Requirements

What ttyak needs, and what makes it better. ttyak ctl check reports what your terminal and system offer (no Slack, no network; run it in your terminal, not through a pipe) and prints one line of each kind of glyph for you to judge: look for empty boxes or misaligned columns.

The terminal

Any system:

• needs: UTF-8, and 80 × 24 cells. A thread opens beside the conversation when the part right of the sidebar is at least 100 columns wide (a terminal of 132 columns; 138 with the workspace rail, shown with two or more workspaces); narrower, it takes the conversation's place until you close it or go back to the messages or the message box (which closes it)
• works best with: mouse reporting; true colour for the built-in themes (otherwise choose the terminal theme in F6 → Appearance, which uses your terminal's own palette); focus reporting (the bell, the tab-title badge and read marks need it); OSC 8 links
• pictures: kitty, WezTerm and foot draw them (tried), and Windows Terminal answers as a sixel terminal (tried); so can any other sixel terminal, and iTerm2 and Ghostty speak protocols ttyak draws with (iTerm2's own, kitty's), though neither is tried yet. Other terminals get half blocks (more on Images and video)
• macOS Terminal.app: 24-bit colour came with macOS 26; on macOS 26.5 Terminal.app sets COLORTERM and ctl check says yes (seen on a Mac). Before macOS 26 use the terminal theme. It answers none of ctl check's questions about mouse, focus, bracketed paste or OSC 8 ("not known"), and its OSC 8 sample is not a link.

Fonts

The terminal draws with what your system has:

• an emoji font: Noto Color Emoji (Debian/Ubuntu fonts-noto-color-emoji, Fedora google-noto-color-emoji-fonts, Arch noto-fonts-emoji); macOS has Apple Color Emoji; Windows has Segoe UI Emoji
• a symbol font for ● ○ ◆ ★ ⏎ ↪ ⬆ ✕ and the box and block characters: DejaVu Sans (fonts-dejavu-core, Fedora dejavu-sans-fonts, Arch ttf-dejavu) or Noto Sans Symbols (fonts-noto-core, google-noto-sans-symbols-fonts, noto-fonts); macOS and Windows have them
• optional: CJK for Chinese, Japanese and Korean names and text (fonts-noto-cjk, Fedora google-noto-sans-cjk-fonts, Arch noto-fonts-cjk); macOS and Windows have them
• emoji drawn as boxes: install the font above, or F6 → Messages & media → "Show emoji as :names:" shows :smile: instead; rows that look misaligned mean the terminal measures an emoji's width differently from ttyak (the same setting is the way out)

Linux

• needs: ALSA (libasound.so.2), glibc 2.34
• works best with: a notification server for the bubbles (swaync, mako, dunst, GNOME or KDE's own) — without one there are none, and ttyak's bell and title badge still work (Notifications and attention); xdg-open (xdg-utils) to open web and mail links; a Wayland compositor with the data-control protocol (or X11) for the clipboard, else ttyak copies through the terminal (OSC 52); a browser for the browser sign-in; ffmpeg / ffprobe for video, cameras and screen sharing, and GStreamer (with the PipeWire plugin) for screen sharing on Wayland (Huddles)

macOS

• needs: macOS 11 or newer
• notifications: macOS shows them as the host terminal's (Terminal's in Terminal.app, tested on macOS 26), and only if that app's notifications are allowed in System Settings → Notifications; while the screen is shared or mirrored macOS keeps them in the Notification Center without a banner, unless "Allow notifications when mirroring or sharing the display" is on. A click on one brings the tab forward in Terminal.app (tried); in kitty ttyak uses kitty's own notifications instead (not tried on a Mac). More on Notifications and attention
• optional: ffmpeg / ffprobe for video, cameras and screen sharing

Windows

• needs: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• Windows Terminal is recommended (it draws sixel pictures); the classic console (conhost) draws emoji in monochrome and no pictures, only half blocks (tried)
• ctl check: run it in the terminal on the desktop — over ssh (no desktop session) its Focus Assist and notification rows read wrongly. Windows Terminal 1.24 and conhost answer its questions about mouse, focus and bracketed paste (tried); OSC 8 links can't be asked about ("not known" everywhere) — Windows Terminal draws them. Windows Terminal has true colour but sets no COLORTERM: ctl check takes its WT_SESSION as the sign and says yes (not tried yet; not inside tmux or screen, which inherit it); conhost's true colour stays "not known"
• toasts appear under PowerShell's name; do-not-disturb (Focus Assist) is read through an undocumented state, so ttyak says when it can't tell; with Follow the system's do-not-disturb on, the toast still goes out under Windows' do-not-disturb, without its sound, for Windows to file in the notification center (tried under the automatic do-not-disturb for a full-screen app; with Do not disturb switched on by hand not tried yet). More on Notifications and attention
• optional: ffmpeg / ffprobe for video, cameras and screen sharing

If it doesn't work

• Pictures show as half blocks
• Emoji or symbols show as boxes
• Colours look wrong
• The thread doesn't open beside the conversation
• Links don't open in the browser
• Copy or paste doesn't work
• No desktop notifications
• everything else: Troubleshooting