Use this command to install winghostty with WinGet:
winget install --id=AmanThanvi.winghostty -e
WingHostty is a terminal emulator for Windows designed to provide developers with a feature-rich, native experience. Built using Ghostty's terminal core, it offers robust VT parsing, scrollback, and shell integration while running as a standalone Win32 application.
Key Features:
Native Win32 Runtime: Includes a tab bar, per-monitor DPI scaling, DWM dark title bar support, IME functionality, drag-and-drop, and native right-click menus.
OpenGL Renderer: Utilizes OpenGL 4.3 for rendering, ensuring smooth performance.
Shell Integration: Supports PowerShell, cmd, Git Bash, and optional WSL integration through an in-app profile picker.
Session Restore: Maintains window shape, tabs, splits, profiles, working directories, and titles across sessions.
GitHub Releases Updater: Checks for updates and verifies downloads using GitHub's public API.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for developers comfortable with configuring terminal applications. WingHostty provides a highly customizable experience tailored to Windows users, enhancing productivity through seamless shell integration and native runtime features. It is particularly suited for those who prioritize feature richness and platform-specific optimization without external dependencies or cross-platform concerns.
Installable via winget, WingHostty offers a stable and efficient terminal solution for Windows developers.
noctty is a terminal emulator for Windows, built on the terminal
core of Ghostty and wrapped in
a Win32 app written for this fork. That gets you:
Native tabs, splits, and right-click context menus
Session restore that brings back your tabs, splits, and working
directories
A fuzzy-searched palette for actions, tabs, panes, profiles, and
settings
A shell picker for PowerShell, cmd, Git Bash, and WSL
Dark title bar, per-monitor DPI scaling, IME input, and file
drag-and-drop
Ghostty's engine underneath: true color, Kitty graphics, shell
integration, and most Ghostty config options and themes
No telemetry, and crash dumps are never uploaded
noctty is built for developers who are comfortable editing a
plain-text config file and clicking through a SmartScreen warning on
first install.
Install
noctty runs on Windows 10 and 11, x64 and ARM64, and needs a GPU
driver with OpenGL 4.3 or newer. Latest stable release:
noctty 1.3.123,
published 2026-08-06.
The older
SHA256SUMS.txt
is still published as an x64 auto-update compatibility alias.
The installers and the binaries inside the portable ZIP are
Authenticode-signed with a self-signed certificate; the ZIP container
itself is checksummed, not signed. SmartScreen warns on first run
because that certificate carries no publisher reputation, so check the
download against its checksum file before you run it.
docs/getting-started.md explains the warning
and walks through install, portable use, and uninstall.
First launch
On first launch, noctty writes a config template to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\noctty\config.ghostty. The template sets no options;
defaults live in the binary. A minimal config:
font-family = JetBrains Mono
font-size = 12
# Pick a theme from: noctty +list-themes
# Theme files are config files; only use themes from sources you trust.
theme = Dracula
Reload config without restarting: Ctrl+Shift+,
A few keybindings to get moving: Ctrl+Shift+T opens a tab,
Ctrl+Shift+\ and Ctrl+Shift+E split, Alt+Arrow moves between
panes, Ctrl+Shift+P opens the command palette, and Ctrl+Shift+C /
Ctrl+Shift+V copy and paste. The full table, plus how to rebind, is in
docs/getting-started.md.
Status
noctty is young: it has a single maintainer, and its first public
release was April 2026. It installs as its own top-level app, so you can
keep Windows Terminal, WezTerm, or Alacritty next to it while you try
it. macOS and Linux app runtimes are not planned.
Questions and feedback go to
Discussions.
GitHub Issues are reserved for reproducible bugs.
Privacy, updates, and crashes
noctty sends no telemetry and no analytics. The only outbound
network activity is the GitHub Releases updater, which runs once per
launch unless you set auto-update = off. It checks at most once every 24 hours, can stage a
verified installer in download mode, and never installs anything
without you starting it.
Crash dumps are never uploaded; they stay under
%LOCALAPPDATA%\noctty\crash, readable with
noctty +crash-report. If a broken config or saved session state
blocks launch, noctty --safe-mode starts once with built-in
defaults.
Updater verification, crash-report details, and diagnostic bundles are
documented in docs/windows.md.
Build from source
Most users should install from Releases. Building needs Windows 10/11 on
x64 or ARM64, Zig 0.15.x (patch ≥ 2), Visual Studio 2022 with the MSVC
toolchain on PATH, and Git for Windows. Then build:
zig build -Demit-exe=true
Output lands at zig-out\bin\noctty.exe. Toolchain details,
dependency cache seeding, the pre-configured dev shell, and test commands
are in HACKING.md. Building the installer and portable ZIP
yourself is covered in PACKAGING.md.
Relationship to Ghostty
noctty is a fork of Ghostty: upstream is tracked as the upstream
Git remote, and the fork relationship is visible in full Git history.
Shared with upstream: the terminal core (src/terminal/), fonts
(src/font/), the renderer (src/renderer/), input, config, termio,
crash handling, shell integration, the inspector (src/inspector/), and
libghostty-vt, the Ghostty VT library, which still builds here for Zig
and C projects.
New in this fork: the Win32 runtime (src/apprt/win32.zig,
src/apprt/win32_theme.zig), the D3D11/DirectComposition window-chrome
pipeline, the updater (src/update/github_releases.zig), and the
Windows packaging (dist/windows/, scripts/package-windows.ps1).
Removed: the upstream macos/ Xcode project, the src/apprt/gtk/
runtime, and Flatpak, Snap, and other Linux desktop packaging.
Because the 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.
Pull requests get automated review from Greptile:
