This content originally appeared on dbushell.com and was authored by dbushell.com
I was a terminal hopper until I switched to Ghostty for the cool name and I stayed for the cool features. Founder, developer, and fellow Zig fan Mitchell Hashimoto discussed Ghostty on the PodRocket podcast. There I learnt of a hidden macOS feature; the Quick Terminal.
Quick Terminal: Lightweight terminal that animates down below the menu bar for instant access without interrupting work.
I recorded a video of my setup to demo it:
Itâs not an in-browser thing, Safari is just there for decoration.
Iâve dabbled with desktop Linux (lol) and a few distros had a similar feature. Itâs quite handy. Hearing about it in Ghostty nerd-sniped me when I should have gone to bed. Itâs macOS-only and enabling it isnât immediately obvious so Iâve written a guide.
System Settings
For Ghosttyâs Quick Terminal to work youâll need to allow additional permissions. As of writing, these are found in System Settings > Privacy and Security > Accessibility. Given Appleâs design goal of turning System Settings into an ever expanding labyrinth of unintuitive UI, one canât assume this guide will be correct at a later date.
If Ghostty isnât listed you can try aiming for the tiny â+â plus icon. Whilst youâre within Settings, enable the pink accent colour. Blue is far too overused.
Ghostty Config
Next youâll need to enable the Quick Terminal in Ghosttyâs own configuration. This can be found at the location below on macOS:
vim $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/configThat location is a tad unwieldy, but Ghostty is a good macOS citizen, even if the laws are questionable. As much as I admire Ghosttyâs configuration philosophy, my experience elsewhere has led me to believe that âzero confâ is a lie. Zero conf typically means obtuse hoop jumping. Zero conf is an excuse to avoid writing documentation. â
Anyway, add this key binding line:
keybind = global:cmd+grave_accent=toggle_quick_terminalNow simply save and quit Vim đ
If Vim isnât your thing there is a community tool that provides GUI configuration you can export. I canât vouch if it works but it looks incredible.
â I appreciate Hashimotoâs pragmatic approach to Ghostty. It was designed to work out of the box with no configuration for most users
whilst still handing over the damned INI file.
Quick Terminal Usage
Hopefully you havenât just copy-pasted stuff with no idea what it does. But to recap, these settings allow you to type the key combo â ` â Command + Grave (aka backtick) â on macOS to open Ghosttyâs Quick Terminal. Both keys are under your left hand. You may need to throw a gang sign to reach them.
The Ghostty app itself must be running for Quick Terminal to launch. You could add it as a login item. A quick ping test concludes that the session can live on after the UI disappears. I wouldnât trust myself to remember any important long-running tasks though.
Optionals
Ghosttyâs Quick Terminal has more configuration options. I personally find the bottom-up pop-up preferable over the default top-down drop-down.
quick-terminal-position = bottomGhostty is neat. I hope it remains that way!
You probably noticed a whiff of disdain towards Apple. The quality of Appleâs own software has plummeted. Itâs a cascade of confused design direction and seemingly no quality assurance. Modern macOS is a bug ridden shambles. Iâve tried desktop Linux, thatâs why I use macOS, but if Apple continue re-enabling their garbage generator, I might just try again.
Thank the lord for oases of solitude like Ghostty.
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This content originally appeared on dbushell.com and was authored by dbushell.com
dbushell.com | Sciencx (2025-04-11T10:00:00+00:00) Ghostty & macOS Quick Terminal đ». Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/04/11/ghostty-macos-quick-terminal-%f0%9f%91%bb/
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