enabled = true
heightPercent = 60.0
monitorMode = "focusedWindow"
opacity = 0.1
position = "center"
widthPercent = 60.0

To answer 4.), yes, text/cursor remains visible.

❯ pgrep -fl OmniWM
81364 /Applications/OmniWM.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniWM
❯ ghostty +validate-config
❯ ghostty +show-config --changes-only | grep -E '^(background|background-opacity|background-opacity-cells|background-blur|custom-shader|theme|macos-titlebar-style|config-file)'
theme = Bluloco Dark
background-opacity = 0.8
background-blur = macos-glass-regular
❯ ls -la ~/.config/ghostty/ "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/"
/Users/jcm/.config/ghostty/:
drwxr-xr-x@   - jcm 27 Jul 14:11  ./
drwxr-xr-x@   - jcm 27 Jul 11:26  ../
drwxr-xr-x@   - jcm 27 Jul 14:11  themes/
.rw-r--r--@ 270 jcm 27 Jul 12:18 󱁻 config

'/Users/jcm/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/':
drwxr-xr-x@    - jcm 21 May 22:36  ./
drwx------     - jcm 27 Jul 11:40  ../
.rw-r--r--@ 1.9k jcm 21 May 22:36 󱁻 config

I hope any of this is helpful to you and really appreciate you taking a look here!

[BarutSRB]

Thanks, this identifies the problem.

Your effective configuration contains:
background-opacity = 0.8
background-blur = macos-glass-regular

Those values differ from the ~/.config/ghostty/config you originally pasted because Ghostty loads ~/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config afterward, so that second file wins.

In glass mode Ghostty intentionally renders its own background with zero alpha and expects the embedding application to provide the native macOS glass view. OmniWM 0.5.9 inherited your glass setting but did not yet provide that view. This explains why the text and cursor remain visible, while 10% and 100% opacity look identical.

As a workaround for 0.5.9, change or remove this line specifically in:
~/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config
Change: background-blur = macos-glass-regular
To: background-blur = false

Then fully quit and relaunch OmniWM. Setting it only in ~/.config/ghostty/config will not override the later Application Support file.

Current OmniWM head already contains the proper fix: Standard Blur overrides inherited Ghostty glass, while the Glass options provide the required native glass view. This will be included in the next release.

You may also want to consolidate the two Ghostty configuration files. Rectangle is not causing this transparency problem, although it should generally be quit while OmniWM is running to avoid unrelated focus or window-management conflicts.

[jemayer]

Perfect catch, problem solved! Thank you so much for this quick resolution and your further guidance. OmniWM really made my day!