CRT is a visually expressive terminal emulator written in Rust that focuses on aesthetic customisation and GPU-accelerated rendering. Instead of treating the terminal purely as a utilitarian interface, the project experiments with styling and visual presentation, allowing the terminal to be themed with effects and animated backgrounds.
The terminal uses GPU rendering to deliver smooth visuals and supports CSS-style theming so users can style their terminal in a similar way to a web page. Themes can be modified and reloaded while the terminal is running, allowing rapid experimentation with layouts, colours, fonts, and effects.
CRT also includes a set of built-in visual themes featuring effects such as retro CRT scanlines, synthwave-style grids, and animated backgrounds. The project is primarily intended as a playful exploration of what a modern terminal interface can look like when visual presentation is prioritised alongside functionality.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- CSS-style theming system for styling terminal appearance.
- Hot-reloading of themes without restarting the terminal.
- Visual Effects – CRT scanlines, matrix rain, particle systems, animated sprites.
- 16 Built-in Themes – Synthwave, Matrix, Nyan Cat, Fallout Pip-Boy, and more.
- GPU Rendering – Smooth 60fps via wgpu/vello.
- Configuration files for customising themes and behaviour.
- Support for creating and installing custom themes.
Website: github.com/colliery-io/crt
Support:
Developer: Colliery Software
License: MIT License or Apache License 2.0
CRT is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Terminal Emulators | |
|---|---|
| Tabby | (Terminus) Highly configurable terminal emulator, SSH and serial client |
| Alacritty | Hardware-accelerated terminal emulator |
| Wave Terminal | AI-native terminal built for seamless workflows |
| urxvt | RXVT-like terminal emulator with Unicode support |
| Kitty | Like Alacritty, Kitty offers hardware acceleration |
| Ghostty | Feature-rich and cross-platform terminal emulator |
| Guake | Drop-down terminal for GNOME |
| Terminator | Multiple GNOME terminals in one window |
| WezTerm | GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer |
| rio | Hardware-accelerated GPU terminal emulator |
| electerm | Terminal emulator and much more |
| st | Simple terminal implementation for X which sucks less |
| contour | Aimed at power users with a modern feature mindset |
| Zutty | High-end terminal emulator for low-end systems |
| xterm | Provides DEC VT102 and Tektronix 4014 compatible terminals |
| Extraterm | Swiss army chainsaw of terminal emulators |
| Tilda | Gtk based drop down terminal |
| Ptyxis | Terminal for a container-oriented desktop |
| MATE Terminal | Terminal emulator the MATE desktop environment |
| Hyper | Terminal emulator built with web technologies |
| GNOME Terminal | Terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop environment |
| foot | Fast, lightweight and minimalistic Wayland terminal emulator |
| Xfce Terminal | Lightweight and easy to use terminal emulator application |
| Tilix | Advanced GTK3 tiling emulator |
| Terminology | Fast, lean and visually enhanced open source terminal emulator |
| Konsole | The KDE 5 terminal emulator |
| Black Box | GTK 4 terminal |
| Yakuake | Drop-down terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology |
| Station | Convergent terminal emulator |
| Sakura | Vte-based terminal emulator |
| QTerminal | Lightweight Qt-based terminal emulator |
| Zashterminal | Modern, intuitive, and innovative terminal built with GTK4 and Adwaita |
| LazyCat Terminal | Built with Vala and GTK4. |
| Kerminal | Modern terminal emulator and SSH manager |
| Termy | Minimal terminal emulator |
| DomTerm | Terminal emulator, REPL console, and screen multiplexer |
| CRT | Visually expressive terminal emulator written in Rust |
| kermit | VTE-based, simple and froggy terminal emulator |
| ROXTerm | VTE terminal emulator with tabs |
| LXTerminal | Lightweight terminal emulator based on GTK+ for the LXDE desktop |
| Bobcat | Built using the U++ framework and TerminalCtrl widget |
| fortty | GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Fortran |
| Tess | Hackable, simple, rapid and beautiful terminal |
| mlterm | Multilingual terminal emulator on X11 |
| Termite | Keyboard-centric VTE-based terminal |
| Packet | Terminal multiplexer and broadcast system |
| fingerterm | Terminal emulator with a custom virtual keyboard |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |