Eight months after the previous 0.15 release, Alacritty, a widely adopted and highly efficient cross-platform GPU-accelerated terminal emulator, has just unveiled its latest update—version 0.16.
One of the most noticeable changes in the new version is the addition of Unicode 17 support, expanding character coverage to include the latest symbols and scripts. The release also refines Vi mode with new motions like *, #, {, and }, plus a new Y keybind for yanking text to the end of a line — something frequent Vi users will appreciate.
Another highlight is the new system-wide configuration fallback at /etc/alacritty/alacritty.toml, making it easier for system administrators to maintain consistent setups across users. On top of that, there’s now IPC-based config retrieval via alacritty msg get-config, which lets users query their running instance for configuration details.
Touch users aren’t left behind either. The release adds multi-sequence touch zoom gestures, improving usability on touch-enabled displays. Rendering has also been refined — rounded corners now look cleaner thanks to improved box-drawing handling.
Under the hood, the minimum Rust version has been bumped to 1.85 to ensure compatibility with recent toolchains. The update fixes several long-standing issues, too, including crashes during OpenGL context resets, modifier key quirks with the Kitty keyboard protocol, and performance slowdowns on macOS.
For more information, see the changelog.
