Kero

Kero is a native macOS terminal workspace built by egoist, available free and open-source under the GPLv3 license. It organizes terminal work around projects rather than windows, embeds Ghostty's terminal core (libghostty) for rendering, and ships with Git and file-tree panels so developers can review and ship without leaving the terminal.

What It Is

Kero is a macOS desktop terminal application that replaces the traditional window-per-session model with a project-centric sidebar. Each repository or working directory becomes a named project; within each project, users open as many terminal tabs as needed, split panes horizontally or vertically, and restore the full layout on relaunch. The terminal engine is libghostty — the same core used by the Ghostty terminal — embedded natively in a Swift application.

How the Project Model Works

The core organizational unit in Kero is the project, not the window:

• Sidebar navigation — Cmd+1–9 switches between projects; Cmd+N adds a new one.
• Sessions per project — Cmd+T opens a new tab; each tab has its own working directory and scrollback buffer.
• Split panes — Cmd+D splits right, Cmd+Shift+D splits down; Opt+Cmd+arrows moves focus between panes.
• Persistent layout — quitting and relaunching restores projects, tabs, and pane arrangement; each shell reopens fresh in its previous directory with prior scrollback visible above a "Session Contents Restored" divider.
• Command palette — Cmd+P jumps to any project, session, or command.

Git and Files Without Leaving the Terminal

Kero adds a Git panel (Cmd+Shift+G) that sits beside the active shell and supports staging, unstaging, discarding, committing, amending, branch switching, branch creation, fetch, fast-forward pull, push, upstream publishing, and stashing. Inline diffs open in place when a changed file is clicked. A separate Files panel (Cmd+Shift+E) browses the working tree with tree-sitter syntax highlighting and Cmd+S saving, and a Session Info panel (Cmd+Shift+I) shows running processes and the TCP ports they are listening on.

Terminal Fidelity and Shell Compatibility

Kero explicitly does not replace the user's shell. Zsh, fish, and bash run exactly as configured — prompt, aliases, and dotfiles are untouched. The libghostty rendering core handles OSC 9;4 progress bars (displayed as a slim bar above the terminal with error and pause states), desktop notifications for bell events and notification escapes, and font rendering with JetBrains Mono and Nerd Font symbols bundled by default. Any monospace family can be substituted.

Open-Source Deployment Model

The source code is hosted at github.com/egoist/kero under GPLv3. The project is written primarily in Swift and also supports an optional Alacritty backend in addition to the default libghostty backend. Builds are signed and notarized by Apple, distributed via a .dmg download from releases.kero.sh, and also installable via Homebrew (brew install egoist/tap/kero). Quiet background updates are handled by Sparkle. The project collects no telemetry and makes no network calls beyond the Sparkle update check.

Current Status: v0.1.37

The current release is v0.1.37, targeting macOS 15.6 and later. The GitHub repository was created in July 2026 and shows active development, with the last push recorded on August 1, 2026. The project has accumulated 726 stars and 59 forks on GitHub as of that date. The FAQ confirms the app is free to download with no subscription and no account required.