ALACRITTY-MSG(1)

✨ ALACRITTY-MSG(1) ✨ General Commands Manual 💖

🦋 NAME

okay bestie, so alacritty-msg is how you send messages to Alacritty 💅 and it is literally the most iconic thing ever 🔥

🌸 SYNOPSIS

okay so this command talks to running Alacritty instances through a socket 🧚 which means you can control Alacritty without actually poking at it directly 💜 main character energy fr fr ✨

🎀 OPTIONS

• -s, --socket <SOCKET> — this is where you tell it the path for the IPC socket communication 🫶

💅 MESSAGES

okay so these are the different things you can send 🌈

create-window

this one makes a brand new window in the same Alacritty process 🪟✨

FLAGS

• --hold — keeps the window open even after the child process exits 🙈

OPTIONS

• --working-directory <WORKING_DIRECTORY> — starts the shell in the directory you pick 📁
• -T, --title <TITLE> — sets the window title 🎀
  • Default: Alacritty 💖
• --class <GENERAL> | <GENERAL>,<INSTANCE> — sets the window class/app_id on X11/Wayland 🦋
  • Default: Alacritty,Alacritty 🫶
• -o, --option <OPTION>... — overrides config file options 🍓
  • Example: alacritty msg create-window -o 'cursor.style="Beam"' 💅
• -e, --command <COMMAND>... — the command and args to run, and it has to be the last argument 👑

config

this one updates your Alacritty configuration 🌈

ARGS

• <CONFIG_OPTIONS>... — the configuration file options you want to set 💜
  • Example: alacritty msg config 'cursor.style="Beam"' ✨

FLAGS

• -r, --reset — clears all the runtime configuration changes 🧹

OPTIONS

• -w, --window-id <WINDOW_ID> — the window ID for the new config 🪟
  • Use -1 to apply this change to all windows 🌸
  • Default: $ALACRITTY_WINDOW_ID 💖

get-config

this one reads your runtime Alacritty configuration 🔍

OPTIONS

• -w, --window-id <WINDOW_ID> — the window ID for the config request 🦋
  • Use -1 to get the global config 🌍
  • Default: $ALACRITTY_WINDOW_ID 💅

🧚 SEE ALSO

okay so you should totally check out alacritty(1), alacritty(5), alacritty-bindings(5), and alacritty-escapes(7) 📚💜

🐛 BUGS

found a bug? 🙈 report it at https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues, bestie 🫶

Heads up: that's where the bug reports go, so please don't just complain in the group chat 💀

👑 MAINTAINERS

• Christian Duerr <contact@christianduerr.com> 🌸
• Kirill Chibisov <contact@kchibisov.com> 🦋

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ily bestie, this page is from 2026-04-13 and it's the ALACRITTY-MSG(1) manpage 💖✨ stay iconic 🫶🌈