zt

The fastest terminal emulator. 88 MB/s throughput. 5.5ms startup.

Date Created:

March 31, 2026

Platforms:

macoslinux

Language:

zig

Source Code Availability:

Open Source (MIT)

Development State:

active

zt is a brutally minimal, performance-first terminal emulator written in Zig. Designed for raw speed and low overhead consistently among the fastest in startup, throughput, and memory usage across published benchmarks. It runs on the Linux framebuffer, X11, Wayland, and macOS, with no GPU required.

zt is intentionally opinionated rather than feature-maximal. Configuration is compile-time via config.zig, following an st-style workflow aimed at users who value speed, simplicity, and low resource usage over runtime customization.

Features

GPU Accelerated

Yes

Image Support

No

Sixel

No

Kitty Graphics

No

iTerm2 Images

No

3D Mode

No

Inline 3D

No

Ratty Graphics Protocol

No

Glyph Protocol

No

True Color (24-bit)

Yes

Font Ligatures

Yes

Tabs

No

Split Panes

No

OSC 52 Clipboard

Yes

OSC 8 Hyperlinks

Yes

Unicode

Yes

Notifications

No

Kitty Keyboard

No

Synchronized Output

Yes

Styled Underlines

Yes

Shell Integration

No

Drop-down Mode

No

Built-in Multiplexer

No

Config Format

Source / compile-time (config.zig)

How to install zt

Built from source with Zig.

Examples:

- fbdev: zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSmall

- X11: zig build -Dbackend=x11 -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

- Wayland: zig build -Dbackend=wayland -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

- macOS: zig build -Dbackend=macos -Dshell=/bin/zsh -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

Compare zt With:

Alacritty

Foot

Ghostty

iTerm2

Kitty

Suckless Terminal (st)

urxvt

Wezterm

xterm