Fixing xterm-ghostty: unknown terminal type

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you use Ghostty as your terminal on macOS and SSH into remote Linux servers, you’ve probably seen this:

root@server:~# clear
'xterm-ghostty': unknown terminal type.

Or this:

missing or unsuitable terminal: xterm-ghostty

This happens to everyone who uses Ghostty with remote servers. Here’s why it happens and how to fix it properly.

Why This Happens

Ghostty ships with its own terminfo entry called xterm-ghostty. When you open a terminal, Ghostty sets TERM=xterm-ghostty in your local shell. When you SSH into a remote server, that TERM value gets forwarded. The remote server then looks up xterm-ghostty in its terminfo database – and finds nothing, because xterm-ghostty is not in any standard Linux distribution yet.

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Fixing xterm-ghostty: unknown terminal type

Why This Happens