A Windows terminal emulator that reuses Ghostty's terminal core under a native Win32 front end.
Native Win32 runtime · OpenGL renderer · Shared terminal core with Ghostty

Releases · Getting started · Status · Hacking · Contributing · Security

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What is winghostty?

winghostty is a terminal emulator for Windows. It pairs:

• The Ghostty terminal core — VT parser, screen and scrollback, font pipeline, and renderer — forked from ghostty-org/ghostty.
• A native Win32 application runtime written for this fork: real Windows tab bar, per-monitor DPI scaling, DWM dark title bar, IME, drag-and-drop, native right-click menus, and a WSL-aware shell picker.

It also ships libghostty-vt, the Ghostty VT library, as a retained deliverable for Zig and C consumers.

It is intended for developers who are comfortable editing a plain-text configuration file and clicking through a SmartScreen warning on first install.

Project status

winghostty is a young, single-maintainer fork. First fork commit: 2026-04-06. First public releases: 2026-04-16.

• Supported platform: Windows 10 and Windows 11 on x64.
• Releases: unsigned installer + portable ZIP. Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run; that is expected until code signing lands.
• Feedback: use Discussions for questions. GitHub Issues are reserved for reproducible bugs.
• No cross-platform app: macOS and Linux app runtimes are not shipped from this repo and are not planned. libghostty-vt remains portable for library consumers.
• Coexistence: winghostty runs as its own top-level app window. It does not register as a Windows Terminal profile provider; installing it alongside Windows Terminal, WezTerm, or Alacritty is fine.
• Accessibility: screen reader / UI Automation support is planned and is not yet shipping.

What works today

• Native Win32 runtime: tab bar with overflow, horizontal / vertical splits, per-monitor DPI scaling, DWM dark title bar, right-click context menus, IME, drag-and-drop of files.
• OpenGL 4.3 renderer via WGL.
• Shared Ghostty terminal core: VT parsing, scrollback, bracketed paste, mouse tracking, OSC 8 hyperlinks, Kitty graphics protocol, shell integration for bash / zsh / fish / PowerShell.
• Windows-aware shell selection: PowerShell, cmd, Git Bash, opt-in WSL.
• In-app profile picker that auto-detects installed shells.
• GitHub Releases updater, notify-only, gated to one check per 24 hours.
• High-contrast (HC) mode detection and palette switching.
• libghostty-vt as a retained Zig / C library deliverable.

A precise list, including what is experimental and what is out of scope, is in docs/status.md.

Install

Download the latest build from Releases:

File	Use when
winghostty-<version>-windows-x64-setup.exe	You want a normal install with a Start menu entry.
winghostty-<version>-windows-x64-portable.zip	You want to run without installing.
SHA256SUMS.txt	Verifying downloads.

On first run, Windows SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC". Click More info → Run anyway. Releases are unsigned right now; code signing is planned.

Full walk-through — installer, portable, uninstall — docs/getting-started.md.

First run

On first launch, winghostty creates its config folder and writes a template:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\winghostty\config.ghostty

The template sets no options — defaults live in the binary. To see every option with inline docs:

winghostty +show-config --default --docs | more

A minimal config:

font-family = JetBrains Mono
font-size   = 12
# Pick a theme from: winghostty +list-themes
theme       = Dracula

Reload config without restarting: Ctrl + Shift + ,

Keybindings

Default keybindings follow Windows conventions. Common ones:

Action	Binding
Copy	Ctrl+Shift+C
Paste	Ctrl+Shift+V
New tab	Ctrl+Shift+T
Close tab	Ctrl+Shift+W
Next / previous tab	Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab
Split right / down	Ctrl+Shift+O / Ctrl+Shift+E
Start search	Ctrl+Shift+F
Increase / decrease font	Ctrl+= / Ctrl+-
Reload config	Ctrl+Shift+,

Full list, plus the keybind grammar for chords and rebinding:

winghostty +list-keybinds
winghostty +show-config --default --docs

Profiles

winghostty auto-detects installed Windows shells (PowerShell, cmd, Git Bash, opt-in WSL) and exposes them through an in-app profile picker. To pin a specific shell, set command = <path> in your config.

Privacy

winghostty does not send telemetry or analytics. The only outbound network call from the app is the GitHub Releases updater (when enabled), which hits GitHub's public API. Crash reports, when produced, are stored locally and never uploaded (see below).

Updates

auto-update = check

The updater checks api.github.com/repos/amanthanvi/winghostty/releases/latest at most once every 24 hours. It is notify-only: it opens the release page if a newer stable version exists and never replaces binaries silently. auto-update = download currently behaves the same as check.

Crash reports

winghostty does not upload crash reports. The app keeps a local directory:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\winghostty\crash

On Windows the Sentry initialization path is a no-op today, so some builds may produce nothing in this directory in practice. The +crash-report CLI reads anything that is there:

winghostty +crash-report

Contents, if any, may include sensitive memory from the crashed process; review before sharing.

Build from source

Most users should install from Releases. If you want to build:

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11 on x64
• Zig 0.15.x (patch ≥ 2) — enforced at compile time via src/build/zig.zig::requireZig. Newer 0.15 patch releases (0.15.3, etc.) are accepted; 0.15.0 / 0.15.1, 0.14.x, and 0.16.x will fail to compile.
• Visual Studio 2022 (Community is fine) — MSVC toolchain on PATH
• Git for Windows

The build script additionally rejects building the win32 app runtime for non-Windows targets, returning error.WindowsOnlyAppRuntimeRequiresWindowsTarget.

Build

zig build -Demit-exe=true

Output: zig-out\bin\winghostty.exe.

If Zig cannot reach deps.files.ghostty.org directly in your environment, seed the Windows build dependency cache first:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts/fetch-zig-deps.ps1
zig build -Demit-exe=true

For a pre-configured developer shell (Visual Studio + Git + Zig cache environment variables):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts/dev-windows.ps1

Build, test, and runtime notes for contributors are in HACKING.md. Packaging the installer and portable ZIP yourself is covered in PACKAGING.md.

Relationship to Ghostty

winghostty is a fork, not a re-implementation. Upstream is tracked as the upstream Git remote; the fork relationship is visible in full Git history.

Shared with upstream Ghostty

• src/terminal/ — VT parsing, screen state, scrollback, search, Kitty graphics protocol, OSC handling
• src/font/ — font discovery and rasterization (HarfBuzz, FreeType)
• src/renderer/ — OpenGL cell/image/shader pipeline
• src/input/, src/config/, src/termio/, src/crash/, src/shell-integration/, src/inspector/, libghostty-vt

New in this fork

• src/apprt/win32.zig — Win32 application runtime
• src/apprt/win32_theme.zig — theme tokens, DWM integration, accent helpers, HC handling (extracted from win32.zig in commit a759eb6)
• src/update/github_releases.zig — updater
• dist/windows/ and scripts/package-windows.ps1 — Windows packaging

Removed from this fork

• Upstream macos/ Xcode project
• Upstream src/apprt/gtk/ runtime
• Flatpak / Snap / Linux desktop packaging

Because the terminal core is shared, most Ghostty configuration options, themes, and shell-integration behavior apply here directly. When Windows-native behavior conflicts with upstream cross-platform behavior, this fork prefers the Windows-native result.

Contributing

Bug reports, reproducible issues, and focused PRs are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md and AI_POLICY.md first. For usage questions and design discussion, use Discussions.

License

MIT. Copyright © 2024 Mitchell Hashimoto, Ghostty contributors. See LICENSE.

Fork-specific changes are contributed under the same license by the fork's maintainer and contributors.