macOS: adjust-cursor-height setting not working

[pineapplethief]

Issue Description

I am on macOS Tahoe 26.2, using ghostty with fish shell and tide prompt theme, with prompt integration turned off for cursor. Cursor blinking is turned off for less visual noise and I really want to have cursor height less than cell height so that it doesnt "connect" with characters above:

Here are my relevant config settings:

shell-integration=fish

font-family = "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono"
adjust-cell-height=6
cursor-style = bar
shell-integration-features = no-cursor
adjust-cursor-height=-4
adjust-cursor-thickness=2
cursor-style-blink=false

I've tried all kinds of values for adjust-cursor-height, positive, negative, percentages, integers, with such setup they dont seem to affect cursor bar height whatsoever.

Expected Behavior

adjust-cursor-height setting adjusts cursor height

Actual Behavior

cursor height is not affected by adjust-cursor-height at all

Reproduction Steps

1. Apply Ghostty configuration settings from issue description
2. Open Ghostty
3. cursor height is not affected by adjust-cursor-height setting and is always same height as the cell itself

Ghostty Logs

Filtering the log data using "subsystem == "com.mitchellh.ghostty""
Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL  
2026-02-01 07:57:36.914464+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] ghostty version=1.2.3
2026-02-01 07:57:36.914923+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] ghostty build optimize=ReleaseFast
2026-02-01 07:57:36.914935+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] runtime=apprt.Runtime.none
2026-02-01 07:57:36.914943+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] font_backend=font.main.Backend.coretext
2026-02-01 07:57:36.914949+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] renderer=renderer.generic.Renderer(renderer.Metal)
2026-02-01 07:57:36.914953+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] libxev default backend=kqueue
2026-02-01 07:57:36.922453+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:os_locale] detected system locale=en_RU.UTF-8
2026-02-01 07:57:36.922585+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:os_locale] setlocale after unset lang result=C
2026-02-01 07:57:36.922606+0400 0x55fa3    Error       0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:os_locale] setlocale failed with LANG and system default. Falling back to en_US.UTF-8
2026-02-01 07:57:36.922704+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:os_locale] setlocale default result=en_US.UTF-8
2026-02-01 07:57:36.923903+0400 0x55fa5    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:sentry] sentry envelope does not contain crash, discarding
2026-02-01 07:57:36.988920+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:default] reading configuration file path=/Users/pineapplethief/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config
2026-02-01 07:57:36.989111+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:config] default shell src=passwd value=/opt/homebrew/bin/fish
2026-02-01 07:57:36.989122+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:config] default working directory src=passwd value=/Users/pineapplethief
2026-02-01 07:57:37.089729+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:ghostty] config reload notification
2026-02-01 07:57:37.089798+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:ghostty] config change notification
2026-02-01 07:57:37.103496+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:ghostty] known but unimplemented action action=37
2026-02-01 07:57:37.107630+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:font_shared_grid_set] font regular: JetBrainsMono NFM Regular
2026-02-01 07:57:37.108328+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:font_shared_grid_set] font bold: JetBrainsMono NFM Bold
2026-02-01 07:57:37.109171+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:font_shared_grid_set] font italic: JetBrainsMono NFM Italic
2026-02-01 07:57:37.109826+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:font_shared_grid_set] font bold_italic: JetBrainsMono NFM Bold Italic
2026-02-01 07:57:37.114265+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:io_exec] found Ghostty resources dir: /Applications/Ghostty.app/Contents/Resources/ghostty
2026-02-01 07:57:37.114296+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:io_exec] shell integration automatically injected shell=termio.shell_integration.Shell.fish
2026-02-01 07:57:37.114373+0400 0x55fa3    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:ghostty] known but unimplemented action action=20
2026-02-01 07:57:37.116033+0400 0x55fbd    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:io_exec] started subcommand path=/usr/bin/login pid=18778
2026-02-01 07:57:37.265924+0400 0x55fc0    Error       0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:stream] unimplemented OSC callback: terminal.osc.Command{ .end_of_command = terminal.osc.Command__struct_18710{ .exit_code = null } }
2026-02-01 07:57:37.265945+0400 0x55fc0    Error       0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:stream] unimplemented OSC command: end_of_command
2026-02-01 07:57:37.272802+0400 0x55fc0    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:osc] unknown semantic prompts option: click_events
2026-02-01 07:57:37.329567+0400 0x55fc0    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:osc] unknown semantic prompts option: click_events
2026-02-01 07:57:37.337240+0400 0x55fbc    Info        0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:font_codepoint_resolver] found codepoint 0x2714 in fallback face=MesloLGS NF Regular
2026-02-01 07:57:39.515522+0400 0x55fa3    Debug       0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:AppDelegate] application will save window state
2026-02-01 07:57:54.518282+0400 0x55fa3    Debug       0x0                  18777  0    ghostty: [com.mitchellh.ghostty:AppDelegate] application will save window state

### Ghostty Version

```text
Ghostty 1.2.3

Version
  - version: 1.2.3
  - channel: stable
Build Config
  - Zig version   : 0.14.1
  - build mode    : builtin.OptimizeMode.ReleaseFast
  - app runtime   : apprt.Runtime.none
  - font engine   : font.main.Backend.coretext
  - renderer      : renderer.generic.Renderer(renderer.Metal)
  - libxev        : kqueue

### OS Version Information

macOS Tahoe 26.2

### (Linux only) Display Server

None

### (Linux only) Desktop Environment/Window Manager

_No response_

### Minimal Ghostty Configuration

```ini
shell-integration=fish

font-family = "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono"
adjust-cell-height=6
cursor-style = bar
shell-integration-features = no-cursor
adjust-cursor-height=-4
adjust-cursor-thickness=2
cursor-style-blink=false

### Additional Relevant Configuration

_No response_

### I acknowledge that:

- [X] I have reviewed the FAQ and confirm that my issue is NOT among them.
- [X] I have searched the Ghostty repository (both open and closed Discussions and Issues) and confirm this is not a duplicate of an existing issue or discussion.
- [X] I have checked the "Preview" tab on all text fields to ensure that everything looks right, and have wrapped all configuration and code in code blocks with a group of three backticks (` ``` `) on separate lines.

[ghost]

I am also experiencing this problem with the latest macOS and Ghostty. I have effectively only customized the font, cell size, palette colors, window styling - everything else is default. I did not set any shell related settings and I am using the default zsh provided by macOS.

The width is adjusting fine. The height doesn't seem to adjust at all whether an integer or percentage is specified

[mabugaj]

I'm a linux user, to be precise gnome + wayland and I've got the same issue. I was trying different settings and my cursor height doesn't change a bit. It's always at the same level no matter what.

[natesilva]

I’m experiencing the same issue. I am not familiar with this codebase, but according to Claude:

In Face.zig:208, the sprite renderer hardcodes const height = metrics.cell_height — that means metrics.cursor_height (which adjust-cursor-height modifies) is never used when drawing the cursor sprite.

That’s found here:

ghostty/src/font/sprite/Face.zig

Line 208 in 54ac5fd

const height = metrics.cell_height;