<img src="images/noctty-flag-light.svg" width="320" />
Noctty is Ghostty's terminal core in a native Windows app.
Tabs, splits, session restore · Win32 and OpenGL · No telemetry
winghostty was renamed to Noctty in August 2026 after a trademark request from the Ghostty team.
Releases
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Getting started
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Windows
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Status
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Contributing
noctty is a terminal emulator for Windows. The terminal core comes from
Ghostty; the Win32 app around it was
written for this fork. You get native tabs, splits, and context menus, session
restore, a command palette, a shell picker for PowerShell, cmd, Git Bash, and
WSL, per-monitor DPI scaling, IME input, and most Ghostty config options and
themes.
The project is young and has one maintainer. It installs as its own app, so
keep your current terminal while you try it. macOS and Linux are not planned.
docs/status.md tracks what works and what is experimental;
docs/windows-capability-matrix.md
compares it feature by feature with upstream Ghostty.
Install
You need Windows 10 version 1809 (build 17763) or newer, or Windows 11, on
x64 or ARM64, and a GPU driver with OpenGL 4.3 or newer. Latest release:
noctty 1.3.127,
published 2026-09-07.
With Scoop (the WinGet package is pending bootstrap):
scoop bucket add noctty https://github.com/amanthanvi/scoop-noctty
scoop install noctty/noctty
Or download from the release page. The installers add a Start menu entry; the
portable ZIPs run from any folder.
Each release also ships signed manifests of the portable ZIP contents
(noctty-1.3.127-windows-x64-portable.manifest.ps1,
noctty-1.3.127-windows-arm64-portable.manifest.ps1) and checksums
(SHA256SUMS-windows-x64.txt, SHA256SUMS-windows-arm64.txt, plus
SHA256SUMS.txt, an x64 alias kept for older auto-update clients).
Releases are signed with a self-signed certificate, so SmartScreen warns on
first run. Check the download against its checksum file before running it;
docs/verify-release.md covers that and the stronger
checks. Install steps, portable use, and uninstall are in
docs/getting-started.md. Guides for moving from
Windows Terminal and
Git Bash/mintty are also available.
Configure
On first launch noctty writes a config template to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\noctty\config.ghostty. Defaults live in the binary, so the
template sets nothing. Set font-family, font-size, and theme there and
press Ctrl+Shift+, to reload.
Ctrl+Shift+T opens a tab, Ctrl+Shift+\ and Ctrl+Shift+E split,
Alt+Arrow moves between panes, and Ctrl+Shift+P opens the command palette.
The full table and how to rebind are in
docs/getting-started.md. Scripting
noctty from the CLI is covered in docs/automation.md.
Updates, crashes, and privacy
noctty sends no telemetry. Its only outbound network activity is the update
check against GitHub Releases, which runs on launch (at most once every 24
hours) unless you set auto-update = off. An update is never installed until
you start it. Crash dumps stay under %LOCALAPPDATA%\noctty\crash and are
never uploaded; read them with noctty +crash-report. If a broken config or
saved session blocks launch, noctty --safe-mode starts once with built-in
defaults. Details are in docs/windows.md.
Build from source
You need Zig 0.15.x (patch 2 or later), Visual Studio 2022 with the MSVC
toolchain on PATH, and Git for Windows. Compiling has no build-number
requirement of its own; running what you build still needs Windows 10 1809
(build 17763) or newer.
zig build -Demit-exe=true
The binary lands at zig-out\bin\noctty.exe. HACKING.md covers
the dev shell and tests; PACKAGING.md covers building the
installer and portable ZIP.
Relationship to Ghostty
noctty is a fork of Ghostty and tracks it as the upstream Git remote. The
terminal core, fonts, renderer, input, config, shell integration, and
libghostty-vt are shared. The Win32 runtime, updater, and Windows packaging
are new here; the macOS and GTK runtimes are removed. Where Windows-native
behavior conflicts with upstream's, this fork picks the Windows-native result.
noctty is not affiliated with the Ghostty project.
Contributing
Bug reports and focused PRs are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md
and AI_POLICY.md first. Questions go to
Discussions; Issues are for
reproducible bugs. Pull requests get automated review from Greptile:
License
MIT. Copyright © 2024 Mitchell Hashimoto, Ghostty contributors. See
LICENSE. Fork-specific changes are contributed under the same
license.