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Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of the old CRTs

Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of the old CRTs

25 comments

·November 24, 2025
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ctenb

2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36798774

2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734137

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413911

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9093545

2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399461

LeFantome

Sad that we missed 2024 esepcially since the 2023 guy explicitly asked for it. Second comment predicted 2026 for a next post--missed it by a month!

com2kid

I used to daily drive this, most of the effects were minimized but I found that a little bit of white noise really helped make my terminal a lot easier on the eyes to read. I wonder if it is related to how some people find that film grain has a pleasing effect.

For those looking at the screenshots note that the terminal is incredibly customizable, you don't have to have all the effects dialed up to 11!

Sadly bit rot has set in and the project doesn't work that well now days. Also a lack of tab support really hurts it as a daily driving terminal.

Aldipower

Having the same with audio. I actually like tape hiss. :-O

pimlottc

People go so overboard on this stuff, the amount of ghosting on the DOS example is insane. I don’t want to spoils anyone’s fun but that’s not really what most screens looked like back then.

sidewndr46

if you're talking about cutting edge CRTs, many of the last generation actually beat flat panels for years. Some may still in some aspects.

There were plenty of junk CRTs out there used for text only display with insane levels of persistence and other issues that lead to a very unique appearance. It's also sort of moot at this point. The existing CRTs out there that have this behavior have degraded over the years. No one makes new high persistence CRTs that I am aware of. So it's mostly down to our memory of them.

I actually have a flat panel that has over 2 decades degraded and now has some weird persistence going on.

dylan604

depends on how the brightness/contrast was set on the tube. if someone came in to a screen that was off and did not allow it enough time to warm up, it was common to see people adjust these knobs in the mornings. eventually, the tube would warm up, and things would just be too bright.

weinzierl

The single most annoying thing with these old displays was the flicker. Whenever I use one of my real old home computer era monitors it is the only thing that makes it unbearable after a while.

But I'm not surprised they don't go overboard with that in the emulators. They'd probably have to add PSE warnings if they did.

poke646

It's almost like a caricature of a CRT. I can see the novelty, but hope that people aren't lead to believe monitors looked like this.

I think what bothers me most is the horizontal line that slowly moves across the screen every few seconds. It's an artifact of recording a CRT on film and doesn't occur when you look at a real monitor...

Aldipower

Damn, now I do not have fun with it anymore.

NunoSempere

I have a regular reminder to use this every now and then because it lifts my mood consistenly :)

dylan604

Just like back in the day, this would cause me to tire so much faster than I normally do. These things are "cute", but for actually getting shit done, they are an annoyance. Does anyone use something like this for extended periods of time? The clarity of modern terminals is a godsend.

Shadow_Death

I think it's the blurry text. I installed it once and used it maybe twice. I found that I spent most of my time squinting at the screen like I needed to put my glasses on. I had to quit using it because my face hurt from squinting the whole time.

graiz

Cool project, love the visuals. Wish it would merge as a plugin or something to a project like http://ghostty.org/ while I appreciate the visual fun, there are other pragmatic tools beyond visuals that are handy.

Diti

Ghostty already supports shaders and effects like this.

aduitsis

It can only apply shader(s) to the current frame I think. To produce the crt ghosting you'd probably need access to the previous frame (not an expert).

throitallaway

I've tried the shaders in the following repo with ghostty. They definitely work. I ended up keeping a cursor trail shader. https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders

rootbear

It's fun to play around with, but unless I'm missing something, it's not possible to specify the size, in rows and columns, of the screen, such as 24x80. It's an odd omission.

technothrasher

Not quite this extreme, but I usually use the old Sun console font in my terminal windows, because I'm an old fart and it makes me happy. Someone at work just the other day looked at my screen and said, "What the heck is wrong with your terminal window???"

jauntywundrkind

Side question, was there a reason early CRT screens were amber? Or was this perhaps maybe downstream of PLATO & the first plasma (and touch) screens being a Friendly Orange Glow?

Recommending Friendly Orange Glow (Doer, 2018), btw. Fun read. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545610/the-friendly...

Cyan488

The color of the screens is related to the phosphor used to coat the back of the screen, which is excited to glow by the electron beam. According to wiki, amber was used as an "eye-friendly" ergonomic color for similar reasons we use blue blocking filters today.

csixty4

The brain perceives amber as a "bright" color that contrasts well with black, without the headaches that come from staring at white light for hours.

Cockbrand

IIRC, amber was considered the most eye friendly color back then. The cheaper monochrome screens were green-on-black.

Brian-Watkins

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Steve-Tony

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