Ghostty Workstation¶

中文 · GitHub source Chinese version: README_ZH.md

A small, manual setup for Ghostty and a focused set of terminal tools.

Supported systems:

macOS with the built-in zsh and Homebrew
Ubuntu 26.04 with the built-in bash and apt

There is no installer or managed configuration directory. Install the tools you want, add the shell lines once, and copy config.ghostty to Ghostty's default configuration location.

Run the commands below from this directory after cloning the repository:

cd engineering/Ghostty

Install tools¶

macOS¶

brew install starship tmux fzf fd ripgrep eza bat zoxide git gh
brew install --cask ghostty

Ubuntu 26.04¶

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ghostty starship tmux fzf fd-find ripgrep eza bat zoxide git gh

Configure the shell¶

Add these lines once to ~/.zshrc on macOS:

eval "$(starship init zsh)"
eval "$(zoxide init zsh)"
alias ll='eza --long --all --git --group-directories-first'
alias tree='eza --tree --group-directories-first'
alias preview='bat --paging=always'

Add these lines once to ~/.bashrc on Ubuntu:

eval "$(starship init bash)"
eval "$(zoxide init bash)"
alias ll='eza --long --all --git --group-directories-first'
alias tree='eza --tree --group-directories-first'
alias preview='batcat --paging=always'
alias fd='fdfind'

Open a new terminal after editing the shell file. fzf works directly as the fzf command; no extra shell configuration is required for the basic workflow.

Configure Ghostty¶

Use cp -i so an existing configuration is not overwritten without confirmation.

macOS¶

ghostty_dir="$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty"
mkdir -p "$ghostty_dir"
cp -i config.ghostty "$ghostty_dir/config.ghostty"

Ubuntu 26.04¶

ghostty_dir="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/ghostty"
mkdir -p "$ghostty_dir"
cp -i config.ghostty "$ghostty_dir/config.ghostty"

If another Ghostty configuration already exists, keep one source of truth and merge the settings manually. Ghostty also recognizes the older config filename, but new configurations should use config.ghostty.

On Ubuntu, if the old config file exists beside config.ghostty, compare them first, move the settings you want into config.ghostty, then remove the old config. Do not keep both files active:

ghostty_dir="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/ghostty"
if [ -f "$ghostty_dir/config" ]; then
    diff -u "$ghostty_dir/config" "$ghostty_dir/config.ghostty" || true
fi

On macOS, check both older config files because macOS can load both the XDG and native configuration locations:

legacy_xdg_config="$HOME/.config/ghostty/config"
legacy_native_config="$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config"
native_config="$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config.ghostty"
if [ -f "$legacy_xdg_config" ]; then
    diff -u "$legacy_xdg_config" "$native_config" || true
fi
if [ -f "$legacy_native_config" ]; then
    diff -u "$legacy_native_config" "$native_config" || true
fi

To validate the copied file when the ghostty command is available:

macOS:

ghostty +validate-config --config-file="$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config.ghostty"

Ubuntu:

ghostty +validate-config --config-file="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/ghostty/config.ghostty"

Remove the setup¶

Remove the lines added to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc. Remove the copied Ghostty configuration only if it contains no personal settings. Installed packages are not removed automatically.

Only portable personal settings belong in this directory. Do not add credentials, SSH keys, cloud profiles, shell history, employer data, or machine-specific secrets.