Alacritty is the fastest terminal emulator in existence. Using the GPU for rendering enables optimizations that simply aren't possible in other emulators. Alacritty currently supports FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, and OpenBSD. Windows support is planned before the 1.0 release.
Alacritty is focused on simplicity and performance. The performance goal means it should be faster than any other terminal emulator available. The simplicity goal means that it doesn't have features such as tabs or splits (which can be better provided by a window manager or terminal multiplexer) nor niceties like a GUI config editor.
The software is considered to be at an alpha level of readiness--there are missing features and bugs to be fixed, but it is already used by many as a daily driver.
Precompiled binaries will eventually be made available on supported platforms. This is minimally blocked on a stable config format. For now, Alacritty must be built from source.
- Announcing Alacritty, a GPU-Accelerated Terminal Emulator January 6, 2017
- A short talk about Alacritty at the Rust Meetup January 2017 (starts at 57:00)
Instructions are provided for macOS and many Linux variants to compile Alacritty from source. With the exception of Arch (which has a package in the AUR), Void Linux (in main repository) and NixOS, please first read the prerequisites section, then find the section for your OS, and finally go to building and configuration.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/alacritty-git.git
cd alacritty-git
makepkg -isrUsing cargo deb, you can create and install a deb file.
git clone https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty.git
cd alacritty
cargo install cargo-deb
cargo deb --installzypper in alacrittyxbps-install alacritty- Alacritty requires the most recent stable Rust compiler; it can be installed with
rustup.
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Install
rustup.rs. -
Clone the source code:
git clone https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty.git cd alacritty -
Make sure you have the right Rust compiler installed. Run
rustup override set stable rustup update stable
You can build alacritty using cargo deb and use your system's package manager
to maintain the application using the instructions above.
If you'd still like to build a local version manually, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's an apt command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
apt-get install cmake libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev xclipOn Arch Linux, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a
pacman command that should install all of them. If something is still found
to be missing, please open an issue.
pacman -S cmake freetype2 fontconfig pkg-config make xclipOn Fedora, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a dnf
command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be
missing, please open an issue.
dnf install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel xclipOn CentOS/RHEL 7, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a yum
command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be
missing, please open an issue.
yum install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel xclip
yum group install "Development Tools"On openSUSE, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's
a zypper command that should install all of them. If something is
still found to be missing, please open an issue.
zypper install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel xclipCompiles out of the box for 14.2 For copy & paste support (middle mouse button) you need to install xclip https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/misc/xclip/?search=xclip
On Void Linux, install following packages before compiling Alacritty:
xbps-install cmake freetype-devel freetype expat-devel fontconfig xclipOn FreeBSD, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a pkg
command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be
missing, please open an issue.
pkg install cmake freetype2 fontconfig xclip pkgconfAlacritty builds on OpenBSD 6.3 almost out-of-the-box if Rust and Xenocara are installed. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
pkg_add rustOn Solus, you need a few extra libraries to build
Alacritty. Here's a eopkg command that should install all of them. If
something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
sudo eopkg install fontconfig-develThe following command can be used to get a shell with all development dependencies on NixOS.
nix-shell -A alacritty '<nixpkgs>'On Gentoo, there's a portage overlay available. Make sure layman is installed
and run:
sudo layman -a slyfoxThen, add x11-terms/alacritty ** to /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords and
emerge alacritty:
sudo emerge alacrittyIt might be handy to mask all other packages provided in the slyfox overlay by
adding */*::slyfox to /etc/portage/package.mask and adding
x11-terms/alacritty::slyfox to /etc/portage/package.unmask.
If you have a rust toolchain setup you can install Alacritty via cargo:
cargo install --git https://github.com/jwilm/alacrittyNote that you still need to download system build dependencies via your package
manager as mentioned above. The binary alacritty will be placed into $HOME/.cargo/bin.
Make sure it is in your path (default if you use rustup).
If you build Alacritty on another distribution, we would love some help filling in this section of the README.
