Sherion

A high-performance, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust.

Install · Features · Configuration · Build from source · Feature inventory

Sherion terminal screenshot

Sherion is a modern terminal emulator built on winit, wgpu, and vello — with a custom title bar, tab sidebar, split panes, GPU text rendering, and full VT/ANSI compatibility via alacritty_terminal.

Features


GPU rendering	vello + wgpu pipeline with dirty-row tracking, glyph atlas, and ligatures
Tabs & splits	Sidebar tabs, detach to window, real split panes with mouse resize
Search	Full scrollback search with regex, case sensitivity, and whole-word match
Input	Kitty keyboard protocol, bracketed paste, IME, configurable keybindings
Mouse	SGR / X10 reporting, OSC 8 hyperlinks, rectangular selection
Config	TOML config with live reload, profiles, themes, and session restore
Cross-platform	Linux, macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon), Windows (ConPTY)

See the full feature inventory for a detailed compatibility checklist.

Install

Pre-built binaries are available on the Releases page.

Linux / macOS

bash

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
  https://github.com/hocestnonsatis/sherion/releases/latest/download/sherion-installer.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell)

powershell

irm https://github.com/hocestnonsatis/sherion/releases/latest/download/sherion-installer.ps1 | iex

Windows (MSI) — download sherion-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.msi from Releases.

macOS (Homebrew)

bash

brew install hocestnonsatis/tap/sherion

Requires the hocestnonsatis/homebrew-tap repository and HOMEBREW_TAP_TOKEN secret on the main repo for automated formula updates.

Linux (.deb)

Download sherion_*_amd64.deb from Releases, then:

bash

sudo dpkg -i sherion_*_amd64.deb

Linux (.rpm)

Download sherion-*.rpm from Releases, then:

bash

sudo dnf install ./sherion-*.rpm

Linux (Flatpak)

Download sherion-x86_64.flatpak from Releases, then:

bash

flatpak install --user sherion-x86_64.flatpak

Linux (AppImage)

Download Sherion-x86_64.AppImage from Releases, make it executable, and run:

bash

chmod +x Sherion-x86_64.AppImage
./Sherion-x86_64.AppImage

Quick start

bash

sherion

Enable debug logging:

bash

RUST_LOG=sherion=debug sherion

Use a profile:

bash

sherion --profile dark

Configuration

Sherion reads config from (in order):

SHERION_CONFIG environment variable
~/.config/sherion/sherion.toml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/sherion/sherion.toml)
./sherion.toml in the current directory (legacy fallback)

Copy or edit sherion.toml as a starting point. See SECURITY.md for hardening guidance.

bash

SHERION_CONFIG=/path/to/sherion.toml sherion

Key sections: [font], [colors], [terminal], [appearance], [ui], [keybindings], [profiles.*].

Build from source

Requirements

Rust 1.88+
GPU with Vulkan, Metal, DX12, or a compatible wgpu backend
A monospace font (DejaVu Sans Mono, Liberation Mono, or Noto Sans Mono)

bash

git clone https://github.com/hocestnonsatis/sherion.git
cd sherion
cargo build --release
./target/release/sherion

Optional SIMD UTF-8 acceleration:

bash

cargo build --release --features simd-utf8

Stack

Layer	Crate
Window + events	winit 0.30
GPU	wgpu 29
Terminal core (grid, VTE, PTY)	alacritty_terminal 0.26
Text shaping	parley 0.10
GPU rendering	vello 0.9
Config	serde + toml

Architecture

PTY I/O runs on a dedicated alacritty_terminal event-loop thread, isolated from the UI. The winit main thread shapes text with parley, builds vello scenes, and presents frames through wgpu with dirty-row damage tracking.

text

┌─────────────┐     MPSC      ┌──────────────────┐
│  PTY thread │ ────────────► │  winit UI thread │
│  (blocking  │               │  parley + vello  │
│   read)     │ ◄──────────── │  + wgpu present  │
└─────────────┘   input       └──────────────────┘

License

MIT

Anıl ÖZ

Publications

sherion