TildaZ

The drop-down terminal that works everywhere. Hit one hotkey and a fast, native terminal slides down over whatever you're doing — on Linux, macOS, and Windows. In the spirit of Tilda, but on every desktop you use.

Most drop-down terminals live on a single OS — or a single Linux desktop. TildaZ is one app across all three platforms, and on Linux it brings a real drop-down with a global hotkey to every major desktop: KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, COSMIC, Hyprland, and sway. No Electron, no toolkit bloat — just a quick native window that gets out of your way.

Website: https://ensky0.github.io/tildaz/ · Download: https://github.com/ensky0/tildaz/releases/latest

v0.5.1 — fullscreen on every desktop + cross-platform polish. One drop-down terminal for Linux (Wayland), macOS, and Windows, with verified drop-down + global-hotkey support on KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, COSMIC, Hyprland, and sway.

Why TildaZ

• One terminal, every OS. The same drop-down terminal on Linux, macOS, and Windows — one config, one muscle memory.
• Works on every Linux desktop. A real drop-down and global hotkey on KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, COSMIC, Hyprland, and sway — not just one.
• Native and quick. No Electron, no GTK/Qt — a direct Wayland client on Linux, GPU rendering on macOS and Windows, and the fast libghostty-vt core.
• A real terminal. Tabs, themes, true color, ligatures, color emoji, and full CJK with inline IME (Korean / Japanese / Chinese), Hanja / kanji included.
• Stays out of your way. Drop it down with a hotkey, dock it to the monitor under your cursor, dismiss it just as fast.
• Private by default. No telemetry, no analytics, no auto-update phone-home — only local config and logs.

See it render

Ligatures, true color, color emoji with skin tones and ZWJ families, full-width CJK, and block / shade glyphs all render correctly — identically on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Paste this into any TildaZ window:

echo -e "\n🎉❤️🌈🎨🌞🍎🚀💎✨\n👋🏻👋🏼👋🏽👋🏾👋🏿\n👨‍👩‍👧👨‍👨‍👦‍👦\nABCDEFG abcdefg 0123456789\n한글 ABC 가나다라마바사\n▀▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█▉▊▋▌▍▎▏\n▐░▒▓▔▕\n"

Install

Download the latest artifact from GitHub Releases.

Platform	Artifact	Notes
Windows 10 1903+ x64	tildaz-vX.Y.Z-win-x64.zip	Unzip anywhere and keep tildaz.exe, conpty.dll, and OpenConsole.exe together.
Windows 11 ARM64	tildaz-vX.Y.Z-win-arm64.zip	Same layout as the x64 zip with ARM64-native binaries.
macOS 14+ universal	tildaz-vX.Y.Z-macos.dmg	Drag TildaZ.app into Applications. Apple Silicon and Intel are both included.
Linux (any distro) — portable	tildaz-vX.Y.Z-linux-{x86_64,aarch64}.tar.gz	Extract, then ./install.sh installs the .desktop and icon under ~/.local/share. The binary stays in the extracted directory by default.
Linux Debian / Ubuntu	tildaz_X.Y.Z_{amd64,arm64}.deb	sudo dpkg -i tildaz_*.deb (or open with the Software app).
Linux Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE	tildaz-X.Y.Z-1.{x86_64,aarch64}.rpm	sudo dnf install ./tildaz-*.rpm (or rpm -Uvh).
Linux distro-independent — single file	TildaZ-X.Y.Z-{x86_64,aarch64}.AppImage	chmod +x TildaZ-*.AppImage && ./TildaZ-*.AppImage — runs on any glibc 2.28+ system.
Linux Arch / Manjaro / EndeavourOS	tildaz-X.Y.Z-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst	sudo pacman -U tildaz-*.pkg.tar.zst (x86_64).

First launch creates the default config:

Platform	Config	Log
Windows	%APPDATA%\tildaz\config.json	%APPDATA%\tildaz\tildaz.log
macOS	~/.config/tildaz/config.json	~/Library/Logs/tildaz.log
Linux	~/.config/tildaz/config.json	~/.local/state/tildaz/tildaz.log

macOS releases are ad-hoc signed. If Gatekeeper blocks the first open, right-click TildaZ.app and choose Open, or run:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/TildaZ.app

Then grant Input Monitoring and Accessibility in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Those permissions are needed for the global hotkey and window control shortcuts.

