kitten-@-close-window(1)

💅 kitten-@-close-window(1) — the kitten Manual, bestie edition ✨

okay so this is a page from the kitten manual, and it's about yeeting windows into the void. no cap, it's a tiny page but the --match option is doing the absolute most, so let's get into it 🎀

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✨ Name ✨

kitten-@-close-window — closes the windows you tell it to close 💀

🦋 Usage 🦋

kitten @ close-window

that's it. that's the whole mood 🫶

🌸 Description 🌸

Close the specified windows 💖 (yes, plural — you can absolutely catch more than one at a time, iykyk)

💅 Options 💅

• --match, -m — which window(s) you're matching, bestie. match specs go like this: field:query. the field can be one of: id, title, pid, cwd, cmdline, num, env, var, state, neighbor, session and recent. the query is the expression you match against — expressions can be a number or a regular expression, and (iconic) you can combine them with Boolean operators 🔥

the special value all matches all windows. every single one. no survivors, periodt.

for the numeric fields — id, pid, num and recent — the expression is read as a number, not a regular expression. negative values for id match from the highest id number down, and specifically -1 is the most recently created window 👑

the field num is the window's position in the current tab, starting from zero and counting clockwise (same order the windows get reported by kitten @ ls, so you know it's legit).

the window id of the current window is hanging out in the KITTY_WINDOW_ID environment variable, in case you need it 🌈

the field recent is about recently active windows in the currently active tab: 0 is the currently active window, 1 is the previously active window, and so on down the line 🕰️

the field neighbor is a neighbor of the active window in whatever direction you specify, which can be: left, right, top or bottom 🧭

the field session matches windows that were created in the specified session. use the expression ^$ to match windows that were not created in a session, . to match the currently active session, and ~ to match either the currently active session or the last active session when no session is active ✨

when you're using the env field to match on environment variables, you can give just the environment variable name, or a name and value, like for example env:MY_ENV_VAR=2 🍓

same energy for the var field, except it matches on user variables set on the window — you can specify name, or name and value, exactly like with the env field 💜

the field state matches on the state of the window. the supported states are: active, focused, needs_attention, parent_active, parent_focused, focused_os_window, self, overlay_parent. so: active windows are the windows that are active in their parent tab. there's only one focused window and it's the window that keyboard events get delivered to — if no window is focused, the last focused window is what gets matched. the value focused_os_window matches all windows in the currently focused OS window. the value self matches the window the remote control command is run in. and the value overlay_parent matches the window that's under the self window, when the self window is an overlay 👀

little tip from the manpage itself: you can use the kitten @ ls command to get a list of windows 📋

• --no-response [=no] — don't wait for a response saying whether the action worked. lowkey be careful here — using this option means you will not be notified of failures 🙈
• --self [=no] — close the window this command is run in, instead of the active window 🪟✨
• --ignore-no-match [=no] — don't return an error if nothing matched, so no windows get closed and nobody throws a fit 😌
• --help, -h [=no] — show help for this command 🫶

👑 Global options 👑

these ones are shared across the remote control commands, so they show up everywhere 💫

• --to — an address for the kitty instance you want to control. it corresponds to the address given to the kitty instance via the --listen-on option or the listen_on setting in kitty.conf. if you don't specify it, the environment variable KITTY_LISTEN_ON gets checked. if that's not found either, messages get sent to the controlling terminal for this process — meaning they'll only work if this process is run inside a kitty window 🐱
• --password — a password to use when contacting kitty. this makes kitty ask the user for permission to perform the specified action, unless the password was already accepted before or is pre-configured in kitty.conf. to use a blank password, specify --use-password as always 🔐
• --password-file [=rc-pass] — a file to read the password from. trailing whitespace is ignored. relative paths are resolved from the kitty configuration directory. use - to read from STDIN. use fd:num to read from the file descriptor num. this is used if no --password is supplied. defaults to checking for the rc-pass file in the kitty configuration directory 📁
• --password-env [=KITTY_RC_PASSWORD] — the name of an environment variable to read the password from. used if no --password-file is supplied. defaults to checking the environment variable KITTY_RC_PASSWORD 🌱
• --use-password [=if-available] — if no password is available, kitty will usually just send the remote control command without a password. this option forces it to always or never use the supplied password. if set to always and no password is provided, the blank password gets used 💫

choices: if-available, always, never

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and that's the whole page, bestie — you ate that 🍓 version 0.49.2, dated Oct 01, 2026, straight from the kitten Manual. go close some windows, you absolute icon 👑💖