Releases
0.2.30 (unreleased)
- Fix Debian/Ubuntu package installation: Resolved terminfo conflicts with system packages #1264
- Debian (.deb) packages no longer include terminfo files to avoid conflicts with ncurses-term
- Users on Ubuntu 22.04 and older need to manually install terminfo after package installation
- Debian 13+ and Ubuntu 24.04+ users get terminfo from system's ncurses-term package
- RPM packages continue to include terminfo as before
- Add audible & visual bell support #1284.
0.2.29
- Fix blinking cursor issue #1269.
- Fix Rio uses UNC (?) path as working directory, breaking Neovim subprocesses on Windows.
- Add NSCameraUseContinuityCameraDeviceType to plist for macOS.
0.2.28
- Optimized rendering pipeline for improved performance: Implemented deferred damage checking and render coalescing
- Added Wakeup events to batch multiple rapid terminal updates into single render passes
- Deferred damage calculation until render time to reduce unnecessary computations
- Skip rendering for unfocused windows when
disable_unfocused_render
is enabled - Skip rendering for occluded windows when
disable_occluded_render
is enabled - Improved damage merging to always accumulate updates even when already marked dirty
- Enhanced performance for rapid terminal output by coalescing non-synchronized updates
0.2.27
- Breaking: If
xterm-rio
is installed we prioritized it overrio
terminfo. - Fix sixel/iterm2 graphics persistence issue: Fixed graphics remaining visible when overwritten by text
- Graphics are now properly removed when cells containing them are overwritten
- Fixes issues with file managers like Yazi where images would persist incorrectly
- Simplified graphics cleanup logic by removing unused ClearSubregion functionality
- CJK Font Metrics: Fixed CJK characters displaying "higher" than Latin characters #1071
- Implemented comprehensive CJK font metrics handling with consistent baseline adjustment
- Fixed scrolling issues for mixed Latin and CJK text content
- Added CJK character width measurement using "水" (water ideograph) as reference
- Created consistent cell dimensions across different font types
- Developed extensive test suite with 40+ font-related tests to verify fixes
0.2.26
- Fix frame dropping in release builds: Fixed an issue where release builds would drop frames due to damage event timing
- Damage events are now emitted directly after parsing PTY data, ensuring proper batching
- Removed redundant Wakeup event mechanism that was causing multiple renders per update
- Synchronized update timeouts now properly emit damage events
- Significantly improves rendering smoothness in optimized builds
0.2.25
- Fix: Rio doesn't launch from context menu on Windows.
- Fix: Rio lacks embedded icon on Windows 10 by @christianjann.
- Fix custom shells in /usr/local/bin not found on macOS: Fixed an issue where custom shells installed in
/usr/local/bin
were not found when Rio was launched from Finder or other GUI applications- On macOS, Rio now uses
/usr/bin/login
to spawn shells, ensuring proper login shell environment with full PATH - Custom shells like Fish, Nushell, or custom Zsh installations in
/usr/local/bin
will now work correctly
- On macOS, Rio now uses
0.2.24
- Fix game mode regression.
- Hint Label Damage Tracking: Improved hint label rendering performance with proper damage tracking
- Hint label areas are now properly marked for re-rendering when cleared
- Eliminates visual artifacts when hint labels are removed
- Optimized rendering to only update affected screen regions
- Configurable Hyperlink Hover Keys: Hyperlink hover modifier keys are now configurable
- Configure custom modifier keys through the hints system in
config.toml
- Default behavior unchanged: Command on macOS, Alt on other platforms
- Supports any combination of Shift, Control, Alt, and Super/Command keys
- Example:
mouse = { enabled = true, mods = ["Shift"] }
to use Shift key
- Configure custom modifier keys through the hints system in
- Hints Configuration: Renamed
hints.enabled
tohints.rules
for better clarity- Update your configuration:
[[hints.enabled]]
→[[hints.rules]]
- All hint configuration sections now use
hints.rules.*
instead ofhints.enabled.*
- Functionality remains the same, only the configuration key names changed
- Update your configuration:
0.2.23
- Fix some rendering regressions introduced by 0.2.21.
- Improve performance by stopping locking on rendering run steps.
- Fix: X11: WM_CLASS has an empty string property.
0.2.22
- Fix some regressions introduced by 0.2.21.
0.2.21
- Breaking:
navigation.use-current-directory
has been renamed tonavigation.current-working-directory
.
Performance Optimizations
- Major: Implemented efficient CVDisplayLink-based VSync synchronization for macOS
- Perfect frame timing aligned with display hardware refresh cycles
- Eliminates screen tearing and stuttering through hardware VSync synchronization
- Adaptive refresh rate support: automatically handles 60Hz, 120Hz, ProMotion displays
- Multi-display support: adapts when windows move between displays with different refresh rates
- Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) integration for thread-safe cross-thread communication
- Smart rendering: Only renders when content actually changes using dirty flag system
- Power efficient: skips unnecessary redraws when content is static, reducing CPU usage
- Professional rendering quality with smooth, tear-free visual updates
- CVDisplayLink runs on dedicated background thread, never blocking UI operations
- macOS VSync Optimization: Disabled redundant software-based vsync calculations on macOS
- CVDisplayLink already provides hardware-synchronized VSync timing
- Eliminates unnecessary frame timing calculations and monitor refresh rate queries
- Reduces CPU overhead and improves rendering performance
- Software vsync logic remains active on other platforms for compatibility
- Major: Implemented a new text run caching system replacing line-based caching
- Up to 96% reduction in text shaping overhead for repeated content
- Individual text runs (words, operators, keywords) cached and reused across frames
- 256-bucket hash table with LRU eviction for optimal memory usage
- Cache Warming: Pre-populate cache with 100+ common terminal patterns on startup
- Programming keywords:
const
,let
,function
,class
,import
,export
, etc. - Indentation patterns: 4/8/12/16 spaces, single/double/triple tabs
- Shell commands:
ls
,cd
,git
,npm
,cargo
,sudo
, etc. - Operators & punctuation:
=
,==
,=>
,();
,{}
,[]
, etc. - File extensions:
.js
,.ts
,.rs
,.py
,.json
,.md
, etc. - Error/log patterns:
Error:
,[INFO]
,FAILED
,SUCCESS
, etc. - Immediate cache hits eliminate cold start shaping delays
- Programming keywords:
- SIMD-Optimized Whitespace Detection: Multi-tier optimization for indentation processing
- AVX2: 32 bytes per instruction (x86-64 with AVX2 support)
- SSE2: 16 bytes per instruction (x86-64 with SSE2 support)
- NEON: 16 bytes per instruction (ARM64/aarch64)
- Optimized scalar: 8-byte chunks (universal fallback)
- Up to 32x performance improvement for long indentation sequences
- Critical for Python, nested JavaScript/TypeScript, YAML, and heavily indented code
- Memory Pool for Vertices: High-performance vertex buffer pooling system
- Size-categorized pools: Small (64), Medium (256), Large (1024), XLarge (4096) vertices
- Zero allocation overhead through buffer reuse across frames
- LRU management with automatic cleanup when pools reach capacity
- Thread-safe concurrent access with performance monitoring
- Eliminates GC pressure and improves frame rate consistency
- Background Font Operations: Non-blocking font management
- Font data release and cleanup in dedicated background thread
- System font scanning and preloading without blocking main thread
- Prevents frame rate drops during font operations
- Occlusion-Based Rendering: Skip rendering for occluded windows/tabs
- Automatically detects when windows are completely hidden by other windows
- Skips rendering for occluded windows to save GPU resources and improve performance
- Renders one frame when window becomes visible again to ensure display is updated
- Configurable via
[renderer] disable-occluded-render = true
(enabled by default) - Significantly improves performance when running multiple tabs or windows
Other Improvements
- Optimize the character cluster cache for wide space characters.
- New font atlas, more efficient.
- Implemented around 75% Memory Reduction: Text glyphs now use R8 (1 byte) instead of RGBA (4 bytes).
