kitty.conf(5)

📦

version 0.49.2 · 16 versions

0.49.2 · arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable (latest)
0.49.1 · nixos 26.05
0.26.5 · epel 9
0.49.2 · nixpkgs unstable
0.48.2 · ubuntu stonking
0.41.1 · ubuntu questing
0.41.1 · ubuntu questing
0.21.2 · ubuntu jammy
0.21.2 · ubuntu jammy
0.47.1 · epel 10, fedora 44
0.32.2 · ubuntu noble
0.32.2 · ubuntu noble
0.43.1 · fedora 43, fedora 44
0.26.5 · debian bookworm
0.45.0 · ubuntu resolute
0.41.1 · debian trixie

Name 🌸

kitty.conf — the configuration file for kitty 💖 (that's kitty.conf(5) if you're citing sources, bestie).

Overview ✨

okay so kitty is highkey customizable — literally everything from keyboard shortcuts all the way to rendering frames-per-second. Scroll down for the full tour of every customization possibility 👑

You can open the config file right inside kitty by pressing ctrl+shift+f2 (⌘+, on macOS). If the file doesn't exist yet, a kitty.conf gets created for you with commented default configurations and descriptions — it's giving starter pack 🎀

The config automatically reloads when it's modified, and that behavior is controlled by auto_reload_config. Wanna reload it manually? Press ctrl+shift+f5 (⌃+⌘+, on macOS), or send kitty the SIGUSR1 signal:

kill -SIGUSR1 $KITTY_PID

You can also display the current configuration by pressing ctrl+shift+f6 (⌥+⌘+, on macOS) 👀

kitty looks for a config file in the OS config directories (usually ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf), but you can pass a specific path via the kitty --config option or use the KITTY_CONFIG_DIRECTORY environment variable. See kitty --config for full details 🔍

Comments & line splitting 🧚

Comments can be added to the config file as lines starting with the # character. This works only if the # character is the first character in the line — so no sneaky trailing comments, bestie, it's not that kind of file 🙈

Lines can be split by starting the next line with the \ character. All leading whitespace and the \ character are removed. Slay 💅

Includes 🦋

You can include secondary config files via the include directive. If you use a relative path for include, it is resolved with respect to the location of the current config file. Note that environment variables are expanded, so ${USER}.conf becomes name.conf if USER=name ✨

A special environment variable KITTY_OS is available, to detect the operating system. It is linux, macos or bsd 🌈

Also, you can use globinclude to include files matching a shell glob pattern, and envinclude to include configuration from environment variables. Finally, you can dynamically generate configuration by running a program using geninclude. For example:

# Include other.conf
include other.conf
# Include *.conf files from all subdirs of kitty.d inside the kitty config dir
globinclude kitty.d/**/*.conf
# Include the *contents* of all env vars starting with KITTY_CONF_
envinclude KITTY_CONF_*
# Run the script dynamic.py placed in the same directory as this config file
# and include its :file:`STDOUT`. Note that Python scripts are fastest
# as they use the embedded Python interpreter, but any executable script
# or program is supported, in any language. Remember to mark the script
# file executable.
geninclude dynamic.py

Fonts 🎀

kitty has very powerful font management. You can configure individual font faces and even specify special fonts for particular characters. it's giving typography main character energy 👑

`font_family`, `bold_font`, `italic_font`, `bold_italic_font`

font_family      monospace
bold_font        auto
italic_font      auto
bold_italic_font auto

You can specify different fonts for the bold/italic/bold-italic variants 💖

The easiest way to select fonts is to run the kitten choose-fonts command, which will present a nice UI for you to select the fonts you want with previews and support for selecting variable fonts and font features ✨ If you want to learn to select fonts manually, read the font specification syntax section.

`font_size`

font_size 11.0

Font size (in pts). no cap, that's the whole thing 🍓

`force_ltr`

force_ltr no

okay so real talk: kitty does not support BIDI (bidirectional text), however, for RTL scripts, words are automatically displayed in RTL. That is to say, in an RTL script, the words "HELLO WORLD" display in kitty as "WORLD HELLO", and if you try to select a substring of an RTL-shaped string, you will get the character that would be there had the string been LTR 😭

For example, assuming the Hebrew word ירושלים, selecting the character that on the screen appears to be ם actually writes into the selection buffer the character י. kitty's default behavior is useful in conjunction with a filter to reverse the word order, however, if you wish to manipulate RTL glyphs, it can be very challenging to work with, so this option is provided to turn it off 💅

Furthermore, this option can be used with the command line program GNU FriBidi (https://github.com/fribidi/fribidi#executable) to get BIDI support, because it will force kitty to always treat the text as LTR, which FriBidi expects for terminals 🔥

`symbol_map`

Has no default values. Example values are shown below:

symbol_map U+E0A0-U+E0A3,U+E0C0-U+E0C7 PowerlineSymbols

Map the specified Unicode codepoints to a particular font 🫶 Useful if you need special rendering for some symbols, such as for Powerline. Avoids the need for patched fonts — iconic behavior honestly.

Each Unicode code point is specified in the form U+<code point in hexadecimal>. You can specify multiple code points, separated by commas, and ranges separated by hyphens. This option can be specified multiple times. The syntax is:

symbol_map codepoints Font Family Name

`narrow_symbols`

Has no default values. Example values are shown below:

narrow_symbols U+E0A0-U+E0A3,U+E0C0-U+E0C7 1

Usually, for Private Use Unicode characters and some symbol/dingbat characters, if the character is followed by one or more spaces, kitty will use those extra cells to render the character larger, if the character in the font has a wide aspect ratio 👀

Using this option you can force kitty to restrict the specified code points to render in the specified number of cells (defaulting to one cell). This option can be specified multiple times. The syntax is:

narrow_symbols codepoints [optionally the number of cells]

`disable_ligatures`

disable_ligatures never

Choose how you want to handle multi-character ligatures ✨ The default is to always render them. You can tell kitty to not render them when the cursor is over them by using cursor to make editing easier, or have kitty never render them at all by using always, if you don't like them 🍓

The ligature strategy can be set per-window either using the kitty remote control facility or by defining shortcuts for it in kitty.conf, for example:

map alt+1 disable_ligatures_in active always
map alt+2 disable_ligatures_in all never
map alt+3 disable_ligatures_in tab cursor

Note that this refers to programming ligatures, typically implemented using the calt OpenType feature. For disabling general ligatures, use the font_features option 💅

`font_features`

Has no default values. Example values are shown below:

font_features none

Choose exactly which OpenType features to enable or disable. Note that for the main fonts, features can be specified when selecting the font using the choose-fonts kitten. This setting is useful for fallback fonts 👑

Some fonts might have features worthwhile in a terminal. For example, Fira Code includes a discretionary feature, zero, which in that font changes the appearance of the zero (0), to make it more easily distinguishable from Ø. Fira Code also includes other discretionary features known as Stylistic Sets which have the tags ss01 through ss20 🌸

For the exact syntax to use for individual features, see the HarfBuzz documentation (https://harfbuzz.github.io/harfbuzz-hb-common.html#hb-feature-from-string).

Note that this code is indexed by PostScript name, and not the font family. This allows you to define very precise feature settings; e.g. you can disable a feature in the italic font but not in the regular font 😭

On Linux, font features are first read from the FontConfig database and then this option is applied, so they can be configured in a single, central place 🦋

To get the PostScript name for a font, use the fc-scan file.ttf command on Linux or the Font Book tool on macOS (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79875/how-can-i-get-the-postscript-name-of-a-ttf-font-installed-in-os-x).

Enable alternate zero and oldstyle numerals:

font_features FiraCode-Retina +zero +onum

Enable only alternate zero in the bold font:

font_features FiraCode-Bold +zero

Disable the normal ligatures, but keep the calt feature which (in this font) breaks up monotony:

font_features TT2020StyleB-Regular -liga +calt

In conjunction with force_ltr, you may want to disable Arabic shaping entirely, and only look at their isolated forms if they show up in a document. You can do this with e.g.:

font_features UnifontMedium +isol -medi -fina -init

`modify_font`

Modify font characteristics such as the position or thickness of the underline and strikethrough 💅 The modifications can have the suffix px for pixels or % for percentage of original value. No suffix means use pts. For example:

modify_font underline_position -2
modify_font underline_thickness 150%
modify_font strikethrough_thickness 200%
modify_font strikethrough_position 2px

Additionally, you can modify the size of the cell in which each font glyph is rendered and the baseline at which the glyph is placed in the cell. For example:

modify_font cell_width 80%
modify_font cell_height -2px
modify_font baseline 3

Note that modifying the baseline will automatically adjust the underline and strikethrough positions by the same amount. Increasing the baseline raises glyphs inside the cell and decreasing it lowers them. Decreasing the cell size might cause rendering artifacts, so use with care 💀

`box_drawing_scale`

box_drawing_scale 0.001, 1, 1.5, 2

The sizes of the lines used for the box drawing Unicode characters 📦 These values are in pts. They will be scaled by the monitor DPI to arrive at a pixel value. There must be four values corresponding to thin, normal, thick, and very thick lines — no adding a fifth, bestie, it's not gonna happen 🙈

`undercurl_style`

undercurl_style thin-sparse

The style with which undercurls are rendered 🌊 This option takes the form (thin|thick)-(sparse|dense). thin and thick control the thickness of the undercurl. sparse and dense control how often the curl oscillates. With sparse the curl will peak once per character, with dense twice 🌀

Changing this option dynamically via reloading the config or remote control is undefined. fr fr, don't do it 💀

`underline_exclusion`

underline_exclusion 1

that's the default value right there — the rest of the deets on this one are coming right up in the next part, so don't go anywhere 💖✨

Okay so this setting right here is all about the little gaps kitty renders in underlines when they overlap with descenders — you know, the parts of letters that hang below the baseline, like for y, q, p and friends. This option controls how thick those gaps are 🎀. It can be either a unitless number, in which case it's a fraction of the underline thickness as specified in the font, or it can have a suffix of px for pixels or pt for points. Set it to zero to disable the gaps entirely. Heads up though: changing this option dynamically via reloading the config or remote control is undefined — so like, don't do that, bestie 💀.

text_composition_strategy — default: platform

This one controls how kitty composites text glyphs onto the background color. The default value platform tries for text rendering as close to "native" for the platform kitty is running on as possible ✨.

A value of legacy uses the old (pre kitty 0.28) strategy for how glyphs are composited. This will make dark text on light backgrounds look thicker and light text on dark backgrounds thinner. It might also make some text appear like the strokes are uneven 🫠.

You can fine tune the actual contrast curve used for glyph composition by specifying up to two space-separated numbers for this setting 👑

The first number is the gamma adjustment, which controls the thickness of dark text on light backgrounds. Increasing the value will make text appear thicker. The default value for this is 1.0 on Linux and 1.7 on macOS. Valid values are 0.01 and above. The result is scaled based on the luminance difference between the background and the foreground. Dark text on light backgrounds receives the full impact of the curve while light text on dark backgrounds is affected very little 🌸.

The second number is an additional multiplicative contrast. It's a percentage ranging from 0 to 100. The default value is 0 on Linux and 30 on macOS.

If you wish to achieve similar looking thickness in light and dark themes, a good way to experiment is start by setting the value to 1.0 0 and use a dark theme. Then adjust the second parameter until it looks good. Then switch to a light theme and adjust the first parameter until the perceived thickness matches the dark theme 💅 (this is the kind of fiddling that is lowkey therapeutic, ngl).

text_fg_override_threshold — default: 0

A setting to prevent low contrast between foreground and background colors. Useful when working with applications that use colors that do not contrast well with your preferred color scheme 😭. The default value is 0, which means no color overriding is performed. There are two modes of operation:

A value with the suffix ratio represents the minimum accepted contrast ratio between the foreground and background color. Possible values range from 0.0 ratio to 21.0 ratio. For example, to meet WCAG level AA (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines) a value of 4.5 ratio can be provided 🫶. The algorithm is implemented using HSLuv (https://www.hsluv.org/) which enables it to change the perceived lightness of a color just as much as needed without really changing its hue and saturation. Iconic behaviour, honestly.

A value with the suffix % represents the minimum accepted difference in luminance between the foreground and background color, below which kitty will override the foreground color. It is a percentage ranging from 0 % to 100 %. If the difference in luminance of the foreground and background is below this threshold, the foreground color will be set to white if the background is dark or black if the background is light ✨.

WARNING: Some programs use characters (such as block characters) for graphics display and may expect to be able to set the foreground and background to the same color (or similar colors). If you see unexpected stripes, dots, lines, incorrect color, no color where you expect color, or any kind of graphic display problem, try setting text_fg_override_threshold to 0 to see if this is the cause of the problem, or consider using the ratio mode of operation described above instead of the % mode of operation 💀🌷

✨ Text cursor customization ✨

Cursor era!! This is the fun section, bestie — all the little things that decide how your cursor looks, blinks, travels and vibes 🦋

cursor — default: #cccccc

Default text cursor color. If set to the special value none the cursor will be rendered with a "reverse video" effect. Its color will be the color of the text in the cell it is over and the text will be rendered with the background color of the cell 👑. Note that if the program running in the terminal sets a cursor color, this takes precedence. Also, the cursor colors are modified if the cell background and foreground colors have very low contrast. Note that some themes set this value, so if you want to override it, place your value after the lines where the theme file is included 🌸.

cursor_text_color — default: #111111

The color of text under the cursor. If you want it rendered with the background color of the cell underneath instead, use the special keyword: background. Note that if cursor is set to none then this option is ignored 💅. Note that some themes set this value, so if you want to override it, place your value after the lines where the theme file is included — same deal as above, fr fr.

cursor_shape — default: block

The cursor shape can be one of block, beam, underline. Note that when reloading the config this will be changed only if the cursor shape has not been set by the program running in the terminal. This sets the default cursor shape, applications running in the terminal can override it. In particular, shell integration (the #shell-integration section) in kitty sets the cursor shape to beam at shell prompts. You can avoid this by setting shell_integration to no-cursor 🫶

cursor_shape_unfocused — default: hollow

Defines the text cursor shape when the OS window is not focused. The unfocused cursor shape can be one of block, beam, underline, hollow and unchanged (leave the cursor shape as it is) ✨

cursor_beam_thickness — default: 1.5

The thickness of the beam cursor (in pts). Skinny legend behaviour.

cursor_underline_thickness — default: 2.0

The thickness of the underline cursor (in pts) 🎀

cursor_blink_interval — default: -1

The interval to blink the cursor (in seconds). Set to zero to disable blinking. Negative values mean use system default. Note that the minimum interval will be limited to repaint_delay. You can also animate the cursor blink by specifying an easing function (see the #term-easing-function section). For example, setting this option to 0.5 ease-in-out will cause the cursor blink to be animated over a second, in the first half of the second it will go from opaque to transparent and then back again over the next half 🔥. You can specify different easing functions for the two halves, for example: -1 linear ease-out. kitty supports all the CSS easing functions (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/easing-function).

