7 ms·

I have been pretty happy with Alacritty for a while but just tried Ghostty and am a little bit mind-blown. The fact that it has a built-in theme picker is insan

by alkh 11mo ago

I have been pretty happy with Alacritty for a while but just tried Ghostty and am a little bit mind-blown. The fact that it has a built-in theme picker is insanely convenient for people working on multiple computers at the same time(so the same theme might not work everywhere). Overall, it literally looks like a better Alacritty alternative. The creator(s) did a great job!

hnlmorg 11mo ago
I thought built in theme pickers were the norm…?
- alkh 11mo ago
  Lol, mb, but I don't believe that's the case for Alacritty. As for the Apple Terminal, it is not great
  - hnlmorg 11mo ago
    Apple Terminal is a lot like Internet Explorer in the 00s: for power users it’s only purpose is an interface to install something else which doesn’t suck.
    - altairprime 11mo ago
      As a decrepit old {COMMO} power user, anything that doesn’t give me fully integrated scripting with expect/switch/dialog and a popup script editor, honestly hasn’t been worth investing in further. So I’ve been on Linux console, Putty, and macOS Terminal ever since. My terminal.app color scheme uses P3 colors on 7% gray rather than the usual sRGB colors so that I can use an OKLCH equidistant palette, and I make extensive use of shift-cmd-up to select and copy “the previous command’s output”. I considered switching for 24-bit color but ultimately I prefer not having to learn a new “rudimentary” app that’s deficient versus my nostalgia just like all the others, and it drastically reduces my stress level when working on other people’s devices that I am proficient in working with an OEM environment. I occasionally use tabs but for the most part I prefer windows, so that I can drag them around and over/underlapped with other work I’m doing in my GUI. Not a big fan of screen and tmux except as their limited value to me in mitigating ssh disconnects when that’s a concern. Perhaps your definition of power user is limited to uses aligned with your own?
      - jjwiseman 11mo ago
        Oh wow, I haven't thought of COMMO in decades.
        altairprime 11mo ago
        I think of it every time I see 'ansible' come up, because the ability to create and run what everyone calls 'playbooks' now should have beeen integrated into the terminal like it was back in the 80s over dialup. I'm all for being able to git commit the resulting script (they’re just text files!) but being able to launch a playbook and halt it and repair it and resume was, like. Sigh.
      - hnlmorg 11mo ago
        > Perhaps your definition of power user is limited to uses aligned with your own? I was clearly being flippant. Terminal.app does suck but if you’re happy in it then I’m not going to judge. For what it’s worth, I cut my teeth on very limited terminals of the 80s and 90s too. But I ended up writing my own terminal emulator because I wasn’t entirely happy with any of the options available these days.
        altairprime 11mo ago
        > Terminal.app does suck but if you’re happy in it Clarification: As noted above, Terminal.app is indistinguishably suck from all the rest in the areas that are materially important to me, so no meaningful gain in happiness exists with any current alternative. I enjoy one of the specific features it offers but I’d give that up the instant a relevant-to-me improvement over the status quo was available. Perhaps someday.
      - pseudalopex 11mo ago
        Where could I learn more of COMMO? How do current terminal emulators fall short? Wikipedia's article was minimal.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo
        11mo ago
    - bigstrat2003 11mo ago
      I used IE back in the 00s (up until Chrome came out), and I certainly was a power user. I liked it just fine. I think that it's a matter of personal preference rather than something sucking (or not).
      - hnlmorg 11mo ago
        I was clearly being flippant. But IE definitely sucked.
    - phantasmish 11mo ago
      It's what I've used for years and it's entirely fine for me. For a long time I installed iterm2 because "that's what you do" but one day I realized I was suffering a little wasted disk space, slightly slower start-up, and slightly worse input latency, for... no reason, because I didn't do anything with it that Terminal.app couldn't do. 25 years on unixy operating systems. Spend tons of time in the terminal.
- alwillis 11mo ago
  The theme picker in Ghostty is above and beyond anything I’ve ever seen in a terminal.
  - ashton314 11mo ago
    Holy crap you’re right. I just found that and it’s amazing
  - hnlmorg 11mo ago
    Why?
mort96 11mo ago
The only thing I'm missing from ghostty is scrollback search. It's planned AFAIU, I hope it gets there eventually. Otherwise, ghostty has been pretty good. (I know you can fake scrollback search with tmux. It's not the same.)
