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I don't understand this too. Terminal need to buffer tty output (so it's not the slow part of pipeline) and display latest visible lines. GPU is not needed for that. Even 10 FPS is enough for smooth CLI work. I don't type that fast or read that fast anyway.

That said, all pixels are rendered via GPU anyway. So using GPU API seems like the most appropriate API and if it means that terminal could work with 100500 FPS, why not?

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Also I don't need high FPS when I accidentally cat a giant file or whatever. What I really want is minimal input latency. I switched from iTerm2 to Ghostty and then eventually back to Terminal.app because terminal input latency really bothers me.

Did you find Ghostty’s input latency subpar?

Not subpar but Terminal.app seemed a little faster, enough to notice a difference side by side.

This also brings tons of efficiency gains on portable hardware. You can choose go full throttle or just reap the efficiency gains with minimal power usage on the rendering.

iTerm2 switches GPU to CPU rendering when running on battery. GPU rendering is more power hungry than CPU.

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