[jamylak]

The 👻 Ghost Tab Issue

ghost_tab_720p.mov

Previous failure scenario (User perspective):

1. Open a new tab
2. Instantly trigger close other tabs (eg. through custom user keyboard shortcut)
3. Now you will see an empty Ghost Tab (Only a window bar with empty content)

The previous failure mode is:

1. Create a tab or window now in newTab(...) / newWindow(...).
2. Queue its initial show/focus work with DispatchQueue.main.async.
3. Close that tab or window with closeTabImmediately() / closeWindowImmediately() before the queued callback runs.
4. The queued callback still runs anyway and calls showWindow(...) / makeKeyAndOrderFront(...) on stale state.
5. The tab can be resurrected as a half-closed blank ghost tab.

The fix:

• Store deferred presentation work in a cancellable DispatchWorkItem and cancel it from the close paths before AppKit finishes tearing down the tab or window.
• This prevents the stale show/focus callback from running after close.

AI Usage

I used GPT 5.4 to find the initial issue and fix it. I cleaned up and narrowed down the commit afterwards.

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Additional Notes:

I use cmd+o to close_tab:other
https://github.com/jamylak/dotfiles/blob/main/ghostty/config#L106C1-L106C34

Try it for your self if you want to reproduce, just do a quick cmd+t cmd+o and you will see

[ghostty-vouch]

Hi @jamylak, thanks for your interest in contributing!

This project requires that pull request authors are vouched, and you are not in the list of vouched users.

This PR will be closed automatically. See https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.

[bo2themax]

!vouch

[bo2themax]

I did encounter this once, but I couldn't reproduce it after. The fix seems reasonable. I'll reopen it first and try this later

[jamylak]

I did encounter this once, but I couldn't reproduce it after. The fix seems reasonable. I'll reopen it first and try this later

thanks for that