Windows host application for the Ghostty terminal emulator.

A WinUI 3 + C++/WinRT shell that hosts the libghostty C API. Each tab owns its own ghostty Surface and DirectX 11 device, rendered into a SwapChainPanel.

• Full terminal emulation via libghostty (VT parser, ConPTY backend)
• PowerShell / cmd.exe / arbitrary shell (command config option)
• Japanese / CJK glyph rendering with system font fallback
• IME input (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) with composition preview
• UTF-16 surrogate pair support (emoji, supplementary planes)
• Auto-close tab when the shell process exits

• Multi-tab UI via WinUI 3 TabView
• Per-tab isolation: each tab owns its own ghostty Surface + D3D11 device
• Per-tab SEH guard: a hardware exception in one tab does not take down siblings (fatal cases still trigger a clean process exit)
• New tab / close tab / reorder via standard TabView gestures
• Custom XAML caption buttons (minimize / maximize / close) that route through WM_SYSCOMMAND to avoid driver-side state-change crashes

• Keyboard: WM_CHAR text input plus key-level events for shortcuts
• Modifier-aware keybindings (Ctrl / Shift / Alt) forwarded to libghostty
• Mouse: left / middle / right click, drag, scroll wheel
• Selection: drag-to-select, Ctrl+C copy, Ctrl+V paste, right-click copy
• Selection auto-clear after copy
• Ctrl+click: URL highlight detection (see Known Issues)

• Custom title bar with ExtendsContentIntoTitleBar
• Drag region sized to survive many open tabs
• Fullscreen toggle, maximize / restore
• DPI scaling (Per-Monitor DPI Aware V2)
• Mica / Acrylic backdrop (when running as an MSIX package)

• Theme support (config file or %LOCALAPPDATA%\ghostty\themes\)
• Background image (background-image config)
• Background opacity (background-opacity config)
• Title bar tint synced with terminal background (DwmSetWindowAttribute, Windows 11)
• Custom ANSI 16-color palette
• Cursor color customization

• DirectX 11 via the libghostty native renderer (no external dependencies)
• FLIP_DISCARD swap chain hosted in a SwapChainPanel
• High-resolution waitable timer for frame pacing (Windows 10 1803+)

• SET_TITLE: tab title from terminal escape sequences
• MOUSE_SHAPE: cursor changes (text, pointer, hand, resize, etc.)
• MOUSE_VISIBILITY: hide / show cursor
• OPEN_URL: open URLs in the default browser (ShellExecuteW)
• RING_BELL: flash window + system beep
• COLOR_CHANGE: sync title bar tint with terminal background
• TOGGLE_FULLSCREEN / TOGGLE_MAXIMIZE
• SIZE_LIMIT / INITIAL_SIZE / RESET_WINDOW_SIZE
• NEW_TAB / CLOSE_TAB / GOTO_TAB
• QUIT: clean shutdown
• Clipboard read / write
• Wakeup: thread-safe PostMessage to the UI thread

GhosttyWin32App.exe (WinUI 3 / C++/WinRT)
  ├── App.xaml — application entry, XAML Controls Resources
  ├── MainWindow
  │   ├── Custom title bar + caption buttons
  │   ├── TabView
  │   │   └── TerminalControl (per tab)
  │   │       ├── SwapChainPanel → ghostty Surface
  │   │       ├── Input forwarding (key / pointer / IME)
  │   │       └── Per-tab D3D11 device + SEH guard
  │   └── SetUnhandledExceptionFilter — best-effort cleanup
  ├── GhosttyApp — ghostty_app_t lifetime wrapper (config, callbacks)
  └── Tabs / TabFactory / TabIdAllocator — tab bookkeeping

ghostty.dll (Zig, from i999rri/ghostty windows-port branch)
  ├── Terminal emulator core (VT parser, Screen)
  ├── DirectX 11 renderer (HLSL SM5.0, d3d11_impl.c COM wrapper)
  ├── Font rendering (Freetype + Harfbuzz)
  ├── ConPTY subprocess management
  └── Windows font discovery (registry lookup, %WINDIR%\Fonts)

scoop bucket add ghostty https://github.com/i999rri/scoop-bucket
scoop install ghosttywin32

v0.2.x (current latest release): the bucket ships a portable ZIP. No elevation required.

v0.3.0 and later (in development): the bucket will ship a signed MSIX. Installation imports the signing certificate into LocalMachine\TrustedPeople and registers the MSIX via Add-AppxPackage, so scoop install has to run from an elevated PowerShell. See issue #46 for the in-flight migration to SignPath Foundation, which will remove the elevation requirement.

v0.2.x: download GhosttyWin32-v<version>-x64.zip from Releases and unzip anywhere.

v0.3.0 and later:

1. Download Ghostty-<version>-x64.msix and Ghostty.cer from Releases.
2. Trust the certificate (one-time per machine; Local Machine → Trusted People store — see docs/INSTALL.md for the exact wizard choices, since the wrong store choice silently fails with 0x800B0109).
3. Double-click the .msix to install.

Subsequent updates only require step 3. Detailed walkthrough and troubleshooting: docs/INSTALL.md.

• Visual Studio 2022 (17.10+) with the "Desktop development with C++" and "Universal Windows Platform development" workloads
• Windows App SDK 1.6+ (installed via the project's NuGet packages)
• Zig 0.15.2+
• Windows SDK 10.0.22621.0+

This requires the forked Ghostty with Windows support patches:

git clone https://github.com/i999rri/ghostty.git
cd ghostty
git switch windows-port
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe -Drenderer=directx

Copy the following into GhosttyWin32App/:

• zig-out/lib/ghostty.dll
• zig-out/lib/ghostty.lib
• (ghostty.h is already vendored in the repo)

Open GhosttyWin32.slnx in Visual Studio, select Release | x64, and build the GhosttyWin32App project. F5 deploys as a packaged MSIX into the local appx registry; Release | x64 build artifacts land under x64/Release/GhosttyWin32App/.

Create %LOCALAPPDATA%\ghostty\config:

font-size=15
command=powershell
confirm-close-surface=false
theme=catppuccin-mocha
window-decoration=false
background-opacity=0.85
background-image=C:/Users/you/path/to/image.png
background-image-opacity=0.3
background-image-fit=cover

Theme files go in %LOCALAPPDATA%\ghostty\themes\. See the upstream Ghostty documentation for the full option list.

• Ctrl+click on a URL exits the process with code 3 (#12) — ghostty-side issue
• Split panes are not yet implemented; only tabs (#13)
• Windows-specific config options (windows-tab-bar, windows-drag-region) are not exposed yet (#17)

This is an experimental Windows port. See the windows-port branch for Ghostty-side changes and Discussion #2563 for context.

MIT. The libghostty library it embeds is also MIT-licensed.

Claude Code was used to assist with development.