BEFORE YOU RUN IT: Install the config file as described below; otherwise, many things (such as arrow keys) will not work.
Once all the prerequisites are installed, compiling Alacritty should be easy:
cargo build --releaseIf all goes well, this should place a binary at target/release/alacritty.
Many linux distributions support desktop entries for adding applications to system menus. To install the desktop entry for Alacritty, run
sudo cp target/release/alacritty /usr/local/bin # or anywhere else in $PATH
sudo desktop-file-install alacritty.desktop
sudo update-desktop-databaseTo build an application for macOS, run
make app
cp -r target/release/osx/Alacritty.app /Applications/Installing the manual page requires the additional dependency gzip.
To install the manual page, run
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1
gzip -c alacritty.man | sudo tee /usr/local/share/man/man1/alacritty.1.gz > /dev/nullTo get automatic completions for alacritty's flags and arguments you can install the provided shell completions.
To install the completions for zsh, run
sudo cp alacritty-completions.zsh /usr/share/zsh/functions/Completion/X/_alacritty
To install the completions for bash, you can source the alacritty-completions.bash in your ~/.bashrc file.
If you do not plan to delete the source folder of alacritty, you can run
echo "source $(pwd)/alacritty-completions.bash" >> ~/.bashrcOtherwise you can copy it to the ~/.bash_completion folder and source it from there:
mkdir -p ~/.bash_completion
cp alacritty-completions.bash ~/.bash_completion/alacritty
echo "source ~/.bash_completion/alacritty" >> ~/.bashrcTo install the completions for fish, run
sudo cp alacritty-completions.fish $__fish_datadir/vendor_completions.d/alacritty.fish
Although it's possible the default configuration would work on your system,
you'll probably end up wanting to customize it anyhow. There is a default
alacritty.yml and alacritty_macos.yml at the git repository root for
Linux and macOS respectively.
Alacritty looks for the configuration file at the following paths:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty/alacritty.yml$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty.yml$HOME/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml$HOME/.alacritty.yml
If none of these paths are found then
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty/alacritty.yml is created once alacritty is first
run. On most systems this often defaults to
$HOME/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml.
Many configuration options will take effect immediately upon saving changes to
the config file. The only exception is the font and dimensions sections
which requires Alacritty to be restarted. For further explanation of the config
file, please consult the comments in the default config file.
If you run into a problem with Alacritty, please file an issue. If you've got a
feature request, feel free to ask about it. Keep in mind that Alacritty is very
much not looking to be a feature-rich terminal emulator with all sorts of bells
and widgets. It's primarily a cross-platform, blazing fast tmux renderer that
Just Works.
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Is it really the fastest terminal emulator?
In the terminals I've benchmarked against, alacritty is either faster, WAY faster, or at least neutral. There are no benchmarks in which I've found Alacritty to be slower.
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macOS + tmux + vim is slow! I thought this was supposed to be fast!
This appears to be an issue outside of terminal emulators; either macOS has an IPC performance issue, or either tmux or vim (or both) have a bug. This same issue can be seen in
iTerm2andTerminal.app. I've found that if tmux is running on another machine which is connected to Alacritty via SSH, this issue disappears. Actual throughput and rendering performance are still better in Alacritty. -
When will Windows support be available?
When someone has time to work on it. Contributors would be welcomed :).
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My arrow keys don't work.
It sounds like you deleted some key bindings from your config file. Please reference the default config file to restore them.
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Why doesn't it support scrollback?
Alacritty's original purpose was to provide a better experience when using tmux which already handled scrollback. The scope of this project has since expanded, and scrollback will eventually be added.
Alacritty discussion can be found in #alacritty on freenode.
Wayland support is available, but not everything works as expected. Many people
have found a better experience using XWayland which can be achieved launching
Alacritty with the WAYLAND_DISPLAY environment variable cleared:
env WAYLAND_DISPLAY= alacrittyIf you're interested in seeing our Wayland support improve, please head over to the Wayland meta issue on the winit project to see how you may contribute.
Alacritty is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0.