Ghostty for Windows

Ghostty doesn't ship a Windows build. Wintty is a separate, open source project that runs the Ghostty terminal core natively on Windows, with a WinUI 3 shell and a DirectX 12 renderer.

Where upstream Ghostty stands on Windows

There is no official Windows app. Ghostty is a native application for macOS and Linux. Its install docs say the project officially ships prebuilt binaries for macOS only; on Linux it comes from distribution packages or a source build, and the download page has no Windows option.

On October 10, 2026, Mitchell Hashimoto wrote that Windows support for core Ghostty is no longer a priority, and that libghostty-vt, Ghostty's terminal library, with custom Windows builds around it is the way forward. The same day the project closed and locked its Windows Support discussion to further talk of porting Ghostty, and said it will support building and using libghostty-vt on Windows as on any other platform. There is no announced Windows release of the Ghostty app.

Wintty takes Ghostty's terminal core and builds the native Windows application around it.

Wintty: a native Windows port of the Ghostty core

Wintty is a separate project with its own name, installer, and roadmap. It is built from two halves:

• From Ghostty: the terminal emulation, VT parsing, screen model, font handling, and the configuration model, shared with upstream through libghostty. Wintty does not reimplement any of it.
• From Windows: a WinUI 3 shell, a DirectX 12 renderer, a signed installer with automatic updates, and platform integration such as jump lists, taskbar progress, Mica and Acrylic backdrops, and a UI Automation provider for screen readers.

That split is the point: the emulation stays Ghostty's, and the shell behaves the way a Windows application should. The about page covers how Wintty relates to Ghostty in depth.

How to install Ghostty for Windows (with Wintty)

There are two ways to get Wintty onto a machine today, plus a paid tier on top.

Signed installer (sponsor build)

Sponsor the project with any amount, sign in with the same GitHub account on the download page, and install the signed build. It updates itself in place, on both stable and tip channels.

Build from source

The full source is free and open. Clone the repository and follow the build from source guide; you need the Zig toolchain and a few Windows build tools, and you get the same terminal every other tier runs.

Pro tiers

Pro adds persistent sessions, read aloud, and streamer mode on top of the sponsor build; Pro Enterprise ships an MSI for fleet deployment. The tiers page compares every tier.

A Pro session runs in a background daemon, so closing the app does not end the programs in it, and reopening Wintty brings back its pane layout and scrollback. The layout is stored on disk, so it also survives app updates. If that is what you would use tmux for, the tmux on Windows guide compares the ways to run tmux itself with what Wintty does instead.

There is no winget or scoop package today; the download page lists the paths that exist.

What you get

The application features are Windows-native, and the terminal features come from the Ghostty core:

• Tabs and splits, including a vertical, side-docked tab layout. Wintty vs Windows Terminal compares how the two handle panes and sessions.
• A quick terminal you summon with a hotkey.
• Color themes that follow the system light and dark mode.
• Custom shaders, with a live gallery you can try in the browser.
• A command palette, in-terminal search, and hyperlink handling.
• Shell integration, background images, and font control.

Underneath, the Ghostty core contributes what a program running inside the terminal sees: the Kitty graphics protocol, synchronized output, and the rest of the sequences in the Terminal API reference.

Ways to run Ghostty on Windows compared

Wintty is not the only way:

If you want a native Windows application with a signed, auto-updating installer, Wintty is built for that. If you want Ghostty's own Linux app, with its GTK interface, WSL 2 is where you can try it on Windows, in a setup Ghostty does not document.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
• A DirectX 12 capable GPU for the standard renderer. No tier falls back to software rendering except Pro Legacy, which is built against DirectX 11 for machines that cannot run DirectX 12.
• No WSL, no X server, and no Linux environment: Wintty installs like any other Windows application.

Ghostty on Windows ARM

Ghostty itself has no native Windows build. Wintty's Ghostty-core build ships an experimental native ARM64 build for Windows on ARM, on its own channels and under the same sponsorship as the x64 build. The Windows on ARM page covers where it stands and how to install it.

Ghostty and WSL

There are two ways to combine them. You can try a Linux build of Ghostty inside a WSL distro, or run Wintty on Windows and open your distros in its tabs.

Ghostty inside a WSL distro

WSL 2 runs Linux GUI apps through WSLg on Windows 11 and on Windows 10 build 19044 or later, with Start menu entries and copy and paste between Linux and Windows apps. Microsoft's guide to Linux GUI apps on WSL covers the setup, including a GPU driver for hardware accelerated OpenGL. Ghostty's install docs cover macOS and Linux and do not mention WSL, so this is a setup you try on your own. Its Linux packages come from distribution maintainers and community builds, so you install it the way your distro packages it. The GTK app renders with OpenGL, and Ghostty's help docs say it shows an error instead of rendering when GTK cannot give it an OpenGL context, so whether it works depends on the driver and OpenGL support in your WSL setup.

WSL distros in Wintty

Wintty starts whatever command a profile names, and that includes wsl. A profile whose command is wsl opens the default distro, and wsl -d Ubuntu opens a named one. wsl -l -v in PowerShell lists the names.

The new-tab button is a split button. Its main click opens the default profile, and its dropdown lists your saved profiles. Set default-profile to a WSL profile's id and every new tab opens in that distro; profile-order sets where it sits in the tab picker and the command palette. Both options are in the Windows-only options, and the tabs docs cover the button.

Since 1.0.0-rc.8, a WSL pane with no folder set opens in your Linux home instead of under /mnt/c. In Pro and Pro Legacy, a profile that runs wsl -d with a distro name runs it in a persistent session, so the Linux shell and the programs in it keep running after the window closes. A Windows reboot still ends the session.

Shell integration has a limit here. It has shipped since 1.0.0-rc.6 and covers bash, elvish, fish, nushell, zsh, PowerShell and cmd, and Wintty picks it by the name of the command a pane starts. wsl is not a shell Wintty detects, so a pane whose command is wsl gets no automatic injection, and features that depend on integration, such as new tabs starting in the current folder and jump_to_prompt, may be unavailable there. The shell integration docs describe sourcing the scripts by hand; they do not cover doing that inside a distro.

FAQ