GTK SIGABRT crash closes all Ghostty windows on Ubuntu 24.04 Wayland

[MalekSmida]

Issue Description

Ghostty crashed and all open Ghostty windows closed at once.

At the time of the crash I had 3 Ghostty terminals open:

• 2 terminals running Codex sessions
• 1 terminal running a local web app on localhost

The crash happened suddenly. All Ghostty windows disappeared together.

Ubuntu apport generated a crash report at:

/var/crash/_usr_bin_ghostty.1000.crash

I did not attach the full apport file because it may contain local paths, environment variables, and process metadata, but I can provide more excerpts if useful.

Expected Behavior

Ghostty should keep running, and one terminal/window crashing or closing should not abruptly close all open Ghostty windows.

Actual Behavior

All open Ghostty windows closed at once.

The journal shows the main Ghostty process aborted with a GLib/GObject assertion:

GLib-GObject:ERROR:../../../gobject/gobject.c:2157:object_set_property: assertion failed: (class != NULL)

The apport crash report shows Signal 6 / SIGABRT for /usr/bin/ghostty.

Reproduction Steps

I do not have a reliable minimal reproduction yet. This happened once during normal use.

What I was doing:

1. Open Ghostty on Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS / GNOME Wayland.
2. Have 3 Ghostty terminals open.
3. Run Codex sessions in 2 terminals.
4. Run a local web app on localhost in the third terminal.
5. Continue normal terminal usage.
6. All Ghostty windows suddenly close together.

The journal also shows GLib/GObject warnings around 5 minutes before the abort, after a Ghostty surface closed.

Ghostty Logs

2026-07-04T20:30:35+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: info(io_exec): pty fd closed, read thread exiting
2026-07-04T20:30:35+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: error(glib): CRITICAL: GLib-GObject: instance of invalid non-instantiatable type '(null)'
2026-07-04T20:30:35+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: error(glib): CRITICAL: GLib-GObject: g_signal_handlers_disconnect_matched: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)'
failed
2026-07-04T20:30:35+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: error(glib): CRITICAL: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
2026-07-04T20:30:35+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: info(surface): surface closed addr=57e45986c2b0

2026-07-04T20:35:31+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: GLib-GObject:ERROR:../../../gobject/gobject.c:2157:object_set_property: assertion failed: (class != NULL)
2026-07-04T20:35:31+02:00 x-terminal-emulator[5566]: Bail out! GLib-GObject:ERROR:../../../gobject/gobject.c:2157:object_set_property: assertion failed: (class != NULL)

Crash report excerpts:

ProblemType: Crash
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/ghostty
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator
Package: ghostty 1.3.1-0~ppa2
Signal: 6
SignalName: SIGABRT

StacktraceTop:
?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
g_assertion_message_expr () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
g_object_new_with_properties () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0

Relevant stack frames:
g_object_new_with_properties() from libgobject-2.0.so.0
g_object_new() from libgobject-2.0.so.0
gtk_scrolled_window_set_hadjustment() from libgtk-4.so.1
gtk_builder_extend_with_template() from libgtk-4.so.1
gtk_widget_init_template() from libgtk-4.so.1

Ghostty Version

Ghostty 1.3.1

Version
- version: 1.3.1
- channel: stable
Build Config
- Zig version   : 0.15.2
- build mode    : .ReleaseFast
- app runtime   : .gtk
- font engine   : .fontconfig_freetype
- renderer      : renderer.generic.Renderer(renderer.OpenGL)
- libxev        : io_uring
- kernel version: 6.17.0-35-generic
- desktop env   : other
- GTK version   :
    build         : 4.14.5
    runtime       : 4.14.5
- libadwaita    : enabled
    build         : 1.5.0
    runtime       : 1.5.0
- libX11        : enabled
- libwayland    : enabled

OS Version Information

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS

(Linux only) Display Server

Wayland

(Linux only) Desktop Environment/Window Manager

GNOME Shell 46.0 on Ubuntu GNOME Wayland session

Minimal Ghostty Configuration

theme = Dark Modern
maximize = false
fullscreen = false
window-width = 160
window-height = 34
font-size = 13.5
copy-on-select = clipboard
selection-clear-on-copy = true

Additional Relevant Configuration

At the time of the crash:

• 2 Ghostty terminals were running Codex sessions.
• 1 Ghostty terminal was running a local web app on localhost.

I was launching Ghostty through x-terminal-emulator, which points to Ghostty:

/usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator -> /usr/bin/ghostty
Package: ghostty 1.3.1-0~ppa2

I acknowledge that:

• I have reviewed the FAQ and confirm that my issue is NOT among them.
• 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.
• 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.

[jcollie]

Ghostty should keep running, and one terminal/window crashing or closing should not abruptly close all open Ghostty windows.

Note that this is basically impossible (unless you turn GTK single instance off). Under normal conditions Ghostty runs as a single process that controls all of the tabs/splits/windows. If that process crashes, it's going to take all of the windows with it. The alternative (running every window as a separate process) gives up a lot of features, uses more memory, and is slower to start up.

That said, it looks like your crash is inside GTK and you are running a very old version of GTK. I'd recommend updating to Ubuntu 26.04 if you can. You can also try compiling from source as there are a lot of unreleased crash fixes in the repo at this point.

[iboalali]

Ghostty crashes for me reliably when I move it from between screens. I don't know if it is related

I'm on Ubuntu 24.04