A terminal for macOS, Windows and Linux, in Rust on GPUI and Ely components. Sessions sit on the left, the terminal in the middle, Git or Files on the right. Every setting has a control in the settings window.

A release on GitHub carries builds for each platform.

• macOS 11 or later, Apple silicon: open ELYTerminal-VERSION.dmg and drag ELYTerminal into Applications. The app is signed with Developer ID and notarized.
• Windows 10 or later, x86_64: unzip ELYTerminal-VERSION-windows-x86_64.zip and run elyterminal.exe. It is unsigned; if SmartScreen stops it, press More info, then Run anyway.
• Linux, x86_64: choose a package below.

Replace VERSION with the release's version. Linux builds need glibc 2.35 or later, an X11 or Wayland desktop and working graphics drivers. Native packages install the runtime libraries, desktop entry and icon through the package manager. The formats below can be built with scripts/linux-packages.sh. Use the assets actually listed for your selected release; packaging CI artifacts are separate downloads.

On Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04 or Debian 12:

sudo apt install ./elyterminal_VERSION_amd64.deb

On Fedora 43:

sudo dnf install ./elyterminal-VERSION-1.x86_64.rpm

Install a newer package the same way to update. To remove it, use sudo apt remove elyterminal or sudo dnf remove elyterminal. Package operations leave ~/.config/ELYTerminal alone.

The AppImage runs without a system installation:

chmod +x ELYTerminal-VERSION-linux-x86_64.AppImage
./ELYTerminal-VERSION-linux-x86_64.AppImage

It bundles the keyboard libraries, but uses the host's glibc, X11/Wayland and graphics libraries, and installed fonts. Install git, curl and xdg-utils on the host for Git, update checks and desktop links. Without FUSE, run ./ELYTerminal-VERSION-linux-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract-and-run. Replace the file to update; delete it to uninstall. Other distributions and Wayland desktops need testing with their own graphics stack.

The tarball remains available. Install libxkbcommon, libxkbcommon-x11, libxcb, the desktop's runtime libraries and the tools above first:

tar -xzf ELYTerminal-VERSION-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd ELYTerminal-VERSION-linux-x86_64
install -Dm755 elyterminal -t ~/.local/bin
install -Dm644 com.zacharyzhang.elyterminal.desktop -t ~/.local/share/applications
install -Dm644 com.zacharyzhang.elyterminal.svg -t ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps
install -Dm644 elyterminal.1.gz -t ~/.local/share/man/man1

The desktop entry runs elyterminal, so ~/.local/bin must be on PATH. Repeat these commands with a newer tarball to update. To uninstall, remove the four installed files; settings stay in the config folder.

Rust 1.95.0, which rust-toolchain.toml pins; rustup installs it on the first build.

cargo run --release

Each platform's script builds its release in target/release: on macOS, scripts/mac-app.sh builds ELYTerminal.app, with its icon, and a disk image of it; on Windows, scripts/windows-zip.ps1 zips elyterminal.exe, its icon inside; on Linux, scripts/linux-packages.sh builds once in Docker on Ubuntu 22.04 and packs the same binary as tar.gz, DEB, AppImage and RPM. scripts/linux-tar.sh still builds the tarball on its own. Linux packaging covers individual scripts, validation and release uploads.

On Linux, install the libraries gpui links first. On Debian and Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install pkg-config libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev \
  libxcb1-dev libx11-xcb-dev libfontconfig-dev libfreetype-dev

The app writes its log to stderr, its own info lines and Ely's. RUST_LOG=elyterminal=debug,ely_gpui_component=info writes more; trace logs each paint. A Windows release build opens no console: elyterminal.exe 2> log.txt keeps its log.

