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BooTTY
An alternative terminal extension for VS Code powered by Ghostty's terminal emulation (libghostty-vt) via WebAssembly.
Pronounced "Boo-T-T-Y" 👻
Note : This is an unofficial community project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Ghostty project.
Performance : The underlying ghostty-web library and WASM builds have not been optimized for web/VS Code environments. Performance may not match native terminal emulators. This is expected and improvements are ongoing upstream.
Features
Ghostty's terminal emulation - VT100/xterm escape sequence parsing via libghostty-vt WASMReal PTY integration - Full terminal emulation with native shell supportPanel and editor terminals - Open terminals in the bottom panel or as editor tabsMulti-tab support - Multiple terminal sessions in the panel viewTheme integration - Automatically uses VS Code's color themeFile path detection - Ctrl/Cmd+click to open files from terminal output
How It Works
This extension uses two main components:
libghostty-vt (WASM) - Ghostty's terminal emulation library handles:
VT100/xterm escape sequence parsing
Terminal state management (cells, cursor, scrollback)
Unicode/grapheme handling
Key encoding (Kitty protocol, xterm modifyOtherKeys)
Canvas2D Renderer (JavaScript) - The extension renders the terminal using:
HTML5 Canvas with 2D context
Dirty line tracking for efficient updates
VS Code theme color integration
Note : This extension uses Canvas2D rendering, not WebGL. GPU-accelerated WebGL rendering is a potential future enhancement.
Installation
Search for "BooTTY" in the VS Code extensions marketplace, or install from the command line:
code --install-extension bigboss.bootty
Usage
Action
Windows/Linux
macOS
Toggle terminal panel
Ctrl+</kbd> | <kbd>Cmd</kbd>+<kbd>
New terminal
Ctrl+Shift+</kbd> | <kbd>Cmd</kbd>+<kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>
New terminal in panel
Ctrl+Shift+T
Cmd+Shift+T
Next tab
Ctrl+Shift+]
Cmd+Shift+]
Previous tab
Ctrl+Shift+[
Cmd+Shift+[
You can also use the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P):
BooTTY: New TerminalBooTTY: New Terminal in EditorBooTTY: New Terminal in PanelBooTTY: Toggle Terminal Panel
Configuration
Setting
Default
Description
bootty.fontFamily""Font family (empty = use editor font)
bootty.fontSize0Font size in pixels (0 = use editor size)
bootty.defaultTerminalLocation"panel"Where new terminals open ("panel" or "editor")
bootty.bell"visual"Bell style ("visual" or "none")
bootty.notificationstrueShow notifications from terminal apps (OSC 9)
Requirements
VS Code 1.106.0 or later
macOS, Linux, or Windows
Credits
Ghostty by Mitchell Hashimoto - The terminal emulator whose VT100 parser (libghostty-vt) powers this extensionghostty-web by Coder - WebAssembly bindings and Canvas2D renderer for libghostty-vt
License
MIT - See LICENSE for details.