- nusaru 11mo ago
  Relevant GitHub issue: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/189 https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/189
  - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
    > To be completely clear, it’s not on the “IMMEDIATE” roadmap (as noted in the prior comment). It’s absolutely on the roadmap and I even already started some it in a branch. But as a passion project, we prioritize working on whatever we want and this isn’t currently the priority. It’s high on the list but not like.. next release (“immediate”) priority at the time of this comment. I mean I can respect that, personally it isn't as a big of deal with me so I use ghostty on my mac but I would still think that I would advocate ghostty only after disclosing this to anyone to be really honest.
    - dpatterbee 11mo ago
      It's planned for 1.3 in March https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes/1-2-0#roadmap https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes/1-2-0#roadmap
- klooney 11mo ago
  There seems to be a contingent that just doesn't use scroll back search, which I find kind of baffling.
  - sevg 11mo ago
    I’ve never used scrollback search, and it was a discovery for me that there’s a contingent that are very vocal in their demands for scrollback search. I can see why someone would feel attached to this feature though. Mostly I’m looking forward to seeing it implemented so I can stop reading complaints about this being missing in every thread about ghostty!
chrysoprace 11mo ago
I've always wanted to like Alacritty but they've had an open issue to support ligatures since 2017 and they're not in a rush to implement them. Now the only feature I need in Ghostty is Windows support.
- Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
  > Now the only feature I need in Ghostty is Windows support. I use ghostty on my mac but have you forgot about ctrl + f to find things support in ghostty (I don't think it has ctrl f support iirc right?)
  - chrysoprace 11mo ago
    I'm always running tmux so it's not typically a feature I look for, but as you mention it doesn't seem to trigger a find for terminal scrollback. Wezterm doesn't do this either so maybe that's an iTerm thing. I always assume Ctrl keybindings will trigger emacs mode shortcuts in the tty. Update: Windows Terminal doesn't do it either.
    - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
      I would love to use tmux. I have used yazi in the past and I really liked it but I was barely using it to its fullest potential. I think I have "skill issue" regarding tmux and I used to use hyprland (recently went to niri) and I just always preferred opening up another terminal I used to use (which was foot back when I was using my own config and it was alacritty on cachy/ idk what was on omarchy for the time I was on omarchy but I don't like omarchy) Is there actually a way to fix this skill issue, like I want something so simple in start that I just run it and forget and still get decent amount of benefits?
      - chrysoprace 11mo ago
        tmux fits my personal use case better so I'll tell you why I use tmux and then if that resonates with you, then you might get value from that as well. - It's generally bundled on most distros, or available for install in most default repositories. - tmux sessions are available over ssh, so if I can continue where I left off over ssh (this is probably my main use case). - I can full screen my terminal instead of having multiple terminals, and split in tmux. I usually split vim buffers, but then keep a terminal split beside it or in another tmux window. - It's keyboard-driven, and universal across different window managers. Even if I switch from MacOS to Windows or to an X11 distro, tmux will still have the same keybinds using the same configuration language. I can also use vim keys to navigate the scrollback history. - Its config language is simple enough for the modifications I personally need. I haven't felt that I need to learn the syntax beyond the basics. - Knowing tmux is also a helpful skill for managing servers, which I do from time to time (my raspberry pi is still running a tmux session from when I last rebooted it).
seanw444 11mo ago
Same here. Any replacement I moved to needed to have content centering, where the margin around the cells is equal in both dimensions when the cells don't fit perfectly into the window. Kinda crazy that it's not a feature in a lot of terminals I checked over the years. I wouldn't even consider myself OCD, but it drove me nuts until I found a terminal that let me do it.
OberstKrueger 11mo ago
The first time I went through the theme picker, I was tickled to see a theme I had made years ago included. Realized later it was due to it including all of the themes from iTerm2 Color Schemes automatically. It made for a more fun first experience with a terminal emulator than I expected to have.

