Ghostty Shaders

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A collection of GLSL fragment shaders optimized for Ghostty terminal v1.3.0+.

These shaders have been written to enforce GLSL type safety, resolve iChannel0 initialization races, and play nicely with strict Mesa drivers and Ghostty engine changes without tanking your framerate. One folder contains the works this project was forked from. I just want a place to curate shaders better, and a place for new and consistent contributors with well-performing shaders to have their own "collection," if you will, represented in the form of a directory in this repo.

A unique collection curated by individuals with talent to show their stuff to the community. Nothing Ghostty ricing is off-limits. There will be more structure to follow along with as I develop this further, so there will be no confusion about what to do if you wish to make a contribution.

For the time being keep all questions or contribution ideas will be treated as issues untill the project matures.

Rules off the bat: No AI. Contributions made with LLMs, or with LLMs listed as contributors, will be rejected.

The original maintainers do not share this policy, so you may find AI contributions in /ghostty-shaders-original.

For now, enjoy what's displayed here!!! And thank you for checking out the repo! While it's still a work in progress, I hope you enjoy and look forward to watching the project grow.

Below are Installation instructions.(will always work on the main branch, even as the project gets more complex.)

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. Tree view

~/.config/
│
└── ghostty/
    │
    ├── config
    │
    └── GSIM/
        │
        ├── README.md
        ├── assets/
        │   ├── banner.svg
        │   ├── ghost.svg
        │   └── logo.svg
        │
        └── shaders/
            ├── Lizard-Originals/
            │   ├── shader1.glsl
            │   └── shader2.glsl
            │
            ├── ghostty-originals/
            │   ├── shader1.glsl
            │   └── shader2.glsl
            │
            └── ContributorName/
                ├── shader1.glsl
                └── shader2.glsl

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Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/GrandBIRDLizard/GSIM.git

Make Ghostty's new GSIM config dir via:

mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty/GSIM/Active

Copy a collection:

cp ~/GSIM/shaders/Lizard-Originals/*.glsl \
   ~/.config/ghostty/GSIM/shaders/Active/

Or a single shader:

cp ~/GSIM/shaders/Lizard-Originals/crt.glsl \
   ~/.config/ghostty/GSIM/shaders/Active/

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Where ever you put it, point Ghostty at it:

custom-shader = ~/.config/ghostty/GSIM/shaders/Active/crt.glsl

Config Tooling Coming Soon

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Troubleshooting:

"Unknown Field" Errors:

If you see unknown field errors in your logs, you likely pasted GLSL code directly into your Ghostty config.

The fix: 1. Ensure all GLSL code is in a separate .glsl file. 2. In your config, only use the custom-shader = path/to/shader.glsl directive.

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Performance & Latency:

To maintain a steady 60/120 FPS on high-refresh displays:

• Use custom-shader-animation = true to pause rendering when the window is hidden.
• Keep the math inside mainImage as lean as possible—avoid complex loops

Progress

anything inside ghostty-shaders is not currently optimized, I will continue to pull new updates in from the maintainers but I will not make any direct progress with the project. repo is a work in progress, I've been tooling with in my spare time will tag a pre-release with tags soon. when I feel I've made significant progress or I've come to a final direction for project.

Lizard-originals

where my Independant work will reside, and each contributer who would like to contribute and have a "slot" can do so by continual contribution and or helpful solutions/ideas/discussion. slot in this sense is a directory in the repo to hold a portfolio of work to show off. Distinct of one off contributions. I will make a spot or system for such one off works when I get the build and configuration stable.

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site not implemented will be available when project ships Pictures will be desplayed in README.md Gif's will be on the website

📖 The Interactive site:

Don't just read the code see it in action. Visit the Ghostty Shader site to preview every shader with high-res recordings and one-click installation.