March 12, 2026
Glass half full, tabs overflowing
Show HN: Calyx – Ghostty-Based macOS Terminal with Liquid Glass UI
Shiny Mac terminal drops: fans swoon, purists fume, iTerm2 diehards dig in
TLDR: Calyx is a new Mac terminal with a shiny “Liquid Glass” look, built on Ghostty for speed and tab-group organization. Comments split: minimalists and iTerm2 loyalists roll eyes, while others want the workflow perks and are curious about AI assistants chatting across panes.
Calyx just dropped with a glossy “Liquid Glass” look and a promise: keep Ghostty’s speed, fix tab chaos. Built on the same fast engine, it adds Tab Groups, split panes, a command palette, session restore, even a sidebar Git view and optional browser tabs. There’s also a built-in server so AI coding assistants (Claude Code) can chat across panes. Dev yuu1ch13 says he made it because Ghostty lacked organization tools. It reads your Ghostty config, but pushes a more macOS “Tahoe” aesthetic. Curious? Peek Calyx on GitHub.
The comments instantly turned into Team Minimal vs Team Shiny. One crowd begs for proof — “please post screenshots!” — while minimalists sigh that flat design already “peaked” and worry about readability. iTerm2 loyalists flex: “hard to convince me to move.” Then came the snark: “Is this a joke.” Meanwhile, the practical folks wonder if it’s just a theme or a real workflow booster, and suggest porting the look to iTerm2. Memes flew about Tab Hoarders Anonymous and glass reflections blinding night coders. Verdict: equal parts eye-candy, skepticism, and genuine interest in taming tab chaos. Supporters cheered the tab groups and Git sidebar, saying it finally treats terminal work like real projects.
Key Points
- •Calyx is a native macOS 26+ terminal app built on libghostty with Metal GPU-accelerated rendering and a Liquid Glass UI.
- •It adds workflow features including tab groups, split panes, a command palette, session persistence, notifications, and WKWebView browser tabs.
- •Developer tools include Git integration (changes sidebar, commit graph, inline diffs) and Claude Code IPC via a built-in MCP server.
- •Calyx is compatible with Ghostty configuration files and offers extensive keyboard shortcuts for groups, tabs, splits, and search.
- •Source build requires macOS 26+, Xcode 26+, Zig, and XcodeGen; the architecture combines AppKit and SwiftUI bridged via NSHostingView with GhosttyFFI.