Terms
The terms for downloading and using Wortel: free, as-is, no account, and no warranty.
Last updated August 10, 2026
Wortel is a free macOS terminal, given away with no account and no payment. These terms cover downloading it, using it, and this website. They are short because the relationship is short.
By downloading or using Wortel you accept them. If you do not, do not use it.
Who you are agreeing with
Giel Cobben, in the Netherlands. Contact: privacy@wortel.sh.
What you may do with it
You may download Wortel and use it, for anything, including at work and on commercial projects, on as many Macs as you like, for free. No licence key, no seat count, no registration.
You may not sell it, or pass off a modified build as the original.
Wortel is not open source. The application is provided as a compiled program, and its source is not published. It does include open-source components, which keep their own licences.
What it is built from
Wortel embeds libghostty (Ghostty’s terminal engine), Sparkle for updates, and tree-sitter grammars for syntax highlighting, among others. These are the work of other people, distributed under their own open-source licences, and nothing here overrides those licences or claims their work.
Updates
Wortel checks for updates and can install them itself, through Sparkle. Updates are signed, and the app verifies that signature before installing anything. See Privacy for what an update check records.
You can turn automatic checks off. Updates then stop arriving, including security fixes.
No warranty
Wortel is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
This matters more for a terminal than for most software, so it is worth being blunt: a terminal runs whatever you type into it, with your permissions. Wortel does not check whether a command is a good idea, and cannot undo one. Deleting your work with a command you ran in Wortel is the same as deleting it in any other terminal. Keep backups, and use version control.
Liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, Giel Cobben is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost data, lost profits or lost time, arising from the use of or inability to use Wortel.
Nothing here excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law, which under Dutch and EU consumer law includes liability for intent, gross negligence, death or personal injury. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights stand whatever this page says.
Availability
The website, the update feed and the downloads are provided without any promise of availability. Wortel is a free program, not a service with an uptime commitment. It may stop being updated, and the download may be withdrawn. A copy you have already installed keeps working.
Governing law
Dutch law governs these terms. Disputes go to the competent court in the Netherlands. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, or of the right to bring a case where the law entitles you to.
Changes
These terms can change, and the date at the top says when they last did. Continuing to use Wortel after a change means accepting the new version. A change is never applied retrospectively to something you already did.