Chostty

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A macOS fork of Ghostty that replaces native window tabs with an in-window Workspace → Tab → Pane hierarchy, driven from a left sidebar.

Upstream gives every tab its own NSWindow inside an NSWindowTabGroup. That is the right default for a terminal, but it makes a set of related shells a property of the window manager rather than of the app: there is no grouping above a tab, the group is invisible when the window is not frontmost, and anything that wants to reason about "the session I was working in" has to go through AppKit.

Chostty keeps one physical window and owns the hierarchy itself. Workspaces group tabs, tabs own a split tree of panes, and the sidebar shows all of it at once. AppKit tabbing is not hidden or worked around — it is removed, and macos/scripts/native-tab-audit.sh fails the build if any of it comes back.

Everything below the window model is stock Ghostty: the same renderer, the same config file, the same terminfo, the same shell integration.

Install

Download the DMG from Releases and drag Chostty to Applications. Releases are signed with a Developer ID and notarized, so they open without extra steps. Universal binary, macOS 13 and later.

Chostty updates itself through Sparkle, against this repository's signed appcast and never upstream's. Set auto-update = off to stop automatic checks, or auto-update = download to fetch updates in the background. Installs of 0.2.12 or older have no updater and need one manual upgrade.

Chostty's version numbers are its own. 1.0.0 is the first stable Chostty release, not a build of Ghostty 1.0; the upstream revision it carries is whatever scripts/upstream-sync.sh reports as the merge base.

Upgrading from 0.2.15 or older

0.2.16 changed the bundle identifier from com.chostty.app to kr.co.devch.chostty and replaced the inherited Ghostty icon with Chostty's own. On first launch the app copies the old preferences and saved session across, leaving the originals in place. macOS ties privacy permissions — Accessibility, Automation, notifications, Full Disk Access — to the bundle identifier, so grant them again when prompted.

Using it

⌘B toggles the sidebar, or use the buttons next to the traffic lights — the toggle, + for a new workspace, and the workspace actions menu. ⌘N makes a workspace, ⌘T a tab inside the current one, ⌘⇧N a separate physical window. Right-click a workspace, a tab, or empty sidebar space for the rest. The full chord table is in FORK.md.

Configuration is unchanged from Ghostty — ~/.config/ghostty/config, the same keybind and theme syntax, TERM=xterm-ghostty. An existing Ghostty setup works as-is, and the two can be installed side by side. Chostty-managed SSH data is separate: <XDG config home>/chostty/ssh/hosts.conf, with hosts.meta.json alongside. An unset or empty XDG_CONFIG_HOME uses ~/.config; Finder-launched apps inherit launchd's environment, not shell profiles.

Configuration can also be edited without touching text: ⌘, (Preferences…) opens a built-in editor for the common settings — fonts, colors, cursor, window behavior, keybinds — with inline help per setting. It rewrites only the lines it changes, so comments, ordering and keys it does not know survive a save untouched. Save & Apply writes the file and reloads immediately; Edit in External Editor opens the same file as plain text. Themes are picked from a previewed gallery, values that come from a theme or an included file are shown with their source, and All Settings reaches every Ghostty key. The open_config action and keybinding open this editor too.

Shortcuts this fork reserves are taken only from chords upstream left unbound or already broken; live Ghostty bindings such as ⌘⌥←/→ and ⌘0 are untouched.

SSH hosts declared in ~/.ssh/config appear in ⌘⇧P as SSH: Connect to and SSH: Connect to in Split. Chostty reads that file; it never edits it. Authentication, host-key confirmation, ProxyJump and agent configuration remain OpenSSH's responsibility. SSH tabs enable ssh-env by default; no-ssh-env disables it, while an undetermined configuration source is left unchanged. Quick Terminal does not offer SSH connections.

The SSH-host manager applies only to normal terminal windows. Its entry points are Window > Manage SSH Hosts…, SSH: Manage Hosts… in the command palette, and the SSH popover footer. Managed hosts alone use ssh -F hosts.conf; ~/.ssh/config, its Includes, and system configuration remain read-only. Managed hosts can choose Password in Keychain when they set explicit User, HostName, and Port. Passwords are kept only in the Keychain, never in SSH files, metadata, snapshots, arguments, environment, or logs. An alias-only edit keeps its item; changing the endpoint requires Use for or Replace Password…. Key passphrases are not stored. Automatic delivery needs explicit Keychain opt-in and works only with system /usr/bin/ssh; other PATH clients remain manual. The manual checks still outstanding are listed under Known gaps in FORK.md. -L/-R/-D tunnels run from the SSH manager, popover, and command palette; their passphrase, one-time-code, and unknown-host-key questions open a sheet, and Password in Keychain hosts answer ssh's password prompt from the Keychain. A changed host key stops the tunnel.

Building

Needs Xcode 26 (macOS 26 SDK) and Zig 0.17. Nix is not required.

zig build -Demit-macos-app=false -Dsentry=false   # GhosttyKit, the Zig core the app links
./macos/build.nu --configuration Release --action build

Verify with the audit gate and the affected test suites:

./macos/scripts/native-tab-audit.sh
xattr -cr macos/build/Debug/Chostty.app
./macos/build.nu --configuration Debug --action test

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