¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

This year I migrated my terminal application from iTerm2 to Ghostty on macOS.

Ghostty has great defaults; I find that there are only a handful of customizations that I need to make to satisfy my needs.

One can configure ghostty by opening its config file with Cmd + ,, the typical preferences shortcut on macOS.

In a vanilla system, that config file is initially $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config (docs).

That location is not convenient / accessible though.

Upon digging the ghostty config docs:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/config.
if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined, it defaults to $HOME/.config/ghostty/config.

macOS-specific Path (macOS only):
$HOME/Library/Application\ Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config
macOS also supports the XDG configuration path mentioned above.

I prefer the ~/.config/ghostty location: it is cross-platform, compatible with Linux as well, and I can easily add it to my dotfiles.

Moving the file to that location yields a no-frills migration:

% mv $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config $HOME/.config/ghostty/config

As of today, the config looks like this:

# https://ghostty.org/docs/config
# keep-sorted start
cursor-style-blink = false
keybind = shift+enter=text:\n
macos-icon = chalkboard
shell-integration-features = no-cursor
theme = catppuccin-macchiato
# keep-sorted end

The first line is a handy shortcut to the config documentation.

The keep-sorted stanzas stem from my tendency to keep the house tidy. They are not merely comments: the sorting is actually enforced via a git pre-commit hook.

cursor-style-blink = false: blinking cursor is unnecessarily distracting.

keybind = shift+enter=text:\n: Claude Code added this, it’s surprising it’s not the default:

[...]
│ > /termi                                                     │
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  /terminal-setup   Install Shift+Enter key binding for newlines

macos-icon = chalkboard: bells and whistles.

shell-integration-features = no-cursor: some context.

theme = catppuccin-macchiato: more bells and whistles. You may like: ghostty +list-themes.