by alkh 11mo ago

hnlmorg 11mo ago

I thought built in theme pickers were the norm…?

alkh 11mo ago
Lol, mb, but I don't believe that's the case for Alacritty. As for the Apple Terminal, it is not great
- hnlmorg 11mo ago
  Apple Terminal is a lot like Internet Explorer in the 00s: for power users it’s only purpose is an interface to install something else which doesn’t suck.
  - altairprime 11mo ago
    As a decrepit old {COMMO} power user, anything that doesn’t give me fully integrated scripting with expect/switch/dialog and a popup script editor, honestly hasn’t been worth investing in further. So I’ve been on Linux console, Putty, and macOS Terminal ever since. My terminal.app color scheme uses P3 colors on 7% gray rather than the usual sRGB colors so that I can use an OKLCH equidistant palette, and I make extensive use of shift-cmd-up to select and copy “the previous command’s output”. I considered switching for 24-bit color but ultimately I prefer not having to learn a new “rudimentary” app that’s deficient versus my nostalgia just like all the others, and it drastically reduces my stress level when working on other people’s devices that I am proficient in working with an OEM environment. I occasionally use tabs but for the most part I prefer windows, so that I can drag them around and over/underlapped with other work I’m doing in my GUI. Not a big fan of screen and tmux except as their limited value to me in mitigating ssh disconnects when that’s a concern. Perhaps your definition of power user is limited to uses aligned with your own?
    - jjwiseman 11mo ago
      Oh wow, I haven't thought of COMMO in decades.
      - altairprime 11mo ago
        I think of it every time I see 'ansible' come up, because the ability to create and run what everyone calls 'playbooks' now should have beeen integrated into the terminal like it was back in the 80s over dialup. I'm all for being able to git commit the resulting script (they’re just text files!) but being able to launch a playbook and halt it and repair it and resume was, like. Sigh.
    - hnlmorg 11mo ago
      > Perhaps your definition of power user is limited to uses aligned with your own? I was clearly being flippant. Terminal.app does suck but if you’re happy in it then I’m not going to judge. For what it’s worth, I cut my teeth on very limited terminals of the 80s and 90s too. But I ended up writing my own terminal emulator because I wasn’t entirely happy with any of the options available these days.
      - altairprime 11mo ago
        > Terminal.app does suck but if you’re happy in it Clarification: As noted above, Terminal.app is indistinguishably suck from all the rest in the areas that are materially important to me, so no meaningful gain in happiness exists with any current alternative. I enjoy one of the specific features it offers but I’d give that up the instant a relevant-to-me improvement over the status quo was available. Perhaps someday.
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      Where could I learn more of COMMO? How do current terminal emulators fall short? Wikipedia's article was minimal.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo
      - 11mo ago
  - bigstrat2003 11mo ago
    I used IE back in the 00s (up until Chrome came out), and I certainly was a power user. I liked it just fine. I think that it's a matter of personal preference rather than something sucking (or not).
    - hnlmorg 11mo ago
      I was clearly being flippant. But IE definitely sucked.
  - phantasmish 11mo ago
    It's what I've used for years and it's entirely fine for me. For a long time I installed iterm2 because "that's what you do" but one day I realized I was suffering a little wasted disk space, slightly slower start-up, and slightly worse input latency, for... no reason, because I didn't do anything with it that Terminal.app couldn't do. 25 years on unixy operating systems. Spend tons of time in the terminal.
alwillis 11mo ago
The theme picker in Ghostty is above and beyond anything I’ve ever seen in a terminal.
- ashton314 11mo ago
  Holy crap you’re right. I just found that and it’s amazing
- hnlmorg 11mo ago
  Why?