Note that turning on animations uses extra power as it means the screen is redrawn multiple times per blink interval 😭. See also, cursor_stop_blinking_after. This setting also controls blinking text, which blinks in exact rhythm with the cursor — the way that they're synced?? obsessed 🩷

cursor_stop_blinking_after — default: 15.0

Stop blinking cursor after the specified number of seconds of keyboard inactivity. Set to zero to never stop blinking. This setting also controls blinking text, which blinks in exact rhythm with the cursor ⭐

cursor_trail — default: 0

Set this to a value larger than zero to enable a "cursor trail" animation ✨ This is an animation that shows a "trail" following the movement of the text cursor. It makes it easy to follow large cursor jumps and makes for a cool visual effect of the cursor zooming around the screen 🦋. The actual value of this option controls when the animation is triggered. It is a number of milliseconds. The trail animation only follows cursors that have stayed in their position for longer than the specified number of milliseconds. This prevents trails from appearing for cursors that rapidly change their positions during UI updates in complex applications 👑

See cursor_trail_decay to control the animation speed and cursor_trail_start_threshold to control when a cursor trail is started. You can also have different styles of trail by using the custom_shaders option, for example: custom_shaders cursor-trail-blaze. To make fast cursor movements look smoother, use custom_shaders cursor-trail-motion-blur, which blurs the trail slightly along the direction it is moving 💅 (iconic, no notes).

cursor_trail_decay — default: 0.1 0.4

Controls the decay times for the cursor trail effect when the cursor_trail is enabled. This option accepts two positive float values specifying the fastest and slowest decay times in seconds. The first value corresponds to the fastest decay time (minimum), and the second value corresponds to the slowest decay time (maximum). The second value must be equal to or greater than the first value 🫶. Smaller values result in a faster decay of the cursor trail. Adjust these values to control how quickly the cursor trail fades away 🌈

cursor_trail_start_threshold — default: 2

Set the distance threshold for starting the cursor trail. This option accepts one or two positive integer values. When a single value is specified, it sets the threshold for both horizontal (x) and vertical (y) movement. When two values are specified, the first sets the x (horizontal) threshold and the second sets the y (vertical) threshold ✨ The values represent the minimum number of cells the cursor must move in each dimension before the trail is started. When the cursor moves less than the threshold in both dimensions, the trail is skipped, reducing unnecessary cursor trail animation 🎀

cursor_trail_color — default: none

Set the color of the cursor trail when cursor_trail is enabled. If set to 'none' (the default), the cursor trail will use the cursor's background color. Otherwise, specify a color value (e.g., #ff0000 for red, or a named color like 'red') 💖 This allows you to customize the appearance of the cursor trail independently of the cursor color — go off, make it cute.

🌸 SCROLLBACK 🌸

Okay bestie, this is where we decide how much of your terminal's past lives rent-free in RAM. Very main character, very "I remember everything" energy. 💅

scrollback_lines — the number of lines of history kept in memory so you can scroll back up. Default is scrollback_lines 2000. Memory gets allocated on demand (it's not greedy upfront, slay). Negative numbers give you an (effectively) infinite scrollback.

⚠️ Real talk: do not go feral with a giant scrollback. Using very large scrollback is not recommended — it can slow down the terminal's performance and eat large amounts of RAM. Instead, consider using scrollback_pager_history_size, which is literally built for this. 😌

Also: on config reload, if this is changed it will only affect newly created windows, not existing ones. So your current windows are not getting the glow-up, sorry. 💀

scrollbar — controls when the scrollbar shows up. Default is scrollbar scrolled. The vibes available:
- scrolled — shows when the scrolling backwards has started.
- hovered — shows when the mouse is hovering on the right edge of the window.
- scrolled-and-hovered — shows when the mouse is over the scrollbar region and scrolling backwards has started.
- scrolled-or-hovered — shows when the mouse is over the scrollbar region or scrolling backwards has started.
- always — shows whenever any scrollback is present.
- never — scrollbar? gone. disabled. not invited. 🫥
scrollbar_interactive — default scrollbar_interactive yes. If disabled, the scrollbar will not be controllable via the mouse, and all mouse events will pass straight through the scrollbar. It's giving "look but don't touch". 🙈
scrollbar_jump_on_click — default scrollbar_jump_on_click yes. When enabled, clicking in the scrollbar track makes the scroll position jump right to the clicked location. When disabled, the scroll position only moves toward the position by a single screenful — which is how traditional scrollbars behave. Old school 🎀
scrollbar_width — default scrollbar_width 0.5. The width of the scroll bar, in units of cell width.
scrollbar_hover_width — default scrollbar_hover_width 1. The width of the scroll bar when the mouse is hovering over it, in units of cell width. She grows when she's perceived. 👑
scrollbar_handle_opacity — default scrollbar_handle_opacity 0.5. Opacity of the scrollbar handle, 0 being fully transparent and 1 being full opaque.
scrollbar_radius — default scrollbar_radius 0.3. The radius (curvature) of the scrollbar handle, in units of cell width. Should be less than scrollbar_width — keep it cute and proportional, bestie. ✨
scrollbar_gap — default scrollbar_gap 0.1. The gap between the scrollbar and the window edge, in units of cell width. Personal space matters.
scrollbar_min_handle_height — default scrollbar_min_handle_height 1. The minimum height of the scrollbar handle, in units of cell height. Prevents the handle from becoming too small when there's a lot of scrollback. Protecting her from shrinking into nothing, we love to see it. 🫶
scrollbar_hitbox_expansion — default scrollbar_hitbox_expansion 0.25. The extra area around the handle to allow easier grabbing of the scrollbar, in units of cell width. Bigger hitbox = easier to grab, iykyk. 🎯
scrollbar_track_opacity — default scrollbar_track_opacity 0. Opacity of the scrollbar track, 0 being fully transparent and 1 being full opaque.
scrollbar_track_hover_opacity — default scrollbar_track_hover_opacity 0.1. Opacity of the scrollbar track when the mouse is over the scrollbar, 0 being fully transparent and 1 being full opaque.
scrollbar_handle_color — default scrollbar_handle_color foreground. The color of the scrollbar handle. A value of foreground means use the current foreground text color; a value of selection_background means use the current selection background color. You can also use an arbitrary color, such as #12af59 or red. Pick your fighter. 🌈
scrollbar_track_color — default scrollbar_track_color foreground. The color of the scrollbar track. A value of foreground means use the current foreground text color; a value of selection_background means use the current selection background color. Also, you can use an arbitrary color, such as #12af59 or red.
progress_bar — default progress_bar top. When a program uses the OSC 9;4 escape sequence to report progress, draw a progress bar in the specified position of the window. The bar uses the same style and color settings as the scrollbar. Literally sharing a wardrobe. 💖
- left — a vertical progress bar on the left edge
- right — a vertical progress bar on the right edge
- top — a horizontal progress bar on the top edge
- bottom — a horizontal progress bar on the bottom edge
- hidden — dont show the progress bar
scrollback_pager — default:

scrollback_pager less --chop-long-lines --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS +INPUT_LINE_NUMBER

This is the program used to view scrollback in a new window. The scrollback buffer is passed as STDIN to this program. If you change it, make sure the program you use can handle ANSI escape sequences for colors and text formatting — otherwise your pretty colors turn into chaos. 😭

INPUT_LINE_NUMBER in the command line above will be replaced by an integer representing which line should be at the top of the screen. Similarly CURSOR_LINE and CURSOR_COLUMN will be replaced by the current cursor position, or set to 0 if there is no cursor — for example, when showing the last command output.

If you would rather use neovim to view the scrollback, use something like this:

scrollback_pager nvim --cmd 'set eventignore=FileType' +'nnoremap q ZQ' +'call nvim_open_term(0, {})' +'set nomodified nolist' +'$' -

The above works for neovim 0.12 and newer. There's also a dedicated plugin, kitty-scrollback.nvim (https://github.com/mikesmithgh/kitty-scrollback.nvim), you can use with more features that works with older neovim as well. Obsessed with options. 🌟

scrollback_pager_history_size — default scrollback_pager_history_size 0. This is a separate scrollback history size (in MB), used only for browsing the scrollback buffer with the pager. This separate buffer is not available for interactive scrolling, but will be piped to the pager program when viewing the scrollback buffer in a separate window.

The current implementation stores the data in UTF-8, so approximately 10000 lines per megabyte at 100 chars per line, for pure ASCII, unformatted text. A value of zero or less disables this feature. The maximum allowed size is 4GB. Note that on config reload, if this is changed it will only affect newly created windows, not existing ones. (Yes, again. It's the same rule. 🎀)

scrollback_fill_enlarged_window — default scrollback_fill_enlarged_window no. Fill new space with lines from the scrollback buffer after enlarging a window. Expanding your horizons, literally.
wheel_scroll_multiplier — default wheel_scroll_multiplier 5.0. Multiplier for the number of lines scrolled by the mouse wheel. Note that this is only used for low precision scrolling devices — not for high precision scrolling devices on platforms such as macOS and Wayland. Use negative numbers to change scroll direction. See also wheel_scroll_min_lines.
wheel_scroll_min_lines — default wheel_scroll_min_lines 1. The minimum number of lines scrolled by the mouse wheel. The scroll multiplier only takes effect after it reaches this number. Note that this is only used for low precision scrolling devices like wheel mice that scroll by very small amounts when using the wheel. With a negative number, the minimum number of lines will always be added.
touch_scroll_multiplier — default touch_scroll_multiplier 1.0. Multiplier for the number of lines scrolled by a touchpad. Note that this is only used for high precision scrolling devices on platforms such as macOS and Wayland. Use negative numbers to change scroll direction. 🔄
pixel_scroll — default pixel_scroll yes. Enables per-pixel scrolling in the kitty scrollback buffer when using high precision input devices (for example touchpads). When enabled, kitty's own scrollback will move by sub-line increments instead of only whole lines. This does not affect applications running inside the terminal (for example full-screen TUIs) that handle scrolling themselves — those do their own thing, we don't interfere. ✨
momentum_scroll — default momentum_scroll 0.96. The amount of friction to apply to slow down momentum (inertial) scrolling. A number from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning no momentum scrolling and 1 meaning infinite scrolling.

Note that this setting only applies on platforms such as Wayland that do not provide native momentum scrolling. On macOS, the native OS based momentum scrolling is used. Also, momentum scrolling only applies to "finger" based devices such as touchpads and touchscreens.

⚠️ Changes to this setting only take effect after a kitty restart. So no instant gratification, bestie. 💀

🐭 MOUSE 🐭

The pointer. The cursor. The little guy. Let's give him some manners. 🫶

mouse_hide_wait — default mouse_hide_wait 3.0. Hides the mouse cursor after the specified number of seconds of the mouse not being used. Set to zero to disable mouse cursor hiding. Set to a negative value to hide the mouse cursor immediately when typing text. Disabled by default on macOS — as getting it to work robustly with the ever-changing sea of bugs that is Cocoa is too much effort. 😭 (no shade, okay maybe a little shade)

By default, once the cursor is hidden, it is immediately unhidden on any further mouse events.

Two formats are supported:

<hide-wait>
<hide-wait> <unhide-wait> <unhide-threshold> <scroll-unhide>

To change the unhide behavior, the optional parameters <unhide-wait>, <unhide-threshold>, and <scroll-unhide> may be set. Look at all these knobs, we love a customizable queen. 👑

<unhide-wait> — waits for the specified number of seconds after mouse events before unhiding the mouse cursor. Set to zero to unhide the mouse cursor immediately on mouse activity. This is useful to prevent the mouse cursor from unhiding on accidental swipes on the trackpad. Because accidental swipes are so real. 🙈
<unhide-threshold> — sets the threshold of mouse activity required to unhide the mouse cursor, when the <unhide-wait> option is non-zero. When <unhide-wait> is zero, this has no effect.

For example, if <unhide-threshold> is 40 and <unhide-wait> is 2.5, when kitty detects a mouse event, it records the number of mouse events in the next 2.5 seconds, and checks if that exceeds 40 * 2.5 = 100. If it does, then the mouse cursor is unhidden, otherwise nothing happens. Math girlie behavior fr fr. 🧮

<scroll-unhide> — controls what mouse events may unhide the mouse cursor. If enabled, both scroll and movement events may unhide the cursor. If disabled, only mouse movements can unhide the cursor.

