Monstar is a terminal emulator for Linux and Wayland.

Features

• Wayland windows, fractional scaling, text input (IME), clipboard, primary selection, activation, and system bell support.
• Desktop notifications and launcher progress over D-Bus.
• Link and file opening through XDG desktop portals.
• Optional systemd scopes for shell processes.
• Kitty graphics, OSC 8 hyperlinks, URI detection, synchronized output, and terminal color support.
• Scrollback search while terminal output continues.
• Fontconfig fonts, bundled color schemes, desktop light/dark preference, padding, and background opacity settings.
• Touchpad scrolling, separate precision and discrete wheel settings, rectangular selection, link opening, and an overlay scrollbar that follows the desktop reduced-motion preference.
• Configuration reloads for most appearance and interaction settings.

Performance

Reference distributions recorded on an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. Lower is better. Results vary by workload.

Startup

Launch-and-exit time over 100 fresh runs of true:

Keystroke latency

Key event to echoed-frame commit over 200 injected keys:

PTY throughput

Sample-time distributions from eight vtebench workloads:

vtebench measures producer blocking and PTY read throughput, not frame presentation or input latency.

Benchmark methodology

• Date: July 15, 2026.
• Session: hardware-accelerated, headless Sway 1.12 at 2560×1440.
• Renderer: GLES2 on the Intel GPU through /dev/dri/renderD128.
• Process setup: empty configuration and a fresh process for each terminal.
• Startup: measured with hyperfine 1.20.0 after 10 warmups. Commands were monstar -e true, foot true, ghostty -e true, kitty true, and alacritty -e true. The result covers the complete process lifetime, not time to the first visible frame.
• Keystroke latency: measured in 120×40 terminals under WAYLAND_DEBUG=client. The test injected 200 keys with wtype at intervals from 50 to 100 ms. A marked 20 ms raw-PTY echo delay was subtracted from each sample to separate output commits from toolkit-only redraws. The result includes client key handling, the PTY round trip, rendering, and buffer commit. It excludes physical input, compositor presentation, and display latency.
• PTY throughput: measured with the default vtebench suite at 120×40 cells. The test used the standard 1 MiB minimum sample size and 10-second workload limit. The result covers PTY reads, not frame rate, display latency, or final-frame presentation.
• Versions: Monstar 0.1.0 (5b350e2, ReleaseFast), foot 1.27.0, Ghostty 1.3.2 tip (c5a21ed), kitty 0.47.4, and Alacritty 0.17.0.

Linux integration

• XDG desktop portals open links, local files, and directories. Portal settings provide desktop light/dark and reduced-motion preferences. Link opening uses Wayland activation tokens.
• D-Bus session services provide desktop notifications and launcher progress. Notification actions can activate the terminal window.
• Monstar launches new windows opened with Ctrl+Shift+N through the systemd user manager. Optional transient scopes place each shell process tree in a separate scope.
• Wayland protocols provide fractional scaling, text-input-v3 IME, cursor shapes, clipboard and primary selection, server-side decorations, named app icons, activation, system bell, and translucent background blur support.

Enable a transient systemd scope for each newly spawned shell with:

linux-cgroup = always

If the session bus or systemd scope is unavailable, Monstar leaves the shell in its inherited cgroup. Link opening falls back to xdg-open when the portal is unavailable. Monstar disables optional Wayland protocols when the compositor does not support them.

Monstar speaks the required subset of the D-Bus wire protocol directly, so D-Bus is not a build or library dependency. Pass -Ddbus=false to compile the client out entirely, at the cost of desktop notifications, launcher progress, portal-based link/file opening (falls back to xdg-open), portal appearance detection, and systemd cgroup isolation. Nothing else is affected. systemd itself is never a build dependency; it is only used at runtime, over the session bus, when linux-cgroup = always is configured and a systemd user session is detected.

Install

Install the current development version on Arch Linux from the monstar-git AUR package:

yay -S monstar-git

Build and install Monstar from source into ~/.local:

zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast install --prefix "$HOME/.local"

The command installs the executable, desktop entry, app icon, manual pages, and bundled themes. Add $HOME/.local/bin to PATH, then launch Monstar:

monstar

See Development for build requirements.

Usage

Run Monstar without arguments to start $SHELL. Monstar falls back to /bin/sh when SHELL is unset. Pass -e to run a command directly:

monstar -e fish --login

Pass -- to run a shell expression:

monstar -- 'git log --oneline | less'

Set the working directory, initial size, title, app ID, font, and one-off configuration overrides with command-line options:

monstar --working-directory ~/src \
  --title scratch \
  --window-size-chars 100x32 \
  --font Iosevka \
  -o background-opacity=0.95

Run monstar --help, man monstar, or man 5 monstar for the complete command and configuration reference.

Configuration

Write configuration to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/monstar/config. Use ~/.config/monstar/config when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset. Start with:

font-family = Iosevka
font-size = 12.5
theme = light:Rose Pine Dawn,dark:Rose Pine
background-opacity = 0.95
window-padding-x = 8
window-padding-y = 6
mouse-scroll-multiplier = precision:1,discrete:3

By default, background-opacity affects only the default terminal background and padding. Set background-opacity-cells = true to apply it to explicit cell background colors too. Monstar requests compositor-provided blur whenever the background is translucent; set background-blur = false to keep it clear.

Leave theme unset to follow the desktop light/dark preference with Monstar's built-in Fluent 2 color schemes. Load bundled iTerm2 color schemes by name. Put custom themes in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/monstar/themes or ~/.config/monstar/themes.

Set the default command for new windows. Commands run through /bin/sh -c unless prefixed with direct::

command = fish --login
# command = direct:fish --no-config

Press Ctrl+Shift+, or send SIGUSR1 to reload the configuration:

pkill -USR1 monstar

Visual and interaction settings apply immediately. Process and storage settings apply to new windows.

Keybindings

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V	Copy / paste
Ctrl+Shift+F	Search scrollback
Ctrl+Shift+N	Open a new window in the current directory
Ctrl+Shift+,	Reload configuration
Shift+PageUp / Shift+PageDown	Scroll back / forward one page
Shift+Home / Shift+End	Scroll to the top / bottom of scrollback
Ctrl++ / Ctrl+= / Ctrl+-	Adjust the font size
Ctrl+0	Reset the font size
Ctrl + left click	Open a hyperlink or detected URI
Ctrl + drag	Make a rectangular selection

Scrollback search updates as you type. Press Ctrl+N and Ctrl+P to move between matches. Press Enter to copy a match to the primary selection. Press Escape to restore the previous viewport.

Scrollback keybindings pass through to applications using the alternate screen.

Hold Shift while dragging to select text after an application captures the mouse. Hold Ctrl+Shift instead of Ctrl to open a link in this state. Middle-click to paste the primary selection.

Development

Building requires Zig 0.16, the Wayland 1.25 core schema, wayland-protocols 1.49, and development libraries for Wayland, Fontconfig, FreeType, HarfBuzz, and xkbcommon. Monstar negotiates protocol versions at runtime to support older compositors.

zig build
zig build test
zig build fmt