• The terminal runs on alacritty_terminal: 256 colors and truecolor, bold, dim, italic, five underline styles, wide characters and combining marks. Box drawing, block elements and powerline shapes are drawn as geometry, so lines join across cells. Keys follow xterm and the kitty keyboard protocol, and on Windows win32-input-mode, as Windows Terminal sends them, so herdr's shortcuts work; input methods compose at the cursor; programs can track the mouse; pastes are bracketed when a program asks; OSC 8 and plain links open with the link press below; inside herdr, herdr opens them, web links only, whole where its pane wraps them, and with Shift the terminal opens what it sees; find searches the scrollback.
• A scrollbar along the terminal's right edge scrolls its history, even while a program takes the wheel.
• Shell integration for zsh, bash, fish and PowerShell, on Windows for Git for Windows' bash and sh too, and for the bash, zsh or fish a Shell of wsl starts, so Files and Git follow a WSL or Git Bash session: each prompt reports its folder and title, and OSC 133 marks each prompt, each command and its exit status.
• Ely peeks over the window's top edge, or up from its bottom left when the window leaves her no room above it, and moves all the time: she breathes, sways and blinks. She follows your sessions: she hops when a program waits on you, shakes at an error, cheers a finish, reads along while a program works, and dozes when all is calm for long. Press her and she winks, waking her from a doze. Drag her along the edge to move her. Settings › Terminal › Ely turns her off.
• Sessions: new, close and switch. A right press on a row duplicates it, in the shell it runs and the folder it last reported, or closes it, and a drag moves a row to another place; Settings › Terminal turns either off. A bell marks a hidden session's row and makes no sound. A row's mark shows what its programs report through OSC 7501, OSC 9;4 or herdr: waiting on you, an error, work with its progress, done or idle, else a failed last command. The mark is 3 by 3 dots: work ripples and waiting dips while they last. Hover over the mark lists each report.
• Notifications: while the window is in the background or the session hidden, a session that starts waiting, finishes or fails, a command that ran 5 seconds or more ending, and a program's OSC 9, 777 or 99, post a system notification, one a session every 3 seconds at most; a press shows the session. On macOS only the app bundle posts them, not cargo run.
• Cmd-Up and Cmd-Down, Ctrl-Shift-Up and Ctrl-Shift-Down off macOS, jump to the prompt before or after the view's top.
• Natural text editing on macOS, off by default in Settings › Terminal: Option-Left and Option-Right move by word, Option-Backspace and Option-Delete delete by word, Command-Left and Command-Right move to the line's ends, and Command-Backspace and Command-Delete delete to them, sent as the editing bytes the shell expects.
• Option as Alt in Settings › Terminal turns the chosen macOS Option keys into the terminal's Alt, with an input method such as Pinyin selected too; an Option key not chosen still types special characters.
• A button at each end of the title bar hides or shows its side column, and a drag on the border between a side column and the terminal resizes it; the window opens as it was left, at the size and widths it was left at. On Windows and Linux a gear beside the right one opens Settings.
• Files shows the session's folder as a tree with Git's marks. Inside herdr the folder is that of herdr's focused pane.
• Git shows the branch, stages, unstages, discards, commits, lists recent commits and opens diffs, all through the git command line.
• Themes: Ely Dark, Ely Light, Catppuccin Mocha, Macchiato, Frappé and Latte, Tokyo Night, Dracula, Nord, Gruvbox Dark, Rosé Pine, Solarized Light, One Light and Kanagawa Wave. A second theme can take over while the system is dark. On Omarchy 4, an Omarchy theme follows the system's theme as it switches, and is the default there.
• Background opacity and blur: NSVisualEffectView on macOS, acrylic on Windows, ext_background_effect_v1 or org_kde_kwin_blur on Wayland, _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION on X11, which KWin reads. Blur shows only while the opacity is under 100%. Hyprland blurs only while its own decoration:blur:enabled is on, and Omarchy 4.0.4 turns it off; to turn it on there, add hl.config({ decoration = { blur = { enabled = true } } }) to ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.lua.

Settings › Terminal lists them all, as this platform binds them.

The settings window saves each change at once to settings.json in the platform's config folder:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/ELYTerminal/settings.json
• Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ELYTerminal/settings.json, else ~/.config/ELYTerminal/settings.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\ELYTerminal\settings.json

A file that does not parse, or holds a value out of range, stops the start with an error naming the file and the field. The app never overwrites it.

Settings › Appearance › Language shows the interface in English or 简体中文.

Settings › Terminal checks for a newer release at start and once a day, or at once with Check now; a newer one shows a Download button that opens its page. The check runs curl, which macOS and Windows ship.

scripts/check.sh runs fmt, clippy, the tests and the 500-line rule. AGENTS.md lists the rest: the layout, the decisions and the tools.

MIT, in LICENSE. Box drawing and key encoding follow Ghostty's code, MIT, in LICENSE-GHOSTTY. The theme files come from iTerm2-Color-Schemes, MIT, with its license in assets/themes. JetBrains Mono and its Nerd Font build are under the SIL Open Font License, in assets/fonts. The compound text decoder's tables come from libX11, under SunSoft's and Bruno Haible's notice, in vendor/xim-ctext/tables/LICENSE.