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Ghostty prompted me for another auto-update, and I was worried about losing my tabs and split views. The first time this happened on another machine, everything was gone after the restart.

By default, Ghostty’s window-save-state is set to default, which on macOS only preserves session state during force quits or when the system setting is enabled. During app-initiated restarts like auto-updates, your session gets lost. At least that was the case on my machine.

The solution seems to explicitly configure session management in your Ghostty config (~/.config/ghostty/config):

# Always save and restore window state (position, size, tabs, splits)
window-save-state = always


# Enable shell integration for working directory preservation
shell-integration = detect
shell-integration-features = no-sudo,cursor,title


# Control auto-update behavior to avoid surprise restarts
auto-update = check

The window-save-state = always setting ensures your tabs and splits survive any restart, not just force quits. The auto-update = check setting gives you control over when updates happen instead of surprising you mid-workflow.

You can check your current configuration and see all available options by running ghostty +show-config --default --docs in your terminal.