kitten-@-get-text(1)

okay bestie, welcome to the kitten-@-get-text page from the kitten manual 💅✨ this is the command that grabs text out of a window, and we are going to go through every single flag like it's a group-chat receipt. no cap.

💖 Name 💖

kitten-@-get-text — Get text from the specified window. That is literally the whole name and the whole job: it gets text from a window. 🎀

🚀 Usage 🚀

kitten @ get-text

Run it exactly like that, bestie. 🫶

🌸 Description 🌸

Get text from the specified window. Yep — it's giving “grab the text from the window you point at,” and honestly that is iconic. ✨

💅 Options 💅

• --match, -m — The window to match. Match specifications are of the form: field:query. Where field can be one of: id, title, pid, cwd, cmdline, num, env, var, state, neighbor, session and recent. query is the expression to match. Expressions can be either a number or a regular expression, and can be combined using Boolean operators.
  • The special value all matches all windows. 👑
  • For numeric fields: id, pid, num and recent, the expression is interpreted as a number, not a regular expression. Negative values for id match from the highest id number down, in particular, -1 is the most recently created window.
  • The field num refers to the window position in the current tab, starting from zero and counting clockwise (this is the same as the order in which the windows are reported by the kitten @ ls command).
  • The window id of the current window is available as the KITTY_WINDOW_ID environment variable.
  • The field recent refers to recently active windows in the currently active tab, with zero being the currently active window, one being the previously active window and so on.
  • The field neighbor refers to a neighbor of the active window in the specified direction, 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 and . 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 using the env field to match on environment variables, you can specify only the environment variable name or a name and value, for example, env:MY_ENV_VAR=2.
  • Similarly, the var field matches on user variables set on the window. You can specify name or name and value as with the env field.
  • The field state matches on the state of the window. Supported states are: active, focused, needs_attention, parent_active, parent_focused, focused_os_window, self, overlay_parent.
    • Active windows are the windows that are active in their parent tab. There is only one focused window and it is the window to which keyboard events are delivered. If no window is focused, the last focused window is matched. The value focused_os_window matches all windows in the currently focused OS window. The value self matches the window in which the remote control command is run. The value overlay_parent matches the window that is under the self window, when the self window is an overlay.
  • Note that you can use the kitten @ ls command to get a list of windows. 🦋
• --extent [=screen] — What text to get. The default of screen means all text currently on the screen. all means all the screen+scrollback and selection means the currently selected text. first_cmd_output_on_screen means the output of the first command that was run in the window on screen. last_cmd_output means the output of the last command that was run in the window. last_visited_cmd_output means the first command output below the last scrolled position via scroll_to_prompt. last_non_empty_output is the output from the last command run in the window that had some non empty output. The last four require shell_integration to be enabled. alternate means the text in the screen that is not currently visible (if the terminal is in the main screen this is the secondary/alternate screen and vice versa). alternate_scrollback is the same but also includes the scrollback buffer (if any).
  • Choices: screen, all, alternate, alternate_scrollback, first_cmd_output_on_screen, last_cmd_output, last_non_empty_output, last_visited_cmd_output, selection
• --ansi [=no] — By default, only plain text is returned. With this flag, the text will include the ANSI formatting escape codes for colors, bold, italic, etc. 🌈
• --add-cursor [=no] — Add ANSI escape codes specifying the cursor position and style to the end of the text. 🎯
• --add-wrap-markers [=no] — Add carriage returns at every line wrap location (where long lines are wrapped at screen edges).
• --clear-selection [=no] — Clear the selection in the matched window, if any.
• --self [=no] — Get text from the window this command is run in, rather than the active window. 🙈
• --help, -h [=no] — Show help for this command.

🌍 Global options 🌍

• --to — An address for the kitty instance to control. Corresponds to the address given to the kitty instance via the --listen-on option or the listen_on setting in kitty.conf. If not specified, the environment variable KITTY_LISTEN_ON is checked. If that is also not found, messages are sent to the controlling terminal for this process, i.e. they will only work if this process is run within a kitty window.
• --password — A password to use when contacting kitty. This will cause kitty to ask the user for permission to perform the specified action, unless the password has been 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 from which to read the password. 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. 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 can be used to force it to always or never use the supplied password. If set to always and no password is provided, the blank password is used.
  • Choices: if-available, always, never

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that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was kitten-@-get-text from the kitten manual, version 0.49.2, dated Oct 01, 2026. go get that text 💅✨