Ghostty 1.4.0 Released: Major Performance Boosts, Kitty Graphics Support, and New Linux Features

The development team behind Ghostty, the popular open-source, Zig-based terminal emulator, has officially launched version 1.4.0. Arriving after seven months of focused development, this major update delivers a robust collection of improvements, ranging from substantial performance optimisations on Linux and macOS to a more capable SSH implementation and an intuitive new method for rearranging terminal split views using simple drag-and-drop mechanics.

One of the standout achievements in Ghostty 1.4.0 is its introduction of complete support for the Kitty graphics protocol, encompassing both animations and relative placements. With this addition, Ghostty becomes the very first terminal emulator other than Kitty itself to offer full support for the protocol. For developers and power users who rely heavily on terminal user interface (TUI) tools or custom scripts to render rich images directly within their terminal windows, this represents a significant technical milestone.

Beyond visual enhancements, the development team has placed a heavy emphasis on underlying system efficiency. Ghostty 1.4.0 introduces an advanced scrollback compression mechanism that automatically compresses off-screen terminal history whenever the application is idle. According to the developers, this intelligent feature can lower the physical RAM consumption of text-heavy histories by up to 90 percent. When users scroll back through their history or make use of the built-in text search feature that was introduced earlier this year in version 1.3.0, the content is seamlessly and instantaneously decompressed.

For Linux users, the update brings targeted improvements to the GTK application build, particularly concerning display scaling. Ghostty now renders text with exceptional sharpness at fractional display scales, such as 125 percent and 150 percent. This refinement addresses long-standing user feedback regarding blurry text rendering on high-resolution displays running fractional scaling environments.

Under the hood, the Linux rendering pipeline has also undergone a major architectural overhaul. Ghostty has replaced its previous reliance on GtkGLArea with a modern EGL rendering pipeline that operates on a dedicated separate thread. This new pipeline passes rendered frames to GTK utilizing DMA-BUFs (Direct Memory Access Buffers). While this approach requires a compatible system EGL library, the application gracefully falls back to slower CPU-based copying methods if a user’s graphics processing unit cannot export DMA-BUFs.

The user interface on Linux has also gained convenience features, most notably the ability to rearrange terminal splits using the mouse. When a single tab contains two or more split panes, each split now features a distinct grab handle. Users can simply click and drag the handle to move the split, dropping it intuitively onto another target zone with visual drop-zone highlights guiding the placement.

Additional refinements included in the 1.4.0 release cover a variety of user-requested tweaks. Configuration options for GTK builds have been expanded with new settings such as gtk-horizontal-tab-scroll, which can be toggled to false in order to prevent accidental two-finger scrolling from switching between open tabs. Furthermore, users can now implement gtk-tabs-inverted to reposition the close button to the start of each individual tab.

Installing Ghostty 1.4.0

While modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu include Ghostty in their official repositories—making a standard package installation straightforward—those system packages do not always feature the absolute newest point releases. Users wishing to immediately experience the features and performance enhancements of version 1.4.0 will need to look to alternative distribution channels.

Several community-maintained installation routes are currently available for Linux users. An unofficial community-maintained DEB package can be installed directly, supported by a dedicated Launchpad PPA that streamlines future updates. Additionally, containerized and portable alternatives such as an official-style AppImage and an unofficial Snap package are accessible to the wider Linux community.

On macOS, Ghostty provides official precompiled binaries, which remain the recommended approach as they feature built-in, in-app updating capabilities. Alternatively, macOS users can install and manage the application via popular command-line package managers, including Homebrew through its Cask interface.

Ghostty Drops Support for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

The arrival of Ghostty 1.4.0 brings notable changes to system requirements that affect users of older long-term support distributions. Because the new version explicitly requires GTK 4.18 and libadwaita 1.7 in accordance with the terminal’s established GTK and Adwaita version support policy, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS no longer meets the necessary runtime dependencies. Consequently, native DEB versions of Ghostty can no longer be installed on Ubuntu 24.04 systems via traditional packaging channels.

Looking beyond the standalone terminal application, the broader ecosystem surrounding Ghostty continues to expand. The underlying libghostty terminal emulation library is slated to power the integrated terminals in upcoming versions of JetBrains integrated development environments. Meanwhile, while Linux Mint’s newly introduced terminal application, Velocitty, does not directly incorporate the core library, its overall architectural design was heavily inspired by the pioneering work behind Ghostty.