Configure

Edit config.json; the schema is documented in CONFIG.md.

Common fields:

• window.dock_position, width_percent, height_percent, offset_percent, opacity_percent
• font.family, font.glyph_fallback, size_point, cell_width_ratio, line_height_ratio
• theme, shell, hotkey, auto_start, hidden_start, max_scroll_lines

Font fallback is capped at 8 families total: 1 primary font.family plus up to 7 entries in font.glyph_fallback.

Build

Requirements:

• Zig 0.15.2
• macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
• Windows: no extra C/C++ toolchain; Zig provides clang + LLD for the MSVC ABI

zig build
zig build test
zig build package

Outputs:

Platform	Local build output	Package output
Windows x64	zig-out/bin/tildaz.exe	zig-out/release/tildaz-v<ver>-win-x64.zip
Windows ARM64	zig-out/bin/tildaz.exe (with -Dtarget=aarch64-windows)	zig-out/release/tildaz-v<ver>-win-arm64.zip
macOS	zig-out/TildaZ.app	zig-out/release/tildaz-v<ver>-macos.dmg
Linux	zig-out/bin/tildaz (with -Dtarget={x86_64,aarch64}-linux-gnu.2.28)	zig-out/release/{tildaz-v<ver>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz,tildaz_<ver>_<debarch>.deb,tildaz-<ver>-1.<arch>.rpm,TildaZ-<ver>-<arch>.AppImage} (-Dformat=tar.gz|deb|rpm|AppImage)

Official release binaries are built by GitHub Actions from v* tags. Local packages are useful for testing, but release artifacts are not uploaded by hand.

Documentation

Need	Read
Configuration schema, themes, examples	CONFIG.md
Keyboard and mouse shortcuts	KEYBINDINGS.md
Current code structure	ARCHITECTURE.md
Cross-platform behavior spec	SPEC.md
Maintainer / agent workflow rules	AGENTS.md
Security reporting	SECURITY.md
Release notes	dist/release-notes/

Historical cross-platform refactor notes are archived in CROSS_PLATFORM.md.

Known Limitations

• Linux is Wayland-only (no X11) and shipped in v0.5.0. It is verified on real hardware across KDE Plasma 6, Hyprland, sway, Cinnamon, GNOME (via a Shell extension), and COSMIC. The Linux renderer is still a software path (no GPU yet). Z-order yield on focus loss is not implemented on Linux (wp_layer_shell_v1 categorical layers have no normal-window slot). Hanja conversion of already-committed Hangul (selecting committed Korean text and pressing the Hanja key) is not supported on Linux — zwp_text_input_v3 has no reconversion request. See SPEC.md §1.2 for the desktop matrix.
• Windows binaries are not Authenticode-signed yet, so SmartScreen or EDR tools may warn on first launch. The current SignPath application draft lives in dist/signpath-application.md.
• The Windows global hotkey cannot fire while an elevated app has focus unless TildaZ is also elevated. This is Windows UIPI behavior.
• macOS releases are ad-hoc signed, so Gatekeeper may require the first-open flow above. Developer ID notarization is still blocked by the current signing environment.
• macOS Emoji & Symbols opens as a floating panel rather than a cursor-anchored popover in custom terminal views. This matches Ghostty, iTerm2, Alacritty, Kitty, and similar GPU cell-grid terminals.
• Holding paste-repeat on very wide ZWJ emoji clusters under macOS bash 3.2 can desynchronize shell wrapping. Normal single paste is unaffected; zsh 5.x does not exhibit the same mismatch.

Privacy

TildaZ has no telemetry, analytics, auto-update check, crash reporter, or network request path. It stores only local config and log files. Child shells (cmd, PowerShell, WSL, bash, zsh, etc.) are independent processes governed by the user's shell and OS configuration.

License

TildaZ is AGPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

Bundled / linked components:

Component	License	Source
libghostty-vt	MIT	https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty
OpenConsole.exe / conpty.dll	MIT	https://github.com/microsoft/terminal