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Ghostty 1.4.0 ships with Kitty graphics, faster resize, macOS fix
Ghostty's project said version 1.4.0 is a major release with full Kitty graphics support, large performance gains, a new Linux OpenGL renderer, and a macOS hyperlink security fix.
- New headline Was: “Ghostty 1.4.0”
- Our desk filed its story
- ghostty.org is now reporting this
The Ghostty project published release notes for Ghostty 1.4.0, describing it as a major update with performance and memory work, a complete Kitty graphics implementation, SSH integration changes, and hundreds of other fixes across platforms1.
The notes said Ghostty's Kitty graphics support now covers 100 percent of the published specification, including animation and relative placements, and that Ghostty and libghostty are the first terminals outside Kitty itself to do so1.
On performance, the project said resizing a 120-by-80 terminal with 10,000 lines of scrollback is about six times faster, and three to five times faster when history is full of CJK text or emoji1. It said the renderer holds the terminal lock 2.7 times to 11 times less per frame1. Idle scrollback compression on macOS and 64-bit Linux is described as cutting physical memory for typical compressed scrollback by 70 to 90 percent, and the default scrollback limit was raised from 10 MB to 50 MB1.
On Linux and FreeBSD, the GTK app has a new OpenGL pipeline that draws with EGL on its own thread, exports frames as DMABUF, and is triple-buffered; the notes said that should reduce tearing and restore crisp text under fractional scaling such as 125 percent or 150 percent1. Ghostty 1.4 also implements the Kitty clipboard protocol (OSC 5522) on macOS and GTK, which 1.3 could parse but not implement1.
A macOS security advisory listed in the notes, GHSA-cw69-wm67-5pv8, said Command-clicking a crafted OSC 8 hyperlink could open unsafe local files or custom URL schemes and lead to arbitrary command execution; Ghostty now blocks unsafe targets and confirms custom URL schemes1. The notes also described a more limited bash-related issue triggered by changing into a directory from untrusted content such as a cloned repository1.
Breaking configuration changes include a reworked copy-on-select option whose values are none, primary, clipboard, or both; clipboard now copies only to the system clipboard, not also the selection clipboard1. On macOS, copy-on-select now defaults to none1. scrollback-limit was renamed to scrollback-limit-bytes1.
The project said it now runs Thomas Dickey's esctest suite against Ghostty's terminal core in CI and fixed many differences from xterm1. Localization for the command palette added Basque, Belarusian, Danish, and Serbian1.
