Noctty

Judgement

What it is

Developer tool

What it does

A native Windows terminal that pairs Ghostty's terminal core with a Win32 interface, offering tabs, splits, session restore and Ghostty config compatibility.

Adopt it when

You are on Windows and want a Ghostty-like terminal now, alongside Windows Terminal.

Watch out

Its own README says it is young with one maintainer, and it is Windows only.

Ready for

Experimental

Runs as

Desktop app

Built with

Zig, Ghostty and Win32

How established

Young: started 7 months ago, latest release v1.3.135.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Noctty → Zig → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Noctty

1. 1
   Alacritty alacritty

   A cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator.

   Developer tool Production-ready You pair your terminal with tmux or Zellij for tabs and splits and want the terminal itself to be fast and simple.

   ★ 66k Apache-2.0 Rust Active, pushed 3 days ago
   
2. 2
   Ghostty ghostty-org

   👻 Ghostty is a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration.

   Developer tool Production-ready You want a fast terminal that looks and behaves like a native app on macOS or GTK Linux with sensible defaults.

   ★ 64k MIT Zig Active, pushed today
   
3. 3
   tmux tmux

   tmux source code

   Developer tool Production-ready You work on remote servers and need sessions that survive dropped connections, using a tool already packaged on almost every Unix system.

   ★ 50k ISC C Active, pushed 2 days ago
4. 4
   Zellij zellij-org

   A terminal workspace with batteries included

   Developer tool Usable You want what tmux does but with on-screen key hints, floating panes and layouts that work without learning a config language.

   ★ 36k MIT Rust Active, pushed today
   
5. 5
   kitty kovidgoyal

   If you live in the terminal, kitty is made for you! Cross-platform, fast, feature-rich, GPU based.

   Developer tool Production-ready You live in the terminal on Linux or macOS and want splits, images and remote control without adding a multiplexer.

   ★ 36k GPL-3.0 Python Active, pushed today
6. 6
   WezTerm wezterm

   A GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer written by @wez and implemented in Rust

   Developer tool Production-ready You want the same scriptable terminal on every operating system, including Windows, with built-in multiplexing.

   ★ 29k See repository Rust Active, pushed 10 days ago
7. 7
   iTerm2 gnachman

   iTerm2 is a terminal emulator for Mac OS X that does amazing things.

   Developer tool Production-ready You work on a Mac and want a mature replacement for Terminal.app with deep tmux and SSH features.

   ★ 18k GPL-2.0 Swift Active, pushed today
8. 8
   Rio raphamorim

   A hardware-accelerated GPU terminal emulator focusing to run in desktops and browsers.

   Developer tool Usable You want a fast, minimal terminal and are happy with a younger project than Alacritty or Kitty.

   ★ 7.7k MIT Rust Active, pushed today