Examples of valid values:

0.0
1.0
-1.0
0.1 3.0 40 yes

url_color, url_style — default:

url_color #0087bd
url_style curly

The color and style for highlighting URLs on mouse-over. url_style can be one of: none, straight, double, curly, dotted, dashed. Curly is the moment, honestly. 🎀

open_url_with — default open_url_with default. The program to open clicked URLs. The special value default will first look for any URL handlers defined via the Scripting the mouse click facility, and if none are found, it will use the Operating System's default URL handler (open on macOS and xdg-open on Linux). Delegation, iconic. 💅
url_prefixes — default:

url_prefixes file ftp ftps gemini git gopher http https irc ircs kitty mailto news sftp ssh

The set of URL prefixes to look for when detecting a URL under the mouse cursor. That's the whole guest list. 🎟️

detect_urls — default detect_urls yes.
detect_urls — Detect URLs under the mouse. Detected URLs are highlighted with an underline and the mouse cursor becomes a hand over them. Even if this option is disabled, URLs are still clickable. See also the underline_hyperlinks option to control how hyperlinks (as opposed to plain text URLs) are displayed. Use detect_url_regex to detect arbitrary text, such as file references, as URLs.
detect_url_regex — A regular expression to detect as a URL under the mouse, in addition to the URLs detected via url_prefixes. Can be specified multiple times, and text under the mouse is detected as a URL if any of the expressions match it. The expressions are tried in the order specified, and only if no normal URL is found under the mouse. Matches are highlighted and clickable exactly like normal detected URLs, see detect_urls. The expressions use the POSIX extended regular expression syntax, so use [0-9] rather than \d and [[:alnum:]] rather than \w. Text that has been soft wrapped onto multiple lines is matched as a single line, looking at most three lines above and below the mouse. For example, to detect file references of the form path/to/file.py:42:

detect_url_regex [[:alnum:]_./-]+\.[[:alnum:]]+:[0-9]+

The matched text is used as the URL when clicked. Use Scripting the mouse click <> with the url criterion to specify what to do with it. Note that the url criterion uses Python regular expression syntax. For example, to pass file references to a script of your own that opens them in an editor, add to open-actions.conf:

url ^[\w./-]+\.\w+:\d+$
action launch --type=background open-file-ref ${URL}

url_excluded_characters — Additional characters to be disallowed from URLs, when detecting URLs under the mouse cursor. By default, all characters that are legal in URLs are allowed. Additionally, newlines are allowed (but stripped). This is to accommodate programs such as mutt that add hard line breaks even for continued lines. \n can be added to this option to disable this behavior. Special characters can be specified using backslash escapes, to specify a backslash use a double backslash.
show_hyperlink_targets — When the mouse hovers over a terminal hyperlink, show the actual URL that will be activated when the hyperlink is clicked. Set to ctrl, cmd, alt or shift to show only while the corresponding modifier key is pressed (Ctrl, Super (macOS Cmd), Shift). If multiple modifiers are pressed, the URL is shown as long as the configured modifier is among them. always to always show, or never to never show.

show_hyperlink_targets never

underline_hyperlinks — Control how hyperlinks are underlined. They can either be underlined on mouse hover, always (i.e. permanently underlined) or never which means that kitty will not apply any underline styling to hyperlinks. Note that the value of always only applies to real (OSC 8) hyperlinks not text that is detected to be a URL on mouse hover. Uses the url_style and url_color settings for the underline style. Note that reloading the config and changing this value to/from always will only affect text subsequently received by kitty.

underline_hyperlinks hover

copy_on_select — Copy to clipboard or a private buffer on select. With this set to clipboard, selecting text with the mouse will cause the text to be copied to clipboard. Useful on platforms such as macOS that do not have the concept of primary selection. You can instead specify a name such as a1 to copy to a private kitty buffer. Map a shortcut with the paste_from_buffer action to paste from this private buffer. For example:

copy_on_select a1
map shift+cmd+v paste_from_buffer a1

Note that copying to the clipboard is a security risk, as all programs, including websites open in your browser can read the contents of the system clipboard. ⚠️

copy_on_select no

clear_selection_on_clipboard_loss — When the contents of the clipboard no longer reflect the current selection, clear it. This is primarily useful on platforms such as Linux where selecting text automatically copies it to a special "primary selection" clipboard or if you have copy_on_select set to clipboard.

Note that on macOS the system does not provide notifications when the clipboard owner is changed, so there, copying to clipboard in a non-kitty application will not clear selections even if copy_on_select is enabled.

clear_selection_on_clipboard_loss no

paste_actions — A comma separated list of actions to take when pasting or dropping text into the terminal. The supported paste actions are:
- quote-urls-at-prompt: If the text being pasted is a URL and the cursor is at a shell prompt, automatically quote the URL (needs shell_integration).
- replace-dangerous-control-codes — Replace dangerous control codes from pasted text, without confirmation.
- replace-newline — Replace the newline character from pasted text, without confirmation.
- confirm: Confirm the paste if the text to be pasted contains any terminal control codes as this can be dangerous, leading to code execution if the shell/program running in the terminal does not properly handle these.
- confirm-if-large — Confirm the paste if it is very large (larger than 16KB) as pasting large amounts of text into shells can be very slow.
- filter: Run the filter_paste() function from the file paste-actions.py in the kitty config directory on the pasted text. The text returned by the function will be actually pasted.
- no-op: Has no effect.

paste_actions quote-urls-at-prompt,confirm

strip_trailing_spaces — Remove spaces at the end of lines when copying to clipboard. A value of smart will do it when using normal selections, but not rectangle selections. A value of always will always do it.

strip_trailing_spaces never

select_by_word_characters — Characters considered part of a word when double clicking. In addition to these characters any character that is marked as an alphanumeric character in the Unicode database will be matched.

select_by_word_characters @-./_~?&=%+#

select_by_word_characters_forward — Characters considered part of a word when extending the selection forward on double clicking. In addition to these characters any character that is marked as an alphanumeric character in the Unicode database will be matched.

If empty (default) select_by_word_characters will be used for both directions.

click_interval — The interval between successive clicks to detect double/triple clicks (in seconds). Negative numbers will use the system default instead, if available, or fallback to 0.5.

click_interval -1.0

focus_follows_mouse — Set the active window to the window under the mouse when the mouse crosses into a different window. The active window does not change while the mouse moves around within a single window, so an accidental mouse bump will not undo a keyboard-driven window switch. Setting it to drop means focus will only be changed when a drag and drop happens in a window. On macOS, this will also cause the OS Window under the mouse to be focused automatically when the mouse enters it, as long as the kitty application is the active application.

focus_follows_mouse no

pointer_shape_when_grabbed — The shape of the mouse pointer when the program running in the terminal grabs the mouse.

pointer_shape_when_grabbed arrow

default_pointer_shape — The default shape of the mouse pointer.

default_pointer_shape beam

pointer_shape_when_dragging — The default shape of the mouse pointer when dragging across text. The optional second value sets the shape when dragging in rectangular selection mode.

pointer_shape_when_dragging beam crosshair

drag_threshold — The threshold distance the mouse must move to start a drag and drop. Dragging works for tabs and windows. You can drag tabs to re-order them, detach them into new OS Windows or move them to another OS Window. A tab with a single window can also be dropped into another tab's content area to insert that window at the highlighted edge, within the same kitty process. Similarly, by dragging the titlebar of a window (see toggle_window_title_bars <#action-toggle_window_title_bars>) you can re-order it in its layout, detach it or move it to another tab. A value of zero disables all dragging.

Note that on Wayland, because of poor design (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/140) cancelling a drag will detach the tab. This is worked around for compositors that support xdg-toplevel-drag (https://wayland.app/protocols/xdg-toplevel-drag-v1).

drag_threshold 5

🐭 Mouse actions 🐭

Mouse buttons can be mapped to perform arbitrary actions. The syntax is:

mouse_map button-name event-type modes action

Where button-name is one of left, middle, right, b1 ... b8 with added keyboard modifiers. For example: ctrl+shift+left refers to holding the Ctrl+Shift keys while clicking with the left mouse button. The value b1 ... b8 can be used to refer to up to eight buttons on a mouse.

event-type is one of press, release, doublepress, triplepress, click, doubleclick. modes indicates whether the action is performed when the mouse is grabbed by the program running in the terminal, or not. The values are grabbed or ungrabbed or a comma separated combination of them. grabbed refers to when the program running in the terminal has requested mouse events. Note that the click and double click events have a delay of click_interval to disambiguate from double and triple presses.

You can run kitty with the kitty --debug-input <#cmdoption-kitty-debug-input> command line option to see mouse events. See the builtin actions below to get a sense of what is possible.

If you want to unmap a button, map it to nothing. For example, to disable opening of URLs with a plain click:

mouse_map left click ungrabbed

See all the mappable actions including mouse actions here <>.

Note: Once a selection is started, releasing the button that started it will automatically end it and no release event will be dispatched. ✨

clear_all_mouse_actions — Remove all mouse action definitions up to this point. Useful, for instance, to remove the default mouse actions.

clear_all_mouse_actions no

Click the link under the mouse or move the cursor

mouse_map left click ungrabbed mouse_handle_click selection link prompt

Okay so mouse_handle_click is the one with the little ordered checklist, and the order matters, bestie: first check for a selection and if one exists do nothing. Then check for a link under the mouse cursor and if one exists, click it. Finally check if the click happened at the current shell prompt and if so, move the cursor to the click location. Note that this requires shell integration (#shell-integration) to work.

Click the link under the mouse or move the cursor even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+left click grabbed,ungrabbed mouse_handle_click selection link prompt

Same as above, except that the action is performed even when the mouse is grabbed by the program running in the terminal.

Click the link under the mouse cursor

mouse_map ctrl+shift+left release grabbed,ungrabbed mouse_handle_click link

Variant with Ctrl+Shift is present because the simple click based version has an unavoidable delay of click_interval, to disambiguate clicks from double clicks.

Discard press event for link click

mouse_map ctrl+shift+left press grabbed discard_event

Prevent this press event from being sent to the program that has grabbed the mouse, as the corresponding release event is used to open a URL.

Paste from the primary selection

mouse_map middle release ungrabbed paste_from_selection

Start selecting text

mouse_map left press ungrabbed mouse_selection normal

By default, pressing the left mouse button starts a new selection. To enable dragging selected text, hyperlinks or detected URLs, add this to kitty.conf:

mouse_map left press ungrabbed mouse_selection drag_or_normal_select

After saving, use Ctrl+Shift+F5 if auto_reload_config is disabled. Select some text and release the mouse button. Then press inside the selection and drag it to another kitty window (including a split) or an application that accepts text drops. The text is copied without changing the clipboard.

For programs that capture mouse events, such as editors with mouse support, also add the following mapping and hold Shift when selecting and dragging:

mouse_map shift+left press grabbed mouse_selection drag_or_normal_select

To require Ctrl for dragging, use these mappings instead of the first example, keeping ordinary left-button selection unchanged:

mouse_map left press ungrabbed mouse_selection normal
mouse_map ctrl+left press ungrabbed mouse_selection drag_or_normal_select

To disable text and link dragging, replace drag_or_normal_select with normal in the mappings you added. Setting drag_threshold to zero also disables dragging, but affects tab and window dragging as well.

Dragging starts after the mouse has moved farther than drag_threshold. The selection takes precedence over links under the mouse. Outside a selection, links can be dragged as before, and other text can be selected normally. A click inside the selection clears it, while double and triple clicks still select words and lines.

Drops into kitty follow the receiving window's paste_actions settings. Multiline text or text containing control codes can therefore require confirmation.

Start selecting text in a rectangle

mouse_map ctrl+alt+left press ungrabbed mouse_selection rectangle

Select a word

mouse_map left doublepress ungrabbed mouse_selection word

Select a line

mouse_map left triplepress ungrabbed mouse_selection line

Select line from first cell

mouse_map alt+left triplepress ungrabbed mouse_selection line_from_begin

Select line from point

mouse_map ctrl+alt+left triplepress ungrabbed mouse_selection line_from_point

Select from the clicked point to the end of the line. If you would like to select the word at the point and then extend to the rest of the line, change line_from_point to word_and_line_from_point.

Extend the current selection

mouse_map right press ungrabbed mouse_selection extend

If you want only the end of the selection to be moved instead of the nearest boundary, use move-end instead of extend.

Extend the current selection with shift

mouse_map shift+left press ungrabbed mouse_selection extend

If you want only the end of the selection to be moved instead of the nearest boundary, use move-end instead of extend.

Paste from the primary selection even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+middle release ungrabbed,grabbed paste_selection
mouse_map shift+middle press grabbed discard_event

Start selecting text even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+left press grabbed mouse_selection normal

Start selecting text in a rectangle even when grabbed

mouse_map ctrl+shift+alt+left press ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection rectangle

Select a word even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+left doublepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection word

Select a line even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+left triplepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection line

Select line from first cell even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+alt+left triplepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection line_from_begin

Select line from point even when grabbed

mouse_map ctrl+shift+alt+left triplepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection line_from_point

Select from the clicked point to the end of the line even when grabbed. If you would like to select the word at the point and then extend to the rest of the line, change line_from_point to word_and_line_from_point.

Extend the current selection even when grabbed

mouse_map shift+right press ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection extend

Show clicked command output in pager

mouse_map ctrl+shift+right press ungrabbed mouse_show_command_output

Requires shell integration (#shell-integration) to work.

⚡ Performance tuning ⚡

repaint_delay — delay between screen updates (in milliseconds). Decreasing it, increases frames-per-second (FPS) at the cost of more CPU usage. The default value yields ~100 FPS which is more than sufficient for most uses. Note that to actually achieve 100 FPS, you have to either set sync_to_monitor to no or use a monitor with a high refresh rate. Also, to minimize latency when there is pending input to be processed, this option is ignored. Default: repaint_delay 10
input_delay — delay before input from the program running in the terminal is processed (in milliseconds). Note that decreasing it will increase responsiveness, but also increase CPU usage and might cause flicker in full screen programs that redraw the entire screen on each loop, because kitty is so fast that partial screen updates will be drawn. This setting is ignored when the input buffer is almost full. It is also ignored when less than 1 KB of input is pending, such as when the program echoes typed characters, but at most once per delay period, so continuous streams of small writes are still coalesced. Default: input_delay 3
sync_to_monitor — sync screen updates to the refresh rate of the monitor. This prevents screen tearing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing) when scrolling. However, it limits the rendering speed to the refresh rate of your monitor. With a very high speed mouse/high keyboard repeat rate, you may notice some slight input latency. If so, set this to no. Default: sync_to_monitor yes

🔔 Terminal bell 🔔

enable_audio_bell — the audio bell. Useful to disable it in environments that require silence. Default: enable_audio_bell yes
visual_bell_duration — the visual bell duration (in seconds). Flash the screen when a bell occurs for the specified number of seconds. Set to zero to disable. The flash is animated, fading in and out over the specified duration. The easing function used for the fading can be controlled. For example, 2.0 linear will make the flash fade in and out linearly. The default if unspecified is to use ease-in-out which fades slowly at the start, middle and end. You can specify different easing functions for the fade-in and fade-out parts, like this: 2.0 ease-in linear. kitty supports all the CSS easing functions (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/easing-function). Default: visual_bell_duration 0.0
visual_bell_color — the color used by visual bell. Set to none will fall back to selection background color. If you feel that the visual bell is too bright, you can set it to a darker color. Default: visual_bell_color none
window_alert_on_bell — request window attention on bell. Makes the dock icon bounce on macOS or the taskbar flash on Linux. Default: window_alert_on_bell yes
bell_on_tab — some text or a Unicode symbol to show on the tab if a window in the tab that does not have focus has a bell. If you want to use leading or trailing spaces, surround the text with quotes. See tab_title_template for how this is rendered. Default:

bell_on_tab "🔔 "

For backwards compatibility, values of yes, y and true are converted to the default bell symbol and no, n, false and none are converted to the empty string.

command_on_bell — program to run when a bell occurs. The environment variable KITTY_CHILD_CMDLINE can be used to get the program running in the window in which the bell occurred. Default: command_on_bell none
macos_dock_badge_on_bell — show a badge on kitty's dock icon when a bell occurs and kitty is not the active application (macOS only). The badge is automatically cleared when kitty regains focus. Default: macos_dock_badge_on_bell yes
bell_path — path to a sound file to play as the bell sound. If set to none, the system default bell sound is used. Must be in a format supported by the operating systems sound API, such as WAV or OGA on Linux (libcanberra) or AIFF, MP3 or WAV on macOS (NSSound). Relative paths are resolved with respect to the kitty config directory. Default: bell_path none
linux_bell_theme — the XDG Sound Theme kitty will use to play the bell sound. On Wayland, when the compositor supports it, it is asked to play the system default bell sound, and this setting has no effect. Note that Hyprland claims to support this protocol, but does not actually play a sound (https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland/issues/10488). This setting defaults to the custom theme name specified in the XDG Sound theme specification (https://specifications.freedesktop.org/sound-theme-spec/latest/sound_lookup.html) with the contents:

[Sound Theme]

Inherits=name-of-the-sound-theme-you-want-to-use

Replace name-of-the-sound-theme-you-want-to-use with the actual theme name. Now all compliant applications should use sounds from this theme.

Default: linux_bell_theme __custom

🪟 Window layout 🪟

The trio is remember_window_size, initial_window_width, and initial_window_height, and the defaults are:

remember_window_size  yes
initial_window_width  640
initial_window_height 400

…and what if it's off? Then the OS Window starts life at whatever size initial_window_width/initial_window_height give it, in pixels 🎯. Little flex for you: tack a suffix of "c" onto the width/height values and they get interpreted as a number of cells instead of pixels. Wayland heads-up though: on Wayland, whether initial window sizes specified in cells works when using fractional scaling is compositor dependent — literally not ours to promise 😭.

remember_window_position — default remember_window_position no. Turn this on and the OS Window position gets remembered, so new kitty instances pop up exactly where the last one was 🫶. Leave it off and the OS Window gets placed by the window manager. Two whole caveats: remembering position only works if the underlying desktop environment/window manager supports it, and it never works on Wayland. Also peep kitty --position if you want to specify the position when launching kitty.
enabled_layouts — default enabled_layouts *. This is the enabled window layouts: a comma separated list of layout names. The special value all means all layouts. Whichever layout you list first becomes the startup layout. The default config = all layouts in alphabetical order ✨. For the list of available layouts, go look at the Layouts section.
window_resize_step_cells, window_resize_step_lines — defaults window_resize_step_cells 2 and window_resize_step_lines 2. The step size (in units of cell width / cell height) used when you resize kitty windows in a layout with the shortcut ctrl+shift+r. The cells value handles horizontal resizing, the lines value handles vertical resizing 🧚.
window_border_width — default window_border_width 0.5pt. Width of them window borders 💅. Can be in pixels (px) or points (pt). Values in pts get rounded to the nearest number of pixels based on screen resolution. If you don't specify a unit, it's assumed to be pt. Important vibe check: borders are displayed only when more than one window is visible — they exist to separate multiple windows, not to decorate your solo window.
draw_minimal_borders — default draw_minimal_borders yes. Draws only the minimum borders needed, meaning only the borders that separate a window from a neighbor get drawn. But watch it: setting a non-zero window_margin_width overrides this and causes all borders to be drawn. so pick your fighter 😌
window_border_radius — default window_border_radius 0. The corner radius of window borders, in pixels (px) or points (pt). Values in pts are rounded to the nearest number of pixels based on screen resolution; no unit specified means pt is assumed. A value of zero disables rounded borders. This one applies only when full window borders are drawn — it has zero effect with minimal borders. Rounded borders are drawn over corner cells, so use window_padding_width to keep your text clear of them 👑
draw_window_borders_for_single_window — default draw_window_borders_for_single_window no. Draws borders around a window even when there's only a single window visible. When enabled and there's only one window, full borders are drawn around it (as if draw_minimal_borders is false). The border shows in the active color when the window is focused and the OS window has focus, and in the inactive color when the OS window loses focus — which is a genuinely iconic visual indicator of whether the kitty window is focused 🎀. When multiple windows are visible this option has no effect and normal border drawing rules apply.

window_margin_width — default window_margin_width 0. The window margin (in pts) — that's the blank area outside the border. A single value sets all four sides. Two values set the vertical and horizontal sides. Three values set top, horizontal and bottom. Four values set top, right, bottom and left 🦋.
single_window_margin_width — default single_window_margin_width -1. The window margin to use when only a single window is visible (in pts). Negative values make it fall back to the value of window_margin_width instead. Same number rules: one value = all four sides, two = vertical and horizontal, three = top, horizontal and bottom, four = top, right, bottom and left.
window_padding_width — default window_padding_width 0. The window padding (in pts) — that's the blank area between the text and the window border. One value sets all four sides, two set vertical and horizontal, three set top, horizontal and bottom, four set top, right, bottom and left 🌸.
single_window_padding_width — default single_window_padding_width -1. The window padding to use when only a single window is visible (in pts). Negative values fall back to window_padding_width. Same 1/2/3/4 value deal as above 💜.

placement_strategy — default placement_strategy center. Real talk: when the window size isn't an exact multiple of the cell size, the cell area of the terminal window ends up with some extra padding on the sides. This option controls how that padding is distributed. center places the cell area centrally. top-left puts the padding only at the bottom and right edges. The value can be one of: top-left, top, top-right, left, center, right, bottom-left, bottom, bottom-right ✨.
padding_fill_strategy — default padding_fill_strategy background. Same situation — window size not an exact multiple of the cell size means thin strips of compensatory padding get added at the window edges (see placement_strategy). This controls how those strips are colored. neighboring_cell colors each strip to match the background color of the cell adjacent to it, which looks best with full screen applications such as editors that have differently colored border cells. background colors the strips using the window background color. Note that this only affects the compensatory padding — the intentional padding from window_padding_width is always drawn using the background color, no cap.
active_border_color — default active_border_color #00ff00. The color for the border of the active window. Set it to none if you don't want borders drawn around the active window at all 🙈.
inactive_border_color — default inactive_border_color #cccccc. The color for the border of inactive windows.
bell_border_color — default bell_border_color #ff5a00. The color for the border of inactive windows in which a bell has occurred 🔔.
inactive_text_alpha — default inactive_text_alpha 1.0. Fades the content in inactive windows by the specified amount. Must be a number between -1 and 1. The absolute value controls the actual opacity — zero is fully faded, one is fully opaque. When you use a positive number, the text is faded even if only a single window is visible when the OS window is not focused. Negative numbers mean the text is only faded when more than one kitty window is visible in an OS Window. Fading happens in all but the active window, even if the OS Window isn't focused — so this is great if you want to let the window manager show OS Window focus while this feature shows which kitty window is active inside the OS Window 👑. Want alternate dimming/highlighting strategies? You can use custom_shaders for example: custom_shaders dim-inactive-windows.
hide_window_decorations — default hide_window_decorations no. Hides the window decorations (title-bar and window borders) with yes. On macOS, titlebar-only and titlebar-and-corners can be used to only hide the titlebar and the rounded corners.

On Wayland, titlebar-only can be used to hide the titlebar while keeping the window shadow for resizing. On compositors that have server-side decorations (such as anything but GNOME), both yes and titlebar-only force client-side decoration mode.

Whether this works and exactly what effect it has depends on the window manager/operating system. Also — the effects of changing this option when reloading config are undefined 💀. When using titlebar-only on macOS it's useful to also set window_margin_width and placement_strategy so the rounded corners don't clip your text. Or just use titlebar-and-corners.

window_logo_path — default window_logo_path none. Path to a logo image. Must be in PNG/JPEG/WEBP/GIF/TIFF/BMP format. Relative paths are interpreted relative to the kitty config directory. The logo is displayed in a corner of every kitty window, and the position is controlled by window_logo_position 🎀. Individual windows can be configured to have different logos either using the launch action or the remote control facility, iykyk.
window_logo_position — default window_logo_position bottom-right. Where to position the window logo in the window. The value can be one of: top-left, top, top-right, left, center, right, bottom-left, bottom, bottom-right.
window_logo_alpha — default window_logo_alpha 0.5. How much the logo should be faded into the background — zero being fully faded and one being fully opaque 🌈.
window_logo_scale — default window_logo_scale 0. The percentage (0-100] of the window size to which the logo should scale. A single number means the logo is scaled to that percentage of the shortest window dimension, while preserving the aspect ratio of the logo image. Two numbers means the width and height of the logo are scaled to the respective percentage of the window's width and height. Using zero as the percentage disables scaling in that dimension. A single zero (the default) disables all scaling of the window logo, periodt.
resize_debounce_time — default resize_debounce_time 0.1 0.5. The time to wait (in seconds) before asking the program running in kitty to resize and redraw the screen during a live resize of the OS window, when no new resize events have been received — i.e. when resizing is either paused or finished. On platforms such as macOS, where the operating system sends events corresponding to the start and end of a live resize, the second number is used for redraw-after-pause, since kitty can distinguish between a pause and end of resizing. On such systems the first number is ignored and redraw is immediate after end of resize. On other systems only the first number is used, so kitty is "ready" quickly after the end of resizing while not also continuously redrawing — saving energy 🔥.
resize_in_steps — default resize_in_steps no. (The full tea on this one is literally right up next, keep scrolling bestie 💅)

Resize the OS window in steps as large as the cells, instead of with the usual pixel accuracy. Combined with initial_window_width and initial_window_height in number of cells, this option can be used to keep the margins as small as possible when resizing the OS window. Heads up though: this does not currently work on Wayland — no cap, it just doesn't. 💀

visual_window_select_characters — default: 1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. This is the list of characters you get for visual window selection — you know, like when you're picking a window to focus with ctrl+shift+f7? 👀 The value should be a series of unique numbers or alphabets, case insensitive, drawn from the set:

0-9A-Z`-=[];',./\.

So basically you just specify your preference as a string of characters, bestie. That's it, that's the whole vibe. ✨

confirm_os_window_close — default: -1. Ask for confirmation when closing an OS window or a tab that has at least this number of kitty windows in it — and this fires whether it's the window manager doing it (e.g. clicking the window close button, or pressing the operating system shortcut to close windows) or the close_tab action doing it. A value of zero disables confirmation entirely. This confirmation also applies to requests to quit the entire application (all OS windows, via the quit action). 🫶
- Negative values are converted to positive ones, however, with shell_integration enabled, using negative values means windows sitting at a shell prompt are not counted — only windows where some command is currently running. So negative = "only yell at me if I'd be killing real work," iconic behavior honestly.
- You can also have backgrounded jobs prevent closing, by adding count-background to the setting, for example: -1 count-background.
- Note that if you want confirmation when closing individual windows, you can map the close_window_with_confirmation action instead. Different action, different job. 💅
window_drag_tolerance — default: 2. Controls dragging window borders to resize kitty windows. This is the tolerance in pts for the region around window borders where pressing the left mouse button will start the dragging of window borders. Use a large negative value such as -200 to disable dragging of borders — dramatic, but valid. ⭐

Note that because kitty uses layouts, dragging borders does not actually resize the window itself, but instead the layout row/column/slot, which can result in multiple windows getting resized. So like… it's giving resize, but the plot is more complicated than you think. 🌸

window_title_bar — default: top. Controls the position of the window title bar relative to the window content. Use window_title_bar_min_windows to control when title bars are shown. Use window_title_template to format the displayed window title. 🎀
window_title_bar_min_windows — default: 0. The minimum number of visible windows in a tab before window title bars are shown. A value of 0 means never show. 1 means always show. 2 or more means show only when at least that many windows are visible. Super similar to tab_bar_min_tabs for the tab bar — same energy, different bar. 👑
window_title_template — default: "{fmt.fg.red}{bell_symbol}{activity_symbol}{fmt.fg.window}{progress_percent}{title}". A template to render the window title bar text. Uses the same template syntax as tab_title_template. Available variables include: {title}, {bell_symbol}, {activity_symbol}, {progress_percent}, {custom}, {fmt}, {is_active}. You can also provide a custom draw_window_title(data) function in window_title_bar.py in the kitty config directory, exposed as {custom}. Yes bestie, you can write your own. Go feral. 🦋
active_window_title_template — default: none. Template to use for the active window title bar. If not set (the value none), the window_title_template is used.
window_title_bar_active_foreground — default: none. Foreground color for the active window title bar. Defaults to the corresponding tab bar color (active_tab_foreground) when set to none.
window_title_bar_active_background — default: none. Background color for the active window title bar. Defaults to the corresponding tab bar color (active_tab_background) when set to none.
window_title_bar_inactive_foreground — default: none. Foreground color for inactive window title bars. Defaults to the corresponding tab bar color (inactive_tab_foreground) when set to none.
window_title_bar_inactive_background — default: none. Background color for inactive window title bars. Defaults to the corresponding tab bar color (inactive_tab_background) when set to none.
window_title_bar_align — default: center. Horizontal alignment of the text in window title bars.

🎀 TAB BAR 🎀

Okay bestie, this section is long but it's lowkey my favorite, because tabs are the whole personality of a terminal. Let's go. 💜

Tab bar

tab_bar_edge — default: bottom. The edge to show the tab bar on: top, bottom, left or right.
tab_bar_margin_width — default: 0.0. The margin perpendicular to the tab bar edge (in pts). For tab bars on the top or bottom this is the margin to the left and right. For tab bars on the left or right this is the margin above and below. 🧚
tab_bar_margin_height — default: 0.0 0.0. The margin along the tab bar edge (in pts). The first number is the margin between the edge of the OS Window and the tab bar. The second number is the margin between the tab bar and the contents of the current tab. Two numbers, two jobs. ✨
tab_bar_style — default: fade. The tab bar style, can be one of:
- fade — Each tab's edges fade into the background color. (See also tab_fade)
- slant — Tabs look like the tabs in a physical file. 📁
- separator — Tabs are separated by a configurable separator. (See also tab_separator)
- powerline — Tabs are shown as a continuous line with "fancy" separators. (See also tab_powerline_style)
- custom — A user-supplied Python function called draw_tab is loaded from the file tab_bar.py in the kitty config directory. For examples of how to write such a function, see the functions named draw_tab_with_* in kitty's source code: kitty/tab_bar.py. See also this discussion <https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/discussions/4447> for examples from kitty users. Main character energy: you become the tab bar.
- hidden — The tab bar is hidden. If you use this, you might want to create a mapping for the select_tab action which presents you with a list of tabs and allows for easy switching to a tab. Sneaky but functional. 🙈
tab_bar_filter — A search expression. Only tabs that match this expression will be shown in the tab bar. The currently active tab is always shown, regardless of whether it matches or not. When using this option, the tab bar may be displayed with less tabs than specified in tab_bar_min_tabs, as evaluating the filter is expensive and is done only at display time. This is most useful when using sessions. An expression of session:~ or session:^$ will show only tabs that belong to the current session or no session. The various tab navigation actions such as goto_tab, next_tab, previous_tab, etc. are automatically restricted to work only on matching tabs. So the navigation respects the filter — no skipping to a tab you can't even see. 🫶
tab_bar_align — default: start. The alignment of the tab bar, can be one of: start, center, end, left, right. The values left and right are aliases for start and end respectively.
tab_bar_show_new_tab_button — default: no. When set to yes, a + button is always shown at the end of the tab bar as a clickable shortcut to open a new tab. When set to no (the default), the button is hidden at rest but still appears temporarily while a window is being dragged, so it can be used as a drop target to open the window in a new tab. Cute little ghost button. 👻
tab_bar_min_tabs — default: 2. The minimum number of tabs that must exist before the tab bar is shown. One tab? Why would you need a bar. Two? Now we're talking. 💅
tab_switch_strategy — default: previous. The algorithm to use when switching to a tab when the current tab is closed. The default of previous will switch to the last used tab. A value of left will switch to the tab to the left of the closed tab. A value of right will switch to the tab to the right of the closed tab. A value of last will switch to the right-most tab. Pick your chaos. ⭐
tab_fade — default: 0.25 0.5 0.75 1. Control how each tab fades into the background when using fade for the tab_bar_style. Each number is an alpha (between zero and one) that controls how much the corresponding cell fades into the background, with zero being no fade and one being full fade. You can change the number of cells used by adding/removing entries to this list. Math but make it aesthetic. 🌈
tab_separator — default: " ┇". The separator between tabs in the tab bar when using separator as the tab_bar_style.
tab_powerline_style — default: angled. The powerline separator style between tabs in the tab bar when using powerline as the tab_bar_style, can be one of: angled, slanted, round. 🦋
tab_activity_symbol — default: none. Some text or a Unicode symbol to show on the tab if a window in the tab that does not have focus has some activity. If you want to use leading or trailing spaces, surround the text with quotes. See tab_title_template for how this is rendered. Go wild, put a little sparkle in there. ✨
tab_title_max_length — default: 0. The maximum number of cells that can be used to render the text in a tab. A value of zero means that no limit is applied. For vertical tab bars, kitty uses a default sidebar width sized for about twenty title cells when this is left unset.
tab_title_max_lines — default: 1. The maximum number of lines each tab may occupy, for vertical tab bars only (see tab_bar_edge). Titles containing newlines are rendered over multiple lines, up to this limit; any remaining lines are dropped. A value of 1 (the default) keeps every tab on a single line, so newlines in tab_title_template have no effect. Increase it to make room for multi-line titles, for example:

tab_title_max_lines 2
tab_title_template "{index}: {tab.active_exe}\n{title}"

Note that tabs are packed according to the number of lines each title actually uses, so a tab with a single-line title still occupies only one line even when this is greater than one. No wasted space, we love efficiency. 💅

tab_title_wrap — default: no. Wrap tab titles that are too long to fit instead of truncating them, for vertical tab bars only (see tab_bar_edge). Can be no (the default) to truncate with an ellipsis as before, yes to wrap at the width of the tab bar, or a number to wrap at that many cells, for example:

tab_title_wrap yes
tab_title_wrap 20

The way that titles just… fit now? Obsessed. 😭

So like, the wrapping only gets to do its thing up to tab_title_max_lines — so while that's set to 1, wrapping is literally doing nothing visible, bestie. And when a title needs more lines than it's allowed, the last line it gets is just truncated with an ellipsis 😭. Explicit newlines you put in tab_title_template still start a new line though, and each of those resulting lines gets wrapped independently. Slay.

`tab_title_template`

tab_title_template "{fmt.fg.red}{bell_symbol}{activity_symbol}{secure_input_symbol}{fmt.fg.tab}{tab.last_focused_progress_percent}{title}"

This is the template that renders your tab title ✨ The default one just renders the title with the optional bell and activity symbols. If you wanna throw the tab-index in there too, do something like {index}:{title} — super useful if you have shortcuts mapped for goto_tab N iykyk. And if you prefer your index as a superscript, use {sup.index} 👑

Here's all the data you get to play with:

title — the current tab title.
index — the tab index, usable with goto_tab N <#action-goto_tab> shortcuts.
layout_name — the current layout name.
session_name — the name of the kitty session file this tab was created from, if any.
active_session_name — the name of the kitty session file the active window in this tab was created from, if any.
num_windows — how many windows are in the tab.
num_window_groups — how many window groups are in the tab (a window group is a window plus all of its overlay windows, fyi).
secure_input_symbol — a key symbol when secure input is enabled on macOS and the tab is the active tab. Empty otherwise.
tab.active_wd — the working directory of the currently active window in the tab (expensive, requires syscall 🫠). Use tab.active_oldest_wd if you want the directory of the oldest foreground process instead of the newest.
tab.active_exe — the name of the executable running in the foreground of the currently active window in the tab (also expensive, also requires a syscall). Use tab.active_oldest_exe for the oldest foreground process.
max_title_length — the maximum title length available.
keyboard_mode — the name of the current keyboard mode <#modal-mappings>, or the empty string if no keyboard mode is active.
tab.last_focused_progress_percent — if a command running in a window reports progress for a task, this shows that progress as a percentage from the most recently focused window in the tab. Empty string if no progress is reported.
tab.progress_percent — if a command running in a window reports progress for a task, this shows the progress as a percentage from all windows in the tab, averaged. Empty string if no progress is reported.
tab.children_mem_usage — the current memory usage of all child processes of the tab and their descendants.
custom — this calls a function named draw_title(data) from the file tab_bar.py sitting in the kitty config directory 🧚 The function gets passed a dictionary of data — the same data you can use in this template — and it can do arbitrarily complex processing and return a string. For example: tab_title_template "{custom}" uses the output of the function as the tab title. Any print statements in draw_title() print to the STDOUT of the kitty process, which is great for debugging 🙈

Heads up: formatting is done by Python's string formatting machinery, so you can totally do stuff like {layout_name[:2].upper()} to show only the first two letters of the layout name, upper-cased 💅

If you wanna style the text, styling directives are your bestie. For example: {fmt.fg.red}red{fmt.fg.tab}normal{fmt.bg._00FF00}greenbg{fmt.bg.tab}. Same deal for bold and italic: {fmt.bold}bold{fmt.nobold}normal{fmt.italic}italic{fmt.noitalic}. The 256 eight terminal colors? Use fmt.fg.color0 through fmt.fg.color255 🌈

And ngl, for backward compatibility: if {bell_symbol} or {activity_symbol} aren't present in your template, they get prepended to it. So don't be surprised 👀

`active_tab_title_template`

active_tab_title_template none

This is the template used for active tabs specifically. If you don't specify one, it falls back to tab_title_template. Easy 💖

`active_tab_foreground`, `active_tab_background`, `active_tab_font_style`, `inactive_tab_foreground`, `inactive_tab_background`, `inactive_tab_font_style`

active_tab_foreground   #000
active_tab_background   #eee
active_tab_font_style   bold-italic
inactive_tab_foreground #444
inactive_tab_background #999
inactive_tab_font_style normal

These are the tab bar colors and styles 🎀 Your whole active-vs-inactive tab moment lives here.

`tab_bar_background`

tab_bar_background none

Background color for the tab bar. Defaults to using the terminal background color. Iconic behavior, honestly ✨

`tab_bar_margin_color`

tab_bar_margin_color none

Color for the tab bar margin area. Defaults to using the terminal background color for margins above and below the tab bar. For the side margins, the default color is chosen to match the background color of the neighboring tab — unless the window is translucent, in which case the default background gets used because it just looks better that way 💅

🎨 the color options, part one 🎨

foreground, background

foreground #dddddd
background #000000

These are the two, bestie — the foreground and background colors. The whole vibe of your terminal hinges on them. 💅

background_opacity

background_opacity 1.0

The opacity of the terminal background color. It's a number between zero and one, where one is fully opaque and zero is fully transparent. ✨ This only works if your OS supports it (like, for instance, when you're using a compositor under X11). Heads up: it only sets the background color's opacity in cells that have the same background color as the default terminal background, so stuff like the status bar in vim, powerline prompts, etc. still looks good. But that also means if you use a color theme with a background color in your editor, it will not be rendered as transparent. Instead you should change the default background color in your kitty config and not use a background color in the editor color scheme. Or use the escape codes to set the terminal's default colors in a shell script that launches your editor. See also transparent_background_colors.

Be aware that using a value less than 1.0 is a (possibly significant) performance hit. 😭 When using a low value for this setting, it's desirable that you set the background color to a color that matches the general color of the desktop background, for best text rendering.

Also note that this setting does not apply to the background_image, if any. The background image can itself have transparency via its alpha channel if you want, and that will be respected. 🫶

If you want to dynamically change transparency of windows, set dynamic_background_opacity to yes (this is off by default as it has a performance cost). Changing this option when reloading the config will only work if dynamic_background_opacity was enabled in the original config.

background_blur

background_blur 0

Set this to a positive value to enable background blur (that's the blurring of the visuals behind a transparent window) on platforms that support it. It only takes effect when background_opacity is less than one. On macOS, this will also control the blur radius (amount of blurring). Setting it too high will cause severe performance issues and/or rendering artifacts — usually, values up to 64 work well. Note that this might cause performance issues depending on how the platform implements it, so use with care. Currently supported on macOS and Wayland, when the compositor supports the background blur extension. 🌸

transparent_background_colors — a space separated list of upto 7 colors, with opacity. When the background color of a cell matches one of these colors, it's rendered semi-transparent using the specified opacity.

Super useful in more complex UIs like editors, where you could want more than a single background color rendered as transparent — for instance, for a cursor highlight line background or a highlighted block. Terminal applications can set this color using The kitty color control escape code. 💖

The syntax for specifying colors is: color@opacity, where the @opacity part is optional. When unspecified, the value of background_opacity is used. For example:

transparent_background_colors red@0.5 #00ff00@0.3

Note that you must also set background_opacity to something less than 1 for this setting to work properly.

dynamic_background_opacity

dynamic_background_opacity no

Allow changing of the background_opacity dynamically, using either keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+shift+a>m and ctrl+shift+a>l) or the remote control facility. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. 🙈

background_image

background_image none

A glob pattern matching one or more background images. Must be in PNG/JPEG/WEBP/TIFF/GIF/BMP format. The first one is used as the default image. Multiple images are stored in GPU VRAM (on demand) so that transitioning between them is instant. ⚡ In order to move between images in the list of background images, use the remote control command set-background-image — see kitten set-background-image --help for details. You can map the command to a key like this:

map f1 remote_control set-background-image +1

Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark, this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect.

background_image_layout

background_image_layout tiled

Whether to tile, scale or clamp the background image. The value can be one of tiled, mirror-tiled, scaled, clamped, centered or cscaled. The scaled and cscaled values scale the image to the window size, with cscaled preserving the image aspect ratio. 👑 Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark, this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect.

background_image_linear

background_image_linear no

When the background image is scaled, whether linear interpolation should be used. Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark, this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect.

background_tint

background_tint 0.0

How much to tint the background image by the background color. This option makes it easier to read the text. Tinting is done using the current background color for each window. This option applies only if background_image is set. 🦋 Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark, this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect.

background_tint_gaps

background_tint_gaps 1.0

How much to tint the background image at the window gaps by the background color, after applying background_tint. Since this is multiplicative with background_tint, you can use it to lighten the tint over the window gaps for a separated look. ✨ Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark, this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect.

dim_opacity

dim_opacity 0.4

How much to dim text that has the DIM/FAINT attribute set. One means no dimming at all and zero means fully dimmed (i.e. invisible). 💀

selection_foreground, selection_background

selection_foreground #000000
selection_background #fffacd

The foreground and background colors for text selected with the mouse. 🖱️ Setting both of these to none will cause a "reverse video" effect for selections, where the selection will be the cell text color and the text will become the cell background color. Setting only selection_foreground to none will cause the foreground color to be used unchanged. Note that these colors can be overridden by the program running in the terminal.

palette_generate

palette_generate fixed

How to fill in any colors that are unset (set to none) in the 256-color palette. By default, for legacy compatibility, these are set to the fixed set of values used by historic terminals.

Instead, you can have kitty generate them based on the first 16 colors — there's a gist from jake-stewart all about it: gist.github.com/jake-stewart/0a8ea46159a7da2c808e5be2177e1783.

The value semantic means use an algorithm that gives good readability in light themes but changes the meaning of some colors compared to the fixed color encoding. The value legacy gives worse readability in light themes but less deviation from the fixed color encoding. 🧚

🌈 The color table 🌈

The 256 terminal colors. There are 8 basic colors, and each color has a dull and a bright version — that's for the first 16 colors. You can set the remaining 240 colors as color16 to color255. 👑

color0, color8

color0 #000000
color8 #767676

black 🖤

color1, color9

color1 #cc0403
color9 #f2201f

red ❤️

color2, color10

color2  #19cb00
color10 #23fd00

green 💚

color3, color11

color3  #cecb00
color11 #fffd00

yellow 💛

color4, color12

color4  #0d73cc
color12 #1a8fff

blue 💙

color5, color13

color5  #cb1ed1
color13 #fd28ff

magenta 💜

color6, color14

color6  #0dcdcd
color14 #14ffff

cyan 🩵

color7, color15

color7  #dddddd
color15 #ffffff

white 🤍

mark1_foreground

mark1_foreground black

Color for marks of type 1

mark1_background

mark1_background #98d3cb

Color for marks of type 1 (light steel blue) 🩵

mark2_foreground

mark2_foreground black

Color for marks of type 2

mark2_background

mark2_background #f2dcd3

Color for marks of type 2 (beige) 🍓

mark3_foreground

mark3_foreground black

Color for marks of type 3

mark3_background

mark3_background #f274bc

Color for marks of type 3 (violet) 💜

💫 Wide gamut color formats 💫

kitty supports modern wide gamut color formats including OKLCH and CIE LAB for precise color specification. These formats can be used anywhere a color value is accepted (foreground, background, color0-color255, etc.). No cap, it's giving precision. 🔥

For detailed documentation on wide gamut color formats, syntax, and examples, see Wide gamut color formats.

🔧 Advanced 🔧

shell

shell .

The shell program to execute. The default value of . means to use the value of the SHELL environment variable, or if that's unset, whatever shell is set as the default shell for the current user. Note that on macOS, if you change this, you might need to add --login and --interactive to ensure that the shell starts in interactive mode and reads its startup rc files. Environment variables are expanded in this setting. 🐚

editor

editor .

The terminal based text editor (such as vim or nano) to use when editing the kitty config file or similar tasks. ✍️

The default value of . means to use the environment variables VISUAL and EDITOR, in that order. If these variables aren't set, kitty will run your shell ($SHELL -l -i -c env) to see if your shell startup rc files set VISUAL or EDITOR. If that doesn't work, kitty will cycle through various known editors (vim, emacs, etc.) and take the first one that exists on your system.

close_on_child_death

close_on_child_death no

Close the window when the child process (usually the shell) exits? With the default value no, the terminal stays open when the child exits as long as there are still other processes outputting to the terminal (for example disowned or backgrounded processes). Set it to yes and the window closes as soon as the child process exits. Important caution: yes means any background processes still using the terminal can fail silently because their stdout/stderr/stdin no longer work. 😭

remote_control_password — Lets other programs control kitty using passwords. You can specify this multiple times to add multiple passwords. If no passwords are present, kitty will ask the user for permission if a program tries to use remote control with a password. A password can also optionally be associated with a set of allowed remote control actions. For example:

remote_control_password "my passphrase" get-colors set-colors focus-window focus-tab

Only the specified actions will be allowed when using this password. Glob patterns can be used too, for example:

remote_control_password "my passphrase" set-tab-* resize-*

To get a list of available actions, run:

kitten @ --help

A set of actions to be allowed when no password is sent can be specified by using an empty password. For example:

remote_control_password "" *-colors

Finally, the path to a python module can be specified that provides a function is_cmd_allowed that is used to check every remote control command. For example:

remote_control_password "my passphrase" my_rc_command_checker.py

Relative paths are resolved from the kitty configuration directory. See Customizing authorization with your own program for details.

allow_remote_control — The synopsis is literally:

allow_remote_control no

Allow other programs to control kitty. If you turn this on, other programs can control all aspects of kitty, including sending text to kitty windows, opening new windows, closing windows, reading the content of windows, etc. Note that this even works over SSH connections. The default setting of no prevents any form of remote control. The meaning of the various values are:

password — Remote control requests received over both the TTY device and the socket are confirmed based on passwords, see remote_control_password.
socket-only — Remote control requests received over a socket are accepted unconditionally. Requests received over the TTY are denied. See listen_on.
socket — Remote control requests received over a socket are accepted unconditionally. Requests received over the TTY are confirmed based on password.
no — Remote control is completely disabled.
yes — Remote control requests are always accepted.

listen_on — The synopsis is:

listen_on none

Listen to the specified socket for remote control connections. Note that this will apply to all kitty instances. It can be overridden by the kitty --listen-on command line option. For UNIX sockets, such as unix:${TEMP}/mykitty or unix:@mykitty (on Linux). Environment variables are expanded and relative paths are resolved with respect to the temporary directory. If {kitty_pid} is present, then it is replaced by the PID of the kitty process, otherwise the PID of the kitty process is appended to the value, with a hyphen. For TCP sockets such as tcp:localhost:0 a random port is always used even if a non-zero port number is specified. See the help for kitty --listen-on for more details. Note that this will be ignored unless allow_remote_control is set to either: yes, socket or socket-only. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported.

env — Specify the environment variables to be set in all child processes. Using the name with an equal sign (e.g. env VAR=) will set it to the empty string. Specifying only the name (e.g. env VAR) will remove the variable from the child process' environment. Note that environment variables are expanded recursively, for example:

env VAR1=a
env VAR2=${HOME}/${VAR1}/b

The value of VAR2 will be <path to home directory>/a/b.

Use the special value read_from_shell to have kitty read the specified variables from your login shell configuration. Useful if your shell startup files setup a bunch of environment variables that you want available to kitty and in kitty session files. Each variable name is treated as a glob pattern to match. For example: env read_from_shell=PATH LANG LC_* XDG_* EDITOR VISUAL. Note that these variables are only read after the configuration is fully processed, thus they are not available for recursive expansion and they will override any variables set by other env directives.

custom_shaders — Space separated list of custom shader pipeline names. If multiple names are specified they are loaded in order and concatenated. You can use shell syntax to quote or escape space characters. The exact loading algorithm is described in How shaders are loaded. See Custom Shaders for details on how custom shaders work. For a quick demo, try setting this to inside-the-matrix.
filter_notification — Specify rules to filter out notifications sent by applications running in kitty. Can be specified multiple times to create multiple filter rules. A rule specification is of the form field:regexp. A filter rule can match on any of the fields: title, body, app, type. The special value of all filters out all notifications. Rules can be combined using Boolean operators. Some examples:

filter_notification title:hello or body:"abc.*def"
# filter out notification from vim except for ones about updates, (?i)
# makes matching case insensitive.
filter_notification app:"[ng]?vim" and not body:"(?i)update"
# filter out all notifications
filter_notification all

The field app is the name of the application sending the notification and type is the type of the notification. Not all applications will send these fields, so you can also match on the title and body of the notification text. More sophisticated programmatic filtering and custom actions on notifications can be done by creating a notifications.py file in the kitty config directory (~/.config/kitty). An annotated sample is available at https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/blob/master/docs/notifications.py.

watcher — Path to python file which will be loaded for Watching launched windows. Can be specified more than once to load multiple watchers. The watchers will be added to every kitty window. Relative paths are resolved relative to the kitty config directory. Note that reloading the config will only affect windows created after the reload.
exe_search_path — Control where kitty finds the programs to run. The default search order is: First search the system wide PATH, then ~/.local/bin and ~/bin. If still not found, the PATH defined in the login shell after sourcing all its startup files is tried. Finally, if present, the PATH specified by the env option is tried.

This option allows you to prepend, append, or remove paths from this search order. It can be specified multiple times for multiple paths. A simple path will be prepended to the search order. A path that starts with the + sign will be appended to the search order, after ~/bin above. A path that starts with the - sign will be removed from the entire search order. For example:

exe_search_path /some/prepended/path
exe_search_path +/some/appended/path
exe_search_path -/some/excluded/path

update_check_interval — The synopsis is:

update_check_interval 24

The interval to periodically check if an update to kitty is available (in hours). If an update is found, a system notification is displayed informing you of the available update. The default is to check every 24 hours, set to zero to disable. Update checking is only done by the official binary builds. Distro packages or source builds do not do update checking. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported.

auto_reload_config — The synopsis is:

auto_reload_config 0.1

Automatically reload configuration files when they are changed. The setting is the number of seconds to wait before reloading the config files. This allows multiple changes to be debounced. Use a negative value to disable automatic reload. You can manually reload with ctrl+shift+f5. Note that automatic reload works only if the kitty.conf already exists when kitty is started. Changes to this setting by reloading configuration are ignored.

startup_session — The synopsis is:

startup_session none

Path to a session file to use for all kitty instances. Can be overridden by using the kitty --session=none command line option for individual instances. See Sessions in the kitty documentation for details. Note that relative paths are interpreted with respect to the kitty config directory. Environment variables in the path are expanded. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. Note that if kitty is invoked with command line arguments specifying a command to run, this option is ignored.

clipboard_control — The synopsis is:

clipboard_control write-clipboard write-primary read-clipboard-ask read-primary-ask

Allow programs running in kitty to read and write from the clipboard. You can control exactly which actions are allowed. The possible actions are: write-clipboard, read-clipboard, write-primary, read-primary, read-clipboard-ask, read-primary-ask. The default is to allow writing to the clipboard and primary selection and to ask for permission when a program tries to read from the clipboard. Note that disabling the read confirmation is a security risk as it means that any program, even the ones running on a remote server via SSH can read your clipboard. See also clipboard_max_size.

clipboard_max_size — The synopsis is:

clipboard_max_size 512

The maximum size (in MB) of data from programs running in kitty that will be stored for writing to the system clipboard. A value of zero means no size limit is applied. Programs using the clipboard protocol that try to write more data than this are sent an EFBIG error and their data is discarded. See also clipboard_control.

file_transfer_confirmation_bypass — The password that can be supplied to the file transfer kitten to skip the transfer confirmation prompt. This should only be used when initiating transfers from trusted computers, over trusted networks or encrypted transports, as it allows any programs running on the remote machine to read/write to the local filesystem, without permission.
allow_hyperlinks — The synopsis is:

allow_hyperlinks yes

Okay so, hyperlink escape sequences (OSC 8)? Those get processed. If it's set to disabled, OSC 8 escape sequences are just ignored, periodt. Otherwise they become clickable links — you can click them with the mouse, or open them with the hints kitten. And the special value ask means kitty will literally ask you before opening the link when you click it. 💅

shell_integration — default: shell_integration enabled

Turns on shell integration for the supported shells. This is the glow-up that unlocks features like jumping back to previous prompts, browsing the output of the previous command in a pager, etc. on supported shells. Set it to disabled to turn shell integration off completely. You can also disable individual features by setting it to a space separated list of these values: no-rc, no-cursor, no-title, no-cwd, no-prompt-mark, no-complete, no-sudo. See the Shell integration section for the details. 🐚

allow_cloning — default: allow_cloning ask

Controls whether programs running in the terminal can request that new windows be created. The canonical example here is clone-in-kitty. By default, kitty will ask for permission for each clone request. Allowing cloning unconditionally gives programs running in the terminal (including over SSH) permission to execute arbitrary code, as the user who is running the terminal, on the computer that the terminal is running on. 😭 So like… think before you set that one, bestie.

clone_source_strategies — default: clone_source_strategies venv,conda,env_var,path

Controls what shell code gets sourced when running clone-in-kitty in the newly cloned window. The supported strategies are:

venv — source the file $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin/activate. This is what the Python stdlib venv module uses, and it lets kitty clone venvs automatically. 🐍
conda — run conda activate $CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV. This supports the virtual environments created by conda.
env_var — execute the contents of the environment variable KITTY_CLONE_SOURCE_CODE with eval.
path — source the file pointed to by the environment variable KITTY_CLONE_SOURCE_PATH.

This option must be a comma separated list of the above values. Only the first valid match, in the order specified, is sourced. ✨

notify_on_cmd_finish — default: notify_on_cmd_finish never

Show a desktop notification when a long-running command finishes (this needs shell_integration). The possible values are:

never — never send a notification. Ever. Not once. 🙈
unfocused — only send a notification when the window does not have keyboard focus.
invisible — only send a notification when the window both is unfocused and not visible to the user, for example because it is in an inactive tab, or its OS window is not currently visible (on platforms that support OS window visibility querying, this considers an OS Window visible iff it is active).
always — always send a notification, regardless of window state. Main character energy, no chill. 👑

There are two optional arguments:

First, the minimum duration for what is considered a long running command. The default is 5 seconds. Specify a second argument to set the duration. For example: invisible 15.

Do not set the value too small, otherwise a command that launches a new OS Window and exits will spam a notification. 💀

Second, the action to perform. The default is notify. The possible values are:

notify — send a desktop notification. The subsequent arguments are optional and specify when the notification is automatically cleared. The set of possible events when the notification is cleared are: focus and next. focus means that when the notification policy is unfocused or invisible the notification is automatically cleared when the window regains focus. The value of next means that the previous notification is cleared when the next notification is shown. The default when no arguments are specified is: focus next.
bell — ring the terminal bell. 🔔
notify-bell — send a desktop notification and ring the terminal bell. The arguments are the same as for notify.
command — run a custom command. All subsequent arguments are the cmdline to run.

Some more examples:

# Send a notification when a command takes more than 5 seconds in an unfocused window
notify_on_cmd_finish unfocused
# Send a notification when a command takes more than 10 seconds in a invisible window
notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 10.0
# Ring a bell when a command takes more than 10 seconds in a invisible window
notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 10.0 bell
# Run 'notify-send' when a command takes more than 10 seconds in a invisible window
# Here %c is replaced by the current command line and %s by the job exit code
notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 10.0 command notify-send "job finished with status: %s" %c
# Do not clear previous notification when next command finishes or window regains focus
notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 5.0 notify

term — default: term xterm-kitty

The value of the TERM environment variable to set. Changing this can break many terminal programs — only change it if you know what you are doing, not because you read some advice on "Stack Overflow" to change it. 🙄 The TERM variable is what various programs use to get information about the capabilities and behavior of the terminal. If you change it, depending on what programs you run, and how different the terminal you are changing it to is, various things — from key-presses, to colors, to various advanced features — may not work. Changing this option by reloading the config will only affect newly created windows.

terminfo_type — default: terminfo_type path

The value of the TERMINFO environment variable to set. This variable is used by programs running in the terminal to search for terminfo databases. The default value of path causes kitty to set it to a filesystem location containing the kitty terminfo database. A value of direct means put the entire database into the env var directly — which can be useful when connecting to containers, for example. But note that not all software supports this. A value of none means do not touch the variable at all. 🫶

forward_stdio — default: forward_stdio no

Forward STDOUT and STDERR of the kitty process to child processes. This is useful for debugging, since it lets child processes print to kitty's STDOUT directly. For example, echo hello world >&$KITTY_STDIO_FORWARDED in a shell will print to the parent kitty's STDOUT. It sets the KITTY_STDIO_FORWARDED=fdnum environment variable so child processes know about the forwarding. Note that on macOS this prevents the shell from being run via the login utility, so getlogin() will not work in programs run in this session.

menu_map — specify entries for various menus in kitty. Currently only the global menubar on macOS is supported. For example:

menu_map global "Actions::Launch something special" launch --hold --type=os-window sh -c "echo hello world"

This will create a menu entry named "Launch something special" in an "Actions" menu in the macOS global menubar. Sub-menus can be created by adding more levels separated by the :: characters. 🌈

🌍 Os specific tweaks 🌍

Okay bestie, these next ones are all about making kitty play nice with your specific operating system. Deep breaths, there's a lot, but it's all vibes and flags, iykyk. 💅

wayland_titlebar_color — the color of the kitty window's titlebar on Wayland systems that do client side window decorations, like GNOME. Default is system, which means "just use the default system colors, don't look at me." A value of background means "use the background color of whatever kitty window is currently active," and finally you can throw in an arbitrary color, like #12af59 or red. Slay.

wayland_titlebar_color system

macos_titlebar_color — same energy, but for the kitty window's titlebar on macOS. Default system uses the default system color, and light or dark can also be used to set it explicitly. A value of background uses the background color of the currently active window, and finally an arbitrary color like #12af59 or red works too.

macos_titlebar_color system

Heads up 🫶: when you're using "Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark," this option gets overridden by the color scheme file — so it has to be set inside that file to actually take effect. No cap.

macos_option_as_alt — use the Option key as an Alt key on macOS. Default is no. With it set to no, kitty uses the macOS native Option+Key behavior to enter Unicode characters. That will break any Alt+Key keyboard shortcuts in your terminal programs (😭), but hey, you get the macOS Unicode input technique. The values are: left, right or both to use only the left, right or both Option keys as Alt, instead. Note that kitty itself always treats Option the same as Alt — which means you cannot use this option to configure different kitty shortcuts for Option+Key vs. Alt+Key. Also, any kitty shortcuts using Option/Alt+Key will take priority, so those key presses will never be passed to terminal programs running inside kitty. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported, fr fr.

macos_option_as_alt no

macos_hide_from_tasks — hide the kitty window from running tasks on macOS (that's ⌘+Tab and the Dock, bestie). Default no. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported.

macos_hide_from_tasks no

macos_quit_when_last_window_closed — have kitty quit when all the top-level windows are closed on macOS. Default no. By default, kitty stays running even with zero open windows, because that's the expected behavior on macOS. Main character energy, honestly.

macos_quit_when_last_window_closed no

macos_window_resizable — default yes. Disable this if you want kitty top-level OS windows to not be resizable on macOS. Locked in place. 🔒

macos_window_resizable yes

macos_thicken_font — draw an extra border around the font with the given width, to bump up legibility at small font sizes on macOS. Default 0. For example, a value of 0.75 gives rendering that looks similar to sub-pixel antialiasing at common font sizes. Note that in modern kitty this option is obsolete (although still supported), so consider using text_composition_strategy instead. ✨

macos_thicken_font 0

macos_traditional_fullscreen — use the macOS traditional full-screen transition, which is faster but less pretty. Default no. Speed vs. aesthetics, pick your fighter. 💀

macos_traditional_fullscreen no

macos_fullscreen_ignore_safe_area_insets — when using macos_traditional_fullscreen, ignore the safe area insets on displays such as MacBook screens with a notch. This lets kitty use the full display frame instead of leaving space for the notch area. Default no. Notch who? 🦋

macos_fullscreen_ignore_safe_area_insets no

macos_use_physical_screen_frame — use the physical screen frame instead of the visible frame when placing macOS desktop panels, such as those created by kitty +kitten panel. This lets panels draw in areas normally reserved for the native menu bar or the Dock. Default no. See also macos_ns_window_layer.

macos_use_physical_screen_frame no

macos_ns_window_layer — set the macOS NSWindow level for newly created panel OS windows, such as with the panel kitten. Default is unset, which leaves normal level handling unchanged. Values can be integer window levels, AppKit/CoreGraphics window-level constant names, or simple arithmetic expressions combining them with integers. For example: NSFloatingWindowLevel, kCGBackstopMenuLevel, NSPopUpMenuWindowLevel - 1. See also macos_use_physical_screen_frame.

macos_ns_window_layer unset

macos_show_window_title_in — control where the window title is displayed on macOS. Default all. A value of window shows the title of the currently active window at the top of the macOS window. A value of menubar shows the title of the currently active window in the macOS global menu bar, making use of otherwise wasted space (iconic, honestly). A value of all shows it in both places, and none hides the title entirely. See macos_menubar_title_max_length for how to control the length of the title in the menu bar. Note that when displaying the title in the menubar it gets prefixed by :: as a separator, and that cannot be changed. 🎀

macos_show_window_title_in all

macos_menubar_title_max_length — the maximum number of characters from the window title to show in the macOS global menu bar. Default 0. Values less than one mean there's no maximum limit at all. Go long, bestie. 🌈

macos_menubar_title_max_length 0

macos_custom_beam_cursor — use a custom mouse cursor for macOS that's easier to see on both light and dark backgrounds. Default no. Nowadays the default macOS cursor already comes with a white border, so this is a little extra. WARNING: this might make your mouse cursor invisible on dual GPU machines. 😭 Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported.

macos_custom_beam_cursor no

macos_colorspace — the colorspace in which to interpret terminal colors. Default srgb makes colors match those seen in web browsers. The value default uses whatever the native colorspace of the display is. The value displayp3 uses Apple's special snowflake display P3 color space, which results in over saturated (brighter) colors with some color shift. Reloading configuration will only change this value for newly created OS windows.

macos_colorspace srgb

linux_display_server — choose between Wayland and X11 backends. Default auto picks an appropriate backend based on the system state automatically. Set it to x11 or wayland to force the choice. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported.

linux_display_server auto

wayland_enable_ime — enable Input Method Extension on Wayland. Default yes. This is typically used for inputting text in East Asian languages. However, its implementation in Wayland is often buggy and introduces latency into the input loop, so disable this if you know you don't need it. 💀 Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported — it will not have any effect.

wayland_enable_ime yes

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts ⌨️

Okay this is the fun part, bestie. 🎉 Keys are identified simply by their lowercase Unicode characters — for example a for the A key, [ for the left square bracket key, etc. For functional keys, such as Enter or Escape, the names live in the Functional key definitions. For modifier keys, the names are ctrl (control, ⌃), shift (⇧), alt (opt, option, ⌥), and super (cmd, command, ⌘).

Simple shortcut mapping is done with the map directive. For full details on advanced mapping — including modal and per-application maps — see "Making your keyboard dance". Some quick examples to illustrate common tasks:

# unmap a keyboard shortcut, passing it to the program running in kitty
map kitty_mod+space
# completely ignore a keyboard event
map ctrl+alt+f1 discard_event
# combine multiple actions
map kitty_mod+e combine : new_window : next_layout
# multi-key shortcuts
map ctrl+x>ctrl+y>z action

For non-Latin keyboard layouts (Russian, Arabic, etc.), the --allow-fallback option controls physical key fallback. The values are: shifted (default — shifted key fallback), ascii (alternate key / physical position fallback, only for non-ASCII keys), none (disable all fallback), or a comma-separated combination. All default shortcuts use --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii:

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii kitty_mod+c copy_to_clipboard

You can browse and trigger these actions by pressing ctrl+shift+f3 to run the command palette. The full list of actions that can be mapped to key presses is available here. Obsessed with this feature ngl. 🫶

kitty_mod — special modifier key alias for default shortcuts. Default ctrl+shift. You can change the value of this option to alter all default shortcuts that use kitty_mod. One little change, big ripple effects. ✨

kitty_mod ctrl+shift

remap_modifiers — remap modifiers, making one modifier act as another. The syntax is:

remap_modifiers <from>:<to> <from>:<to> ...

for example remap_modifiers ctrl:super makes every Ctrl+key press arrive as Super+key. Only shift, alt, ctrl, super, hyper and meta can be named. The source must be exactly one modifier; the destination may name more than one, in which case holding the source is indistinguishable from holding all of them. 🌀

To swap two modifiers, specify remap rules for both — for example, to swap ctrl and super:

remap_modifiers ctrl:super super:ctrl

Ordering among remap_modifiers items matters only in that the last item for a given source wins. Periodt.

The remapping happens before anything else looks at the event, so it's application wide: kitty's own keyboard shortcuts, kitty_mod, mouse_map and the keys sent to the program running in the terminal all see the remapped modifier. Every mapping in kitty.conf is therefore written in terms of the modifier a key becomes, not the one printed on the keycap — including the built-in shortcuts, so remap_modifiers ctrl super moves every default ctrl+shift+… binding onto the physical Super key unless you also change kitty_mod. No cap, that's a whole thing.

A modifier key's own press and release are remapped too, so a program using the full keyboard protocol doesn't see, for example, ctrl reported together with the Hyper key. That is only possible when the destination is a single modifier; with a multi-modifier destination the key itself keeps its original identity.

On macOS, a menu bar accelerator is shown on the physical key that now produces the modifier it was declared with. Where no such key exists — because more than one modifier maps onto it, or because it maps to hyper or meta, which the macOS menu bar cannot express — the accelerator is left off the menu rather than shown incorrectly. The shortcut itself continues to work, so don't panic. 💅

On macOS the remap is applied before the key event reaches the text input system, so Option — which produces text natively unless macos_option_as_alt is set — behaves consistently with the modifiers it reports. A destination of hyper or meta cannot be expressed in Cocoa's modifier flags, so such a remap is left unapplied there rather than silently losing the modifier. 🙈

Like, quick heads up before you remap anything on Wayland — kitty only detects the hyper and meta modifiers when KITTY_WAYLAND_DETECT_MODIFIERS is set in the environment. Without it those two never show up on key events at all, so remapping to or from them literally has nothing to act on there. 💀

This is useful for keyboard layouts that move Control somewhere more comfortable — for example placing a Hyper key on Caps Lock to use for readline and TUI editing, while leaving the physical Control key free for GUI-style shortcuts. Use kitty --debug-input to see the remapping applied to each event. (this is the move, ngl — you can literally watch it happen ✨)

🎀 `clear_all_shortcuts`

clear_all_shortcuts no

Remove all shortcut definitions up to this point. Useful, for instance, to remove the default shortcuts. (nuclear option, bestie — but sometimes you just want a clean slate 💅)

🎀 `map_timeout`

map_timeout 0.0

The default timeout (in seconds) for multi-key mappings and modal keyboard modes. If you press the first key(s) of a multi-key mapping and don't press the next key within this timeout, the mapping is cancelled and the mode is exited. A value of zero disables the timeout. This can be overridden for specific modes using the --timeout option when creating a keyboard mode with --new-mode. For example:

# 2 second timeout for all mappings
map_timeout 2.0

# This mode will have a 5 second timeout (overrides the global 2 second timeout)
map --new-mode resize --timeout 5.0 kitty_mod+r

🎀 `action_alias`

Has no default values. Example values are shown below:

action_alias launch_tab launch --type=tab --cwd=current

Define action aliases to avoid repeating the same options in multiple mappings. Aliases can be defined for any action and will be expanded recursively. For example, the above alias allows you to create mappings to launch a new tab in the current working directory without duplication:

map f1 launch_tab vim
map f2 launch_tab emacs

Similarly, to alias kitten invocation:

action_alias hints kitten hints --hints-offset=0

🎀 `kitten_alias`

Has no default values. Example values are shown below:

kitten_alias hints hints --hints-offset=0

Like action_alias above, but specifically for kittens. Generally, prefer to use action_alias. This option is a legacy version, present for backwards compatibility. It causes all invocations of the aliased kitten to be substituted. So the example above will cause all invocations of the hints kitten to have the --hints-offset=0 option applied. 🐱

🌸 Clipboard

Copy to clipboard

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+c copy_to_clipboard

There is also a copy_or_interrupt action that can be optionally mapped to Ctrl+C. It will copy only if there is a selection and send an interrupt otherwise. Similarly, copy_and_clear_or_interrupt will copy and clear the selection or send an interrupt if there is no selection. The copy_or_noop action will copy if there is a selection and pass the key through to the application running in the terminal if there is no selection. (so smart, fr fr — it just knows what you meant 🫶)

Copy to clipboard or pass through

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+c copy_or_noop 🍎

Paste from clipboard

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+v paste_from_clipboard
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+v paste_from_clipboard 🍎

Paste from selection

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+s paste_from_selection
map shift+insert paste_from_selection

Pass selection to program

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+o pass_selection_to_program

You can also pass the contents of the current selection to any program with pass_selection_to_program. By default, the system's open program is used, but you can specify your own, the selection will be passed as a command line argument to the program. For example:

map kitty_mod+o pass_selection_to_program firefox

You can pass the current selection to a terminal program running in a new kitty window, by using the @selection placeholder:

map kitty_mod+y new_window less @selection

🦋 Scrolling

Scroll line up

map ctrl+shift+up scroll_line_up smooth
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+k scroll_line_up smooth
map opt+cmd+page_up scroll_line_up smooth 🍎
map cmd+up scroll_line_up smooth 🍎

Scroll line down

map ctrl+shift+down scroll_line_down smooth
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+j scroll_line_down smooth
map opt+cmd+page_down scroll_line_down smooth 🍎
map cmd+down scroll_line_down smooth 🍎

Scroll page up

map ctrl+shift+page_up scroll_page_up
map cmd+page_up scroll_page_up 🍎

Scroll page down

map ctrl+shift+page_down scroll_page_down
map cmd+page_down scroll_page_down 🍎

Scroll to top

map ctrl+shift+home scroll_home
map cmd+home scroll_home 🍎

Scroll to bottom

map ctrl+shift+end scroll_end
map cmd+end scroll_end 🍎

Scroll to previous shell prompt

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+z scroll_to_prompt -1

Use a parameter of 0 for scroll_to_prompt to scroll to the last jumped to or the last clicked position. Requires shell integration to work. (no shell integration = no vibes, sorry 😭)

Scroll to next shell prompt

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+x scroll_to_prompt 1

Browse scrollback buffer in pager

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+h show_scrollback

You can pipe the contents of the current screen and history buffer as STDIN to an arbitrary program using launch --stdin-source. For example, the following opens the scrollback buffer in less in an overlay window:

map f1 launch --stdin-source=@screen_scrollback --stdin-add-formatting --type=overlay less +G -R

For more details on piping screen and buffer contents to external programs, see The launch command. 📚

Browse output of the last shell command in pager

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+g show_last_command_output

You can also define additional shortcuts to get the command output. For example, to get the first command output on screen:

map f1 show_first_command_output_on_screen

To get the command output that was last accessed by a keyboard action or mouse action:

map f1 show_last_visited_command_output

You can pipe the output of the last command run in the shell using the launch action. For example, the following opens the output in less in an overlay window:

map f1 launch --stdin-source=@last_cmd_output --stdin-add-formatting --type=overlay less +G -R

To get the output of the first command on the screen, use @first_cmd_output_on_screen. To get the output of the last jumped to command, use @last_visited_cmd_output.

Requires shell integration to work. 🐚

Search the scrollback within a pager

map ctrl+shift+/ search_scrollback
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+f search_scrollback 🍎

Search for currently selected text in the scrollback using the configured scrollback_pager. Assumes that pressing the / key triggers search mode in the pager. If you want to create a manual mapping with a special pager for this, you can use something like:

map f1 combine : launch <--stdin-source=@screen_scrollback>
--stdin-add-formatting --type=overlay mypager : send_key /

For more sophisticated control, such as using the current selection, use remote_control_script. ✨

👑 Window management

New window

map ctrl+shift+enter new_window
map cmd+enter new_window 🍎

You can open a new kitty window running an arbitrary program, for example:

map kitty_mod+y launch mutt

You can open a new window with the current working directory set to the working directory of the current window using:

map ctrl+alt+enter launch --cwd=current

You can open a new window that is allowed to control kitty via the kitty remote control facility with launch --allow-remote-control. Any programs running in that window will be allowed to control kitty. For example:

map ctrl+enter launch --allow-remote-control some_program

You can open a new window next to the currently active window or as the first window, with:

map ctrl+n launch --location=neighbor
map ctrl+f launch --location=first

For more details, see The launch command.

New OS window

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+n new_os_window
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+n new_os_window 🍎

Works like new_window above, except that it opens a top-level OS window. In particular you can use new_os_window_with_cwd to open a window with the current working directory.

Close window

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+w close_window
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii shift+cmd+d close_window 🍎

Next window

map ctrl+shift+] next_window

Previous window

map ctrl+shift+[ previous_window

Move window forward

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+f move_window_forward

Move window backward

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+b move_window_backward

Move window to top

map ctrl+shift+` move_window_to_top

Start resizing window

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+r start_resizing_window
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+r start_resizing_window 🍎

First window

map ctrl+shift+1 first_window
map cmd+1 first_window 🍎

Second window

map ctrl+shift+2 second_window
map cmd+2 second_window 🍎

Third window

map ctrl+shift+3 third_window
map cmd+3 third_window 🍎

Fourth window

map ctrl+shift+4 fourth_window
map cmd+4 fourth_window 🍎

Fifth window

map ctrl+shift+5 fifth_window
map cmd+5 fifth_window 🍎

Sixth window

map ctrl+shift+6 sixth_window
map cmd+6 sixth_window 🍎

Seventh window

map ctrl+shift+7 seventh_window
map cmd+7 seventh_window 🍎

Eighth window

map ctrl+shift+8 eighth_window
map cmd+8 eighth_window 🍎

Ninth window

map ctrl+shift+9 ninth_window
map cmd+9 ninth_window 🍎

Tenth window

map ctrl+shift+0 tenth_window

Visually select and focus window

map ctrl+shift+f7 focus_visible_window

okay that's the whole window-management buffet and yes, you're gonna want all of them 💖

Display overlay numbers and letters right on top of each window, and the second you hit the key — boom, focus jumps there. But plot twist: if you've only got two windows, kitty doesn't even bother showing the overlay, it just switches straight over. And if you're picky about which characters show up and in what order? That's visual_window_select_characters and it's all yours to customize 💅

Visually swap window with another

map ctrl+shift+f8 swap_with_window

Literally the same energy as focus_visible_window up above, except it swaps the windows instead of just hopping focus over. No cap, it's the glow-up version ✨

Tab management

Next tab

map ctrl+shift+right next_tab
map shift+cmd+] next_tab 🍎
map ctrl+tab next_tab

Previous tab

map ctrl+shift+left previous_tab
map shift+cmd+[ previous_tab 🍎
map ctrl+shift+tab previous_tab

New tab

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+t new_tab
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+t new_tab 🍎

Close tab

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+q close_tab
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+w close_tab 🍎

Close OS window

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii shift+cmd+w close_os_window 🍎

Move tab forward

map ctrl+shift+. move_tab_forward

Move tab backward

map ctrl+shift+, move_tab_backward

Set tab title

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+alt+t set_tab_title
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii shift+cmd+i set_tab_title 🍎

Okay so you can also make shortcuts that jump to a specific tab — 1 is the first tab, 2 is the second, -1 is the tab you were on before this one, -2 is the one active before that one, and so on down the history rabbit hole 🐇. And the bounds are handled for you: any number bigger than how many tabs you actually have just yeets you to the last tab, and any number smaller than however many previously-used tabs exist in history sends you to the oldest one in that history:

map ctrl+alt+1 goto_tab 1
map ctrl+alt+2 goto_tab 2

And just like with new_window earlier, you can pass the name of arbitrary commands to run when you use new_tab and new_tab_with_cwd. Also, if you want the new tab to pop open right next to the current tab instead of getting dumped at the end of the list (main character placement, honestly), do this:

map ctrl+t new_tab !neighbor [optional cmd to run]

Layout management

Next layout

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+l next_layout

You can also build shortcuts that jump straight to specific layouts 🎀

map ctrl+alt+t goto_layout tall
map ctrl+alt+s goto_layout stack

goto_layout with tall or stack — pick your fighter. And to bounce back to whatever layout you were using before:

map ctrl+alt+p last_used_layout

There's also a toggle_layout action, which switches to the named layout — or hops back to the previous layout if you're already sitting in the named one. Which is lowkey perfect for temporarily "zooming" your active window by flipping to the stack layout:

map ctrl+alt+z toggle_layout stack

Font sizes

So this is the good stuff: you can resize fonts across all your top-level kitty OS windows at once, or just the one you're in. Your call, bestie 💖

Increase font size

map ctrl+shift+equal change_font_size all +2.0
map ctrl+shift+plus change_font_size all +2.0
map ctrl+shift+kp_add change_font_size all +2.0
map cmd+plus change_font_size all +2.0 🍎
map cmd+equal change_font_size all +2.0 🍎
map shift+cmd+equal change_font_size all +2.0 🍎

Decrease font size

map ctrl+shift+minus change_font_size all -2.0
map ctrl+shift+kp_subtract change_font_size all -2.0
map cmd+minus change_font_size all -2.0 🍎
map shift+cmd+minus change_font_size all -2.0 🍎

Reset font size

map ctrl+shift+backspace change_font_size all 0
map cmd+0 change_font_size all 0 🍎

Want shortcuts that set one specific font size? Say less:

map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all 10.0

Only want to mess with the current OS window's font size? Respect.

map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size current 10.0

And yes, you can multiply or divide the font size too — math era 🧮:

map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all *2.0
map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all /2.0

Select and act on visible text

This is where the hints kitten does its thing — grab some text on screen and either hand it off to an external program, shove it into the terminal, or copy it to the clipboard. Obsessed, honestly 🫶

Open URL

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+e open_url_with_hints

Opens a URL that's currently visible, all from the keyboard. Whatever program actually opens the URL is set by open_url_with.

Insert selected path

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>f kitten hints --type path --program -

Pick a path/filename and it gets inserted into the terminal. Legit useful — like when you wanna run git commands on a filename that some earlier git command spat out.

Open selected path

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>shift+f kitten hints --type path

Pick a path/filename and it opens with your default open program.

Insert chosen file

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>c kitten choose-files

Choose a file via the choose-files <> kitten and it lands right there in your terminal.

Insert chosen directory

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>d kitten choose-files --mode=dir

Same deal, but for directories — pick one with the choose-files <> kitten and insert it.

Insert selected line

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>l kitten hints --type line --program -

Select a whole line of text and insert it. Chef's kiss for the output of stuff like: ls -1.

Insert selected word

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>w kitten hints --type word --program -

Select words, insert them into the terminal. Simple as.

Insert selected hash

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>h kitten hints --type hash --program -

Selects anything that looks like a hash and inserts it. Super handy with git, which uses SHA1 hashes to identify commits — iykyk 💅

Open the selected file at the selected line

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>n kitten hints --type linenum

Selects something shaped like filename:linenum and opens it in your default editor, jumped straight to that line number. Iconic.

Open the selected hyperlink

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>y kitten hints --type hyperlink

Selects a hyperlink — i.e. a URL that the terminal program marked as such, for example by running ls --hyperlink=auto.

And that's not even the whole menu — the hints kitten has so many more modes of operation you can map to different shortcuts. Full rundown lives in the hints kitten docs 🦋

Miscellaneous

Show documentation

map ctrl+shift+f1 show_kitty_doc overview

Command palette

map ctrl+shift+f3 command_palette

Toggle fullscreen

map ctrl+shift+f11 toggle_fullscreen
map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+cmd+f toggle_fullscreen 🍎

Toggle maximized

map ctrl+shift+f10 toggle_maximized

Toggle macOS secure keyboard entry

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii opt+cmd+s toggle_macos_secure_keyboard_entry 🍎

macOS Cycle through OS Windows

map cmd+` macos_cycle_through_os_windows 🍎

macOS Cycle through OS Windows backwards

map cmd+shift+` macos_cycle_through_os_windows_backwards 🍎

Unicode input

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+u kitten unicode_input
map ctrl+cmd+space kitten unicode_input 🍎

Edit config file

map ctrl+shift+f2 edit_config_file
map cmd+, edit_config_file 🍎

Open the kitty command shell

map ctrl+shift+escape kitty_shell window

Opens the kitty shell in a new window / tab / overlay / os_window so you can drive kitty around with commands. Main character energy fr fr 👑

Increase background opacity

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>m set_background_opacity +0.1

Decrease background opacity

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>l set_background_opacity -0.1

Make background fully opaque

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>1 set_background_opacity 1

Reset background opacity

map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>d set_background_opacity default

Reset the terminal

map ctrl+shift+delete clear_terminal reset active
map opt+cmd+r clear_terminal reset active 🍎

You can absolutely make your own shortcuts to clear/reset the terminal. Like so:

# Reset the terminal
map f1 clear_terminal reset active
# Clear the terminal screen by erasing all contents
map f1 clear_terminal clear active
# Clear the terminal scrollback by erasing it
map f1 clear_terminal scrollback active
# Scroll the contents of the screen into the scrollback
map f1 clear_terminal scroll active
# Clear everything on screen up to the line with the cursor or the start of the current prompt (needs shell integration)
map f1 clear_terminal to_cursor active
# Same as above except cleared lines are moved into scrollback
map f1 clear_terminal to_cursor_scroll active
# Erase the last command and its output (needs shell integration to work)
map f1 clear_terminal last_command active

And if you want to hit all the kitty windows instead of just the current one, swap active for all. Casual global domination 🌈

Some genuinely useful functions you can drop into your shell rc files to do various flavours of clearing in the current window:

clear-only-screen() {
    printf "\e[H\e[2J"
}

clear-screen-and-scrollback() {
    printf "\e[H\e[3J"
}

clear-screen-saving-contents-in-scrollback() {
    printf "\e[H\e[22J"
}

So like — using these escape codes, you can remap Ctrl+L to both scroll the current screen contents into the scrollback buffer and clear the screen, instead of just clearing the screen. For ZSH, in ~/.zshrc, add:

ctrl_l() {
    builtin print -rn -- $'\r\e[0J\e[H\e[22J' >"$TTY"
    builtin zle .reset-prompt
    builtin zle -R
}
zle -N ctrl_l
bindkey '^l' ctrl_l

Alternatively — and this is the lazy-girl route, no shame — you can just add map ctrl+l clear_terminal to_cursor_scroll active to kitty.conf and it works with zero changes to your shell rc files. Small catch though: it only clears up to the prompt, it does not clear any text at the prompt itself 🙈

Clear to start

map cmd+k clear_terminal to_cursor active 🍎

Clear scrollback

map option+cmd+k clear_terminal scrollback active 🍎

Clear the last command

map cmd+l clear_terminal last_command active 🍎

Clear screen

map cmd+ctrl+l clear_terminal to_cursor_scroll active 🍎

Reload kitty.conf

map ctrl+shift+f5 load_config_file
map ctrl+cmd+, load_config_file 🍎

Reload kitty.conf, applying any changes since the last time it was loaded. Basically a little refresh button for your config, bestie ✨

Heads up though: a handful of options cannot be dynamically changed and need a full restart of kitty. And particularly, when you're changing shortcuts for actions that live on the macOS global menu bar, a full restart is needed. No shortcuts, sorry 💅

You can also map a keybinding to load a different config file, like:

map f5 load_config /path/to/alternative/kitty.conf

Note that all options from the original kitty.conf are discarded — in other words, the new configuration replaces the old ones. Clean slate energy 🫶

Debug kitty configuration

map ctrl+shift+f6 debug_config
map opt+cmd+, debug_config 🍎

Shows you details about exactly what configuration kitty is running with plus its host environment. Genuinely so useful for debugging issues 👑

Send arbitrary text on key presses

You can tell kitty to send arbitrary (UTF-8) encoded text to the client program when pressing specified shortcut keys. For example:

map ctrl+alt+a send_text all Special text

This will send Special text when you press the Ctrl+Alt+A key combination 🔥 The text to be sent decodes ANSI C escapes <https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/ANSI_002dC-Quoting.html> so you can use escapes like \e to send control codes or \u21fb to send Unicode characters (or you can just input the Unicode characters directly as UTF-8 text, live your life 💖). You can use kitten show-key to get the key