ghostty-config-cli

A fullscreen terminal UI for editing Ghostty config + live preview

• Fullscreen, paned TUI — sidebar navigation, a focused detail editor, and a live preview, rendered in the alternate screen buffer (your scrollback is restored on exit).
• Live preview — a mock terminal window that updates as you type: real theme colors (resolved straight from Ghostty's theme files), the 16-color ANSI palette, and a cursor that reflects your cursor-style and blink settings.
• Safe, surgical writes — only the settings this tool manages are rewritten. Your comments, keybindings, and every other line are preserved byte-for-byte. Writes are atomic (temp file + rename), so a config is never left half-written.
• Save with one-level undo — s writes immediately; u restores the exact previous file.
• Smart pickers — type-to-filter over ghostty +list-themes (463 themes) and ghostty +list-fonts, with warnings for unknown themes or uninstalled fonts. Custom values are accepted too.
• Degrades gracefully — works even if ghostty isn't on your PATH; you can still edit colors, size, and cursor.

Settings managed (v1)

theme · font-family · font-size · background · foreground · background-opacity · cursor-style · cursor-style-blink

Every other key in your config is left untouched.

Install

npm install -g ghostty-config-cli

Requires Node.js ≥ 18. Ghostty is recommended (for theme/font enumeration) but not required.

Usage

ghostty-config-cli            # launch the interactive editor
ghostty-config-cli --print    # print current values and exit (no TTY needed)
ghostty-config-cli --dry-run  # edit, but preview saves without writing
ghostty-config-cli --version
ghostty-config-cli --help

Keys

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | ↑ / ↓ (or k / j) | Navigate settings | | Enter | Edit the selected setting | | ← / →, ↑ / ↓ | Adjust sliders / cycle options | | Esc | Finish / cancel editing | | s | Save to disk | | u | Undo the last save | | r / R | Reset field / reset all | | q | Quit |

After saving, reload Ghostty with ctrl+shift+r (its built-in config reload) to see changes live.

Config location

Resolved automatically per OS:

• Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ghostty/config.ghostty (or ~/.config/ghostty/…)
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config.ghostty (honors XDG_CONFIG_HOME if set)

config.ghostty is preferred (loaded by Ghostty ≥ 1.2.3 and gives editor syntax highlighting); a plain config file is used if that's what exists.

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # run from source with tsx
npm run typecheck
npm run build      # compile to dist/

Built with TypeScript, Ink, and execa.

License

MIT © aj khullar