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 WASM
• Real PTY integration - Full terminal emulation with native shell support
• Panel and editor terminals - Open terminals in the bottom panel or as editor tabs
• Multi-tab support - Multiple terminal sessions in the panel view
• Theme integration - Automatically uses VS Code's color theme
• File path detection - Ctrl/Cmd+click to open files from terminal output

How It Works

This extension uses two main components:

1. 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)

2. 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+`	Cmd+`
New terminal	Ctrl+Shift+`	Cmd+Shift+`
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 Terminal
• BooTTY: New Terminal in Editor
• BooTTY: New Terminal in Panel
• BooTTY: Toggle Terminal Panel

Configuration

Setting	Default	Description
bootty.fontFamily	""	Font family (empty = use editor font)
bootty.fontSize	0	Font 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.notifications	true	Show 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 extension
• ghostty-web by Coder - WebAssembly bindings and Canvas2D renderer for libghostty-vt

Related Repositories

• BooTTY - This VS Code extension
• @0xbigboss/ghostty-web - Fork of ghostty-web with enhanced selection handling (npm)

License

MIT - See LICENSE for details.