A fast, native macOS terminal with real Settings panes.
Real login shells on a Metal surface. No account, no telemetry.
- Real PTY login shells, rendered by Ghostty on Metal.
- Windows and tabs (⌘N / ⌘T / ⌘W), with scroll arrows when tabs overflow and an optional full-height vertical rail.
- Quake Terminal: a dropdown terminal that slides down from the top of the screen on a global hotkey. Height, background opacity, hide-on-focus-loss, and the slide animation are set in Settings → Quake Mode.
- Windows reopen at the position and size you left them, several at once, on every launch.
- Tab titles show the running command with a directory prefix, and closing a tab with a live process asks first.
- Themes from the GhosttyTheme catalog, light and dark, set globally or per tab.
- Pinned tabs, renamed tabs, color-coded tabs.
- Font family, size, weight, and line height, plus per-tab zoom (⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0).
- Find in scrollback with ⌘F.
- Links in the terminal open in your browser.
- Window padding, starting position, and character-grid size.
- A plain config file, if you would rather type than click.
Requires macOS 15.6 or later.
Homebrew
brew tap tretten/kuu
brew install --cask kuuManual
Download Kuu.dmg from Releases and drag Kuu.app into Applications. Builds are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized, so Gatekeeper lets them through without complaining.
Updates arrive on their own through Sparkle, so there is nothing to re-download later.
On first launch Kuu offers to install its shell additions. They are optional and you can skip them.
Press ⌘, for Settings: General, Shortcuts, Quake Mode, Appearance, and About.
The same settings live in ~/.config/kuu/config.yml. Edit it in any editor, press ⌘⇧, inside Kuu, and the changes take effect. No restart.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| New window | ⌘N |
| New tab | ⌘T |
| Close tab / window | ⌘W |
| Zoom in / out / reset | ⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0 |
| Find in scrollback | ⌘F |
| Settings | ⌘, |
| Reload config | ⌘⇧, |
Kuu collects nothing and sends nothing anywhere. The one exception is Sparkle checking for updates, and you can turn that off in Settings → About.
macOS refuses to open the app. Make sure the build came from the Releases page. Those are signed and notarized, so Gatekeeper stays quiet.
How do I uninstall it?
Delete Kuu.app from Applications. Remove ~/.config/kuu as well if you want the settings gone.
Something looks off. Open an issue with your macOS version, the Kuu version from the About window, and the steps that got you there.
MIT, see LICENSE. Kuu builds on Ghostty (also MIT), with code adapted from 0x96f/justty and tretten/screenkit.
This repository hosts the signed release builds (DMG and ZIP) that feed the auto-updater.