No tabs in quick terminal

[lucymhdavies]

Known issue, mentioned in #2320

But I'm creating an issue specifically to track it

[mitchellh]

Thanks, this is currently a "wont fix" because we have no plans to implement custom tabs. I noted it can be fixed if we do that, but there aren't any plans to actually do that, and the feature is documented as not supporting tabs currently.

[lucymhdavies]

Aha! Thanks for that clarification :)

[mitchellh]

No problem, if my stance changes I'll reopen. Your other two issues are good though!

[yasyf]

@mitchellh I know this is wontfix but just wanted to mention this is something I normally rely on in my workflow!

[mitchellh]

Hey @yasyf its not a "wont fix" forever, its just dependent on something that is a lot of work and not quite ready to be worked on yet :)

[yasyf]

@mitchellh luckily splits get us almost all the way there for now :)

[tkafka]

Bringing a twitter conversation here:

TLDR is that I personally I'd be completely okay with hotkey window being just a regular window, maybe with some special positioning rules.

Advantages:

• easy to add tabs

Disadvantages

• some people might want the hotkey window to look special (no chrome, animations etc.). I don't :).

@mitchellh: tweet

On tabs our hands are tied: macOS tabs require a titlebar. And a titlebar doesn't let you move the window off screen (to animate in), plus looks wonky. We need a fully custom tab bar solution (a ton of work) to fix this. Its planned but not short term.

@tkafka:

I understand, but personally, I don't care about the animation, and I am okay with it appearing exactly as a 'regular' window. Even now my iTerm2 hotkey window has a limited width, as there is zero reason for a mile wide command line.
I understand someone else will have different priorities, I just wanted to say that personally I am okay with all the drawbacks :). Thanks for a great work!

[lucymhdavies]

Even now my iTerm2 hotkey window has a limited width, as there is zero reason for a mile wide command line.

For this part at least, we have #2384 (which a couple of us have experimented with, but not got a full implementation developed yet)

#3100 is also related.

[hherman1]

Seconding this report about user preferences. I use iterm2 exclusively as a hotkey window with tabs. I would like to use ghostty instead, but I don’t think I can switch if I can’t use tabs with my hot key window.

Since it is the only way I use my terminal, without tabs I am limited to only a single terminal window, which is a blocker for me to adopt. I would gladly sacrifice appearance controls, or any sort of visual, to be able to use ghostty.

[sohsatoh]

This feature has been the biggest hurdle for me in fully replacing iTerm2 with Ghostty, so I’m currently working on implementing it.

It’s just a proof of concept for now, but the changes aren’t too significant.

If everything looks good, I’m going to submit a pull request in a few days (hopefully).

ghostty-qt-tab.mp4

[derekbunch]

in the interim, i use this hammerspoon script to show/hide a singleton window based on a keymap. Maybe it would be helpful for others trying to migrate from iTerm. I used it previously with kitty, then generalized it a bit to work with any mac bundle_id

local spaces = require("hs.spaces") -- https://github.com/asmagill/hs._asm.spaces
local ghostty_bundle_id = "com.mitchellh.ghostty" -- more accurate to avoid mismatching on browser titles

-- Switch kitty
local toggle_app = function(bundle_id)
	function GetMainWindow(app)
		-- get main window from app
		local win = nil
		while win == nil do
			win = app:mainWindow()
		end
		return win
	end

	function MoveWindow(app_to_toggle, space, mainScreen)
		-- move to main space
		local win = GetMainWindow(app_to_toggle)
		if win:isFullScreen() then
			hs.eventtap.keyStroke("fn", "f", 0, app_to_toggle)
		end
		local winFrame = win:frame()
		local scrFrame = mainScreen:fullFrame()
		winFrame.w = scrFrame.w
		winFrame.y = scrFrame.y
		winFrame.x = scrFrame.x
		win:setFrame(winFrame, 0)
		spaces.moveWindowToSpace(win, space)
		if win:isFullScreen() then
			hs.eventtap.keyStroke("fn", "f", 0, app_to_toggle)
		end
		win:focus()
	end

	local app_to_toggle = hs.application.get(bundle_id)
	if app_to_toggle ~= nil and app_to_toggle:isFrontmost() then
		app_to_toggle:hide()
	else
		local space = spaces.activeSpaceOnScreen()
		local mainScreen = hs.screen.mainScreen()
		if app_to_toggle == nil and hs.application.launchOrFocusByBundleID(bundle_id) then
			local appWatcher = nil
			appWatcher = hs.application.watcher.new(function(name, event, app)
				if event == hs.application.watcher.launched and app:bundleID() == bundle_id then
					GetMainWindow(app):move(hs.geometry({ x = 0, y = 0, w = 1, h = 0.8 })) -- move app_to_toggle window on top, you could set the window percentage here
					app:hide()
					MoveWindow(app, space, mainScreen)
					appWatcher:stop()
				end
			end)
			appWatcher:start()
		end
		if app_to_toggle ~= nil then
			MoveWindow(app_to_toggle, space, mainScreen)
		end
	end
end

-- change your own hotkey combo here, available keys could be found here:https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.hotkey.html#bind
hs.hotkey.bind({ "command" }, "`", function()
	toggle_app(ghostty_bundle_id)
end)