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 · Getting started · Windows · Status · Contributing

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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.

File	What it is
noctty-1.3.127-windows-x64-setup.exe	x64 installer
noctty-1.3.127-windows-arm64-setup.exe	ARM64 installer
noctty-1.3.127-windows-x64-portable.zip	x64 portable
noctty-1.3.127-windows-arm64-portable.zip	ARM64 portable

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.