- Hint Label Damage Tracking: Improved hint label rendering performance with proper damage tracking
- Hint label areas are now properly marked for re-rendering when cleared
- Eliminates visual artifacts when hint labels are removed
- Optimized rendering to only update affected screen regions
- IME Cursor Positioning: Added configurable IME cursor positioning based on terminal cell coordinates
- IME input popups now appear precisely at the cursor position
- Improves input experience for CJK languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
- Configurable via
[keyboard] ime-cursor-positioning = true
(enabled by default)
- Shift+Click Selection: Added Shift+click support for expanding text selections
- Shift+clicking now extends the current selection to the clicked cell
- Provides standard terminal selection behavior expected by users
- Regular clicking without Shift still clears selection and starts new one as before
- CLI accepts relative paths for working directory CLI argument: When invoking rio from other terminals using
rio --working-dir=<path>
, a relative path is now correctly processed
Bug Fixes
- Cursor Damage Tracking: Fixed cursor rendering issues after
clear
command and during rapid typing- Replaced complex point-based damage tracking with simplified line-based approach
- Eliminates edge cases where cursor updates were missed during fast typing sequences
- Improved reliability by always damaging entire lines instead of tracking column ranges
- Aligns with modern terminal design principles for more robust damage calculation
- Selection Rendering: Fixed selection highlight not appearing on first render
- Selection changes now properly trigger damage tracking and rendering
- Optimized selection damage to only redraw affected lines for better performance
- Selection highlights now appear immediately when making selections
- Text Selection: Fixed selection behavior during input and paste operations
- Selection properly clears when typing or pasting text (both bracketed and regular paste)
- Selection coordinates remain stable during viewport scrolling
- Prevents selection from being lost unexpectedly during normal terminal usage
- Auto-scroll on Input: Fixed issue where typing after scrolling up wouldn't automatically scroll to bottom
- Now properly scrolls to bottom for both keyboard input and IME/paste operations
- Ensures cursor remains visible when typing new content
- Scroll Performance: Improved scrolling performance by optimizing render event handling
- Moved scroll display offset update before mouse cursor dirty event
- Removed redundant render calls during scroll operations
- Implemented centralized damage-based rendering in event loop for better performance
- macOS IME Improvements: Fixed emoji input and IME stability issues
- Resolved
IMKCFRunLoopWakeUpReliable
errors when using emoji picker - Improved coordinate validation and error handling for IME positioning
- Better handling of direct Unicode input (emoji picker, character viewer)
- Added throttling to prevent excessive IME coordinate updates
- Resolved
- Documentation: Added comprehensive manual pages (man pages) for Unix-like systems
man rio
- Main Rio terminal manual page with command-line optionsman 5 rio
- Complete configuration file format documentationman 5 rio-bindings
- Key bindings reference and customization guide- Available in
extra/man/
directory with build instructions
- Terminfo Compatibility: Improved terminal compatibility by adding
xterm-rio
terminfo entry- Added
xterm-rio
as primary terminfo entry withrio
as alias for better application compatibility - Applications that look for "xterm-" prefixed terminals (like termwiz-based apps) now work correctly
- Maintains
TERM=rio
environment variable for consistency with terminal identity - Fixes crashes with applications like
gitu
and other termwiz-based terminal programs - Follows same pattern as other modern terminals (Alacritty, Ghostty) for maximum compatibility
- Added
Technical Details
The performance optimizations in this release represent a significant architectural improvement to Rio's text rendering pipeline:
- Text Run Caching: Replaces line-based caching with individual text run caching. Each unique text sequence (word, operator, keyword) is shaped once and reused across all occurrences.
- SIMD Implementation: Platform-adaptive SIMD instructions automatically detect and use the best available CPU features (AVX2 > SSE2 > NEON > optimized scalar) for maximum performance across different architectures.
- Memory Management: The vertex pool system uses size-categorized buffers with LRU eviction, eliminating allocation overhead while preventing memory bloat.
- Cache Strategy: Two-level caching (render data + text runs) with 256-bucket hash table using FxHasher for optimal lookup performance.
- Compatibility: All optimizations maintain full backward compatibility with existing Rio APIs and configurations.
These changes are particularly beneficial for:
- Programming workflows with repetitive code patterns
- Terminal sessions with heavy indentation (Python, nested JS/TS, YAML)
- Long-running sessions where cache warming provides sustained performance benefits
- Systems with limited memory where reduced allocation overhead improves overall responsiveness
Bug Fixes
- Backspace Key Compatibility: Fixed backspace key not working properly in vim when
TERM=xterm-256color
- Changed backspace key bindings to send BS (0x08) instead of DEL (0x7F)
- Updated Rio terminfo and termcap entries to match actual key behavior
- Updated XTGETTCAP response to return
^H
forkbs
capability - Ensures compatibility with applications expecting xterm-256color backspace behavior
- Fixes issue where vim would display
^?
instead of performing backspace operation
0.2.20
- Performance: Implemented SIMD-accelerated UTF-8 validation throughout Rio terminal using the
simdutf8
crate.- Architecture support: AVX2/SSE4.2 (x86-64), NEON (ARM64), SIMD128 (WASM)
- Automatic optimization: Runtime detection selects fastest implementation available
- Support for XTGETTCAP (XTerm Get Termcap) escape sequence for querying terminal capabilities.
- Font library is now under a RWLock instead of Mutex to allow multiple tabs readings same font data.
- Fix: crash on openSUSE Tumbleweed #1160.
0.2.19
- Reduced the bundle size by ~20.81% (MacOS, Linux, BSD).
- Performance: stop saving empty images in the image cache.
- Fix: On MacOS, keybind definition to ignore cmd-w does not work #879.
- Fix: Build for MacOS 26 Tahoe.
- Fix:
Enter
,Tab
,Backspace
not disambiguated withshift
in kitty keyboard's disambiguate mode. - Fix: line-height adds small gaps for box-drawing characters #1126.
- Search matching a wrapping fullwidth character in the last column.
- Update Rust to 1.87.0.
0.2.18
- Fix image display crashing the application whenever f16 is available.