ELY-Open-Source/ELYTerminal

ELYTerminal is a new cross-platform terminal emulator built in Rust on GPUI, aimed at developers who want sessions and side panels in one window rather than a stack of separate tools. It is worth a look if you like the idea of a three-column layout; it is too young to treat as a settled daily driver.

The problem

You want several shell sessions, a glance at Git state and a look at the files for the same project, without hopping between tabs and a separate terminal multiplexer layout. In a conventional single-pane terminal, the usual workaround is a terminal multiplexer plus a separate editor or Git UI, or extra windows that are easy to lose track of. ELYTerminal changes that by making the layout part of the app: sessions sit in a left column, the terminal in the middle, and Git or Files in a right column. The result is one window that holds the whole working context, which you can switch between per project.

What's different

The terminal core is alacritty_terminal, so the README describes 256 colors and truecolor, bold, dim, italic, five underline styles, wide characters and combining marks, with box-drawing, block and powerline shapes drawn as geometry so lines join across cells. Key handling follows xterm and the kitty keyboard protocol, and on Windows win32-input-mode, so shortcuts from tools like herdr keep working. OSC 8 and plain links open with a configurable press, input methods compose at the cursor, and pastes are bracketed when a program asks. The visible differentiator is the layout and the fully exposed settings window: every setting has a control there, and each change is written immediately to settings.json.

The trade-off is that the settings file is strict. If it does not parse or holds an out-of-range value, the app stops on startup with an error naming the file and field, though the README says it never overwrites the file. That gives you a clear diagnostic instead of silent defaults, but it also means hand-editing that file can take the app down until you fix it. Beyond that, the README establishes a young project's feature scope, not long-term stability, so treat the polished-looking contract as something to verify against your own workflows.

Who should try it

A good fit is a developer on macOS, Windows or Linux who works with a small number of parallel sessions per project and wants Git state and files in the same window, and who is comfortable installing a young terminal. The signed and notarized macOS build and the unsigned Windows zip are straightforward release-download paths. A poor fit is someone who runs an existing terminal multiplexer configuration or depends on a heavily customized setup, since moving that configuration and habits is the cost of adoption.

Linux users should read the packaging instructions first: builds require glibc 2.35 or later, an X11 or Wayland desktop and working graphics drivers. Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 12 and Fedora 43 are named as supported package targets, so a distribution outside that set has a less-documented path.

Requirements and limitations

Platform floor is macOS 11 on Apple silicon, Windows 10 and later on x86_64, and Linux x86_64 with glibc 2.35 plus X11 or Wayland. The Windows build is unsigned, so SmartScreen may stop it until you choose More info then Run anyway; the macOS build is described as signed with Developer ID and notarized. Building from source pins Rust 1.95.0 via rust-toolchain.toml.

Ongoing care means knowing where settings.json lives on each platform and that an invalid value blocks startup with a named error, so a hand-edit needs a backup and a correct value. See the release assets and the Linux packaging notes before committing.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo first recorded the repository at 160 total stars on the 2026-10-25 NEW-REPOSITORY board for Rust (#24), five days after creation. That is a dated snapshot, not a growth series, and the stored coverage is too sparse to judge whether interest persists. The project is genuinely new, so the main question is whether its terminal compatibility and macOS, Windows and Linux packaging hold up in everyday use; check the release assets against your platform before adopting it.