Ghosteel

The Ghostty terminal's VT engine, running on a Linux phone.

_{Built for Sailfish OS · Truecolor · GPU-rendered · Multi-session · Encrypted scrollback}

Truecolor & GPU Rendering	TUI App Support	Multi-session

Ghosteel is a Sailfish OS terminal built on Ghostty's VT engine. Most mobile terminals use older VT parsers that break on modern TUI apps. Using Ghostty's parser means tmux, neovim, htop, btop and lazygit render correctly, with truecolor and GPU rendering.

Features

• Ghostty VT engine: full escape sequence support, 24-bit color, alternate screen buffer
• GPU rendering: OpenGL ES 2.0/3.0 renderer with cursor trails shader support
• Multi-session: create, name, switch, and persist sessions with per-session working directories
• Command Sessions: launch commands in new sessions (ghosteel -e htop), switch to named sessions (ghosteel -s editor), create .desktop file launchers for TUI apps
• Touch text selection: long-press with Sailfish-style magnifier, velocity-aware hiding, double/triple tap
• Pinch-to-zoom: two-finger pinch to adjust font size with live overlay, per-session font size, optional (off by default)
• Extra keys bar: configurable sticky modifiers (Ctrl/Alt), arrow keys, F1-F12, PgUp/PgDn
• Link detection: OSC 8 hyperlinks and automatic URL detection, tap to open in browser
• Inline images: Kitty Graphics Protocol support, PNG decoding, configurable toggle
• Encrypted scrollback: Encryption backed by Sailfish Secrets, configurable retention (7–365 days or disabled)
• 2 color schemes: Dark and Light, adjustable opacity
• 35+ translations

Install

Recommended: Install via SailfishOS:Chum:

devel-su pkcon install ghosteel

Also available from OpenRepos or GitHub Releases:

devel-su pkcon install-local ./ghosteel-<version>.rpm

Desktop file launchers

Create .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications/ to launch TUI apps directly into Ghosteel sessions:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
X-Nemo-Application-Type=silica-qt5
X-Nemo-Single-Instance=no
Icon=ghosteel
Exec=ghosteel -e top
Name=Top

[X-Sailjail]
OrganizationName=com.zackslash
ApplicationName=ghosteel
Permissions=UserDirs;Secrets;
Sandboxing=Disabled

Use -s <name> to give the session a persistent name (survives app restart):

Exec=ghosteel -s sysmon -e top

Note: set X-Nemo-Single-Instance to no, otherwise the SailfishOS invoker swallows CLI args for already-running apps. If you edit a desktop file that's already on the homescreen, restart lipstick for the launcher to pick up changes:

systemctl --user restart lipstick.service

Build

Requires Sailfish OS SDK and Zig 0.15.2 (Ghostty is incompatible with 0.16+).

# Install Zig 0.15.2
curl -L https://ziglang.org/download/0.15.2/zig-x86_64-linux-0.15.2.tar.xz | tar -xJ -C ~/.local/
ln -sf ~/.local/zig-x86_64-linux-0.15.2/zig ~/.local/bin/zig

# Build libghostty-vt for your target architecture
./scripts/build-libs.sh          # all architectures
./scripts/build-libs.sh aarch64  # single architecture

# Build RPM
mb2 build

Architecture

Built with Qt/QML and Sailfish Silica. Terminal engine is Ghostty's libghostty-vt (Zig, static C library). Rendering via OpenGL ES. Supports Ghostty-compatible post-processing shaders on ES 3.0+. Native cover page, single-instance via QLocalSocket IPC. Built for aarch64, armv7hl, and i486.

Development

IDE Setup

Before first IDE build:

git submodule update --init
./scripts/build-libs.sh i486

The Ghostty submodule needs a patch for a Zig i386 C ABI bug. It's applied automatically by the spec during builds. For manual builds: git -C ghostty apply patches/ghostty-i386-abi-fix.patch

See CONTRIBUTING.md for git hooks and development guidelines.

License

MIT