<img src="images/noctty-flag-light.svg" width="320" />
A native Windows terminal built on Ghostty's terminal core.
Tabs, splits, and session restore · Win32 and OpenGL · No telemetry
Download
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Website
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Getting started
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Windows guide
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Status
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Contributing
Formerly winghostty. Renamed in August 2026 after a trademark request from the Ghostty team.
Noctty is a Windows terminal that pairs the terminal core from
Ghostty with a native Win32 app
written for this fork.
- Native Windows UI: tabs, splits, and context menus, per-monitor DPI
scaling, and IME input.
- Your shells, found for you: a shell picker for PowerShell, cmd, Git Bash,
and WSL distributions.
- Session restore: windows, tabs, splits, and working directories come
back the next time you launch. Running programs are not restored.
- Command palette: find and run actions from the keyboard.
- Ghostty config and themes: most Ghostty options and themes work as they
are.
- Private by default: no telemetry, and crash dumps never leave your PC.
Noctty is young and has one maintainer. It installs alongside your current
terminal and does not replace it, so you can try both side by side. It runs on Windows
only; macOS and Linux are not planned. See docs/status.md for
what works and what is still experimental, and the
capability matrix for a feature-by-feature
comparison with upstream Ghostty.
Install
Requirements: Windows 10 version 1809 (build 17763) or later, or
Windows 11, on x64 or ARM64, with a GPU driver that supports OpenGL 4.3 or
later.
- There is no software renderer, so Noctty won't start where OpenGL falls
back to software. That is common over Remote Desktop and in VMs without 3D
acceleration.
- On Windows on Arm PCs, first install the free OpenCL, OpenGL, and Vulkan
Compatibility Pack from the Microsoft Store
(why).
The latest release is
noctty 1.3.131,
published 2026-09-24.
With Scoop
scoop bucket add noctty https://github.com/amanthanvi/scoop-noctty
scoop install noctty/noctty
A WinGet package is planned but not published yet.
Direct download
The installer adds a Start menu entry, an "Open noctty here" item to
Explorer's right-click menu, and an uninstaller. The portable ZIP runs from
any folder without installing.
> [!NOTE]
> Releases are signed with a self-signed certificate, so Windows SmartScreen
> shows "Windows protected your PC" when you first run one. Check the download
> first, then click More info, then Run anyway. Hash the file and
> compare the result with its line in SHA256SUMS-windows-x64.txt or
> SHA256SUMS-windows-arm64.txt from the same release:
>
> powershell > Get-FileHash .\noctty-1.3.131-windows-x64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256 >
>
> A matching checksum shows the file arrived intact, not who published it.
> docs/verify-release.md covers the stronger
> provenance and signature checks.
Each release also includes signed manifests of the portable ZIP contents
(noctty-1.3.131-windows-x64-portable.manifest.ps1 and
noctty-1.3.131-windows-arm64-portable.manifest.ps1) and SHA256SUMS.txt, an
alias of the x64 checksum file kept for older auto-update clients.
Scoop puts noctty on your PATH; the installer and the portable ZIP do not.
To run the noctty commands in this README, add the install folder to PATH
or run .\noctty.com from that folder.
For portable mode and uninstalling, see
docs/getting-started.md. Switching terminals? There
are guides for moving from
Windows Terminal and from
Git Bash/mintty.
Getting started
On first launch, Noctty writes a config template to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\noctty\config.ghostty. Every default is built into the app,
so the template sets no options: add only what you want to change. You can
also press Ctrl+, to open the Settings window.
font-family = JetBrains Mono
font-size = 12
theme = Dracula
Save the file, then press Ctrl+Shift+, to
reload. Run noctty +list-themes to browse the bundled themes.
A few keys to start with:
| Action | Keys |
|---|
| Copy / paste | Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V |
| New tab | Ctrl+Shift+T |
| Split right | Ctrl+Shift+\ |
| Split down | Ctrl+Shift+E |
| Move between panes | Alt+arrow keys |
| Command palette | Ctrl+Shift+P |
| Search | Ctrl+Shift+F |
| Settings | Ctrl+, |
| Reload config | Ctrl+Shift+, |
The full list, and how to rebind keys, is in
docs/getting-started.md. To drive
Noctty from scripts and the command line, see
docs/automation.md.
Privacy and updates
- No telemetry. Noctty goes online only to reach GitHub Releases for
updates.
- Updates are checked when Noctty starts, at most once every 24 hours.
Nothing is installed until you start the update yourself. Set
auto-update = off to stop checking, or auto-update = download to have
Noctty download and verify the update ahead of time.
- Crash dumps stay on your PC in
%LOCALAPPDATA%\noctty\crash and are
never uploaded.
More detail is in docs/windows.md.
Troubleshooting
- Won't start? If a broken config or saved session blocks launch, run
noctty --safe-mode. It starts once with built-in defaults and no session
restore, so you can fix the config.
- Crashed?
noctty +crash-report lists the local crash dumps. For a bug
report, noctty +diagnostic-bundle writes a support bundle that leaves out
terminal content, commands, and config values by default. Crash dumps can
hold sensitive memory, so review anything before you share it.
See docs/windows.md for more.
Build from source
You need:
- Zig 0.15.2 or a later 0.15.x release
- Visual Studio 2022 with the MSVC toolchain on
PATH
- Git for Windows
git clone https://github.com/amanthanvi/noctty.git
cd noctty
zig build -Demit-exe=true
The app is built to zig-out\bin\noctty.exe. Building has no Windows version
requirement of its own, but running the result needs Windows 10 1809 or later.
HACKING.md covers the dev shell and tests, and
PACKAGING.md covers building the installer and portable ZIP.
Relationship to Ghostty
Noctty is a fork of Ghostty. It takes in upstream changes in planned merge
windows, normally after each Ghostty release; see the
upstream merge policy, and
docs/status.md for the Ghostty version it is
currently based on. It shares
Ghostty's terminal core, fonts, renderer, input handling, config, shell
integration, and libghostty-vt. The Win32 app, the updater, and the Windows
packaging were written for this fork, and the macOS and GTK apps have been
removed. When Windows conventions and upstream behavior disagree, Noctty
follows Windows.
Noctty is an independent project and is not affiliated with Ghostty.
Contributing
Bug reports and focused pull requests are welcome. Please read
CONTRIBUTING.md and AI_POLICY.md first.
Pull requests are reviewed automatically by Greptile.
License
MIT, the same as Ghostty. Copyright © 2024 Mitchell Hashimoto, Ghostty
contributors. Changes made in this fork are released under the same license.
See LICENSE.