Alacritty is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

-accelerated

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote termin ...

focused on performance and simplicity. Consequently, it does not support tabs or splits and is configured by editing a text file. It is written in

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH ...

and uses

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

(for performance). A similar terminal emulator that uses OpenGL is kitty.

History

Joe Wilm announced Alacritty in his blog on 6 January 2017. He describes it as "the result of frustration with existing terminal emulators. Using vim inside

tmux tmux is an open-source terminal multiplexer for Unix-like operating systems. It allows multiple terminal sessions to be accessed simultaneously in a single window. It is useful for running more than one command-line program at the same time. I ...

in many terminals was a particularly bad experience. None of them were ever quite fast enough". He found

urxvt Rxvt (acronym for our extended virtual terminal) is a terminal emulator for the X Window System, and in the form of a Cygwin port, for Windows. History Rxvt was originally written by Rob Nation and later extensively modified by Mark Olesen, w ...

and st difficult to configure and criticized their "inability to run on non-

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

platforms". With the release of version 0.2.0 in September 2018 Alacritty gained support for scrollback. In version 0.3.0, released in April 2019, Alacritty entered

beta stage A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

and support for Windows, text reflow, and clicking on

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

s was added. In version 0.5.0, released in July 2020, a mode with vi keybindings for searching and copying text was added. In version 0.6.0, released in November 2020, a new binding to cancel search and leave vi mode was added.

Features

Alacritty supports true color in addition to the standard 16

ANSI color ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape charac ...

s. Alacritty explicitly does ''not'' support tabs or splits because similar functionality can be achieved with a

terminal multiplexer A terminal multiplexer is a software application that can be used to multiplex several separate pseudoterminal-based login sessions inside a single terminal display, terminal emulator window, PC/workstation system console, or remote login session, ...

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction ...

Configuration

Alacritty is configured by editing a template file in

YAML YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Exte ...

format, for example: colors: primary: background: '#000000'

References

{{Terminal emulators Free terminal emulators Free software programmed in Rust X Window programs

History

Features

Configuration

See also

References