Three dominant themes in the discussion
| # | Theme | Key points & quotes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Performance & latency | Users compare how fast terminals react to key‑presses and render large outputs. • “I seriously tried it, but went back because I could notice a small end‑end latency, between keypress and action.” – 0sdi • “Ghostty has the worst input latency across all contenders.” – ivanjermakov • “Kitty feels very responsive out of the box, but the defaults are balanced for sane energy use on portable machines.” – homebrewer |
| 2 | SSH / terminfo compatibility | Many complain that Ghostty (and other new terminals) break when used over SSH unless the remote system’s terminfo database is updated or $TERM is tweaked. • “Ghostty does not work correctly with SSH unless you hack the $TERM variable.” – dwedge • “The bug is that nobody updates their terminfo databases anymore… you have to set them yourself.” – analemma_ • “I have to copy over term‑info on virtually every machine… it’s frustrating.” – icedrift |
| 3 | Missing features & user preference | Users weigh the trade‑off between new terminals’ speed and the feature set (tabs, search, copy‑paste, UI polish) that they’re used to in iTerm2/Kitty. • “The lack of CMD+F feature… I use Terminal.app. This is a critical feature for me.” – thallavajhula • “I switched to Ghostty because of it. I’d love to have tabs… I have an hard time resizing them.” – znpy • “I’m still using iTerm2 for pretty much everything… it just doesn’t have the features I need.” – pdimitar |
These three themes—performance, SSH/terminfo hurdles, and feature gaps—capture the bulk of the conversation.