mort96 11mo ago

The only thing I'm missing from ghostty is scrollback search. It's planned AFAIU, I hope it gets there eventually. Otherwise, ghostty has been pretty good. (I know you can fake scrollback search with tmux. It's not the same.)

nusaru 11mo ago
Relevant GitHub issue: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/189 https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/189
- Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
  > To be completely clear, it’s not on the “IMMEDIATE” roadmap (as noted in the prior comment). It’s absolutely on the roadmap and I even already started some it in a branch. But as a passion project, we prioritize working on whatever we want and this isn’t currently the priority. It’s high on the list but not like.. next release (“immediate”) priority at the time of this comment. I mean I can respect that, personally it isn't as a big of deal with me so I use ghostty on my mac but I would still think that I would advocate ghostty only after disclosing this to anyone to be really honest.
  - dpatterbee 11mo ago
    It's planned for 1.3 in March https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes/1-2-0#roadmap https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes/1-2-0#roadmap
klooney 11mo ago
There seems to be a contingent that just doesn't use scroll back search, which I find kind of baffling.
- sevg 11mo ago
  I’ve never used scrollback search, and it was a discovery for me that there’s a contingent that are very vocal in their demands for scrollback search. I can see why someone would feel attached to this feature though. Mostly I’m looking forward to seeing it implemented so I can stop reading complaints about this being missing in every thread about ghostty!

chrysoprace 11mo ago

I've always wanted to like Alacritty but they've had an open issue to support ligatures since 2017 and they're not in a rush to implement them. Now the only feature I need in Ghostty is Windows support.

Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
> Now the only feature I need in Ghostty is Windows support. I use ghostty on my mac but have you forgot about ctrl + f to find things support in ghostty (I don't think it has ctrl f support iirc right?)
- chrysoprace 11mo ago
  I'm always running tmux so it's not typically a feature I look for, but as you mention it doesn't seem to trigger a find for terminal scrollback. Wezterm doesn't do this either so maybe that's an iTerm thing. I always assume Ctrl keybindings will trigger emacs mode shortcuts in the tty. Update: Windows Terminal doesn't do it either.
  - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
    I would love to use tmux. I have used yazi in the past and I really liked it but I was barely using it to its fullest potential. I think I have "skill issue" regarding tmux and I used to use hyprland (recently went to niri) and I just always preferred opening up another terminal I used to use (which was foot back when I was using my own config and it was alacritty on cachy/ idk what was on omarchy for the time I was on omarchy but I don't like omarchy) Is there actually a way to fix this skill issue, like I want something so simple in start that I just run it and forget and still get decent amount of benefits?
    - chrysoprace 11mo ago
      tmux fits my personal use case better so I'll tell you why I use tmux and then if that resonates with you, then you might get value from that as well. - It's generally bundled on most distros, or available for install in most default repositories. - tmux sessions are available over ssh, so if I can continue where I left off over ssh (this is probably my main use case). - I can full screen my terminal instead of having multiple terminals, and split in tmux. I usually split vim buffers, but then keep a terminal split beside it or in another tmux window. - It's keyboard-driven, and universal across different window managers. Even if I switch from MacOS to Windows or to an X11 distro, tmux will still have the same keybinds using the same configuration language. I can also use vim keys to navigate the scrollback history. - Its config language is simple enough for the modifications I personally need. I haven't felt that I need to learn the syntax beyond the basics. - Knowing tmux is also a helpful skill for managing servers, which I do from time to time (my raspberry pi is still running a tmux session from when I last rebooted it).

seanw444 11mo ago

Same here. Any replacement I moved to needed to have content centering, where the margin around the cells is equal in both dimensions when the cells don't fit perfectly into the window. Kinda crazy that it's not a feature in a lot of terminals I checked over the years. I wouldn't even consider myself OCD, but it drove me nuts until I found a terminal that let me do it.

OberstKrueger 11mo ago

The first time I went through the theme picker, I was tickled to see a theme I had made years ago included. Realized later it was due to it including all of the themes from iTerm2 Color Schemes automatically. It made for a more fun first experience with a terminal emulator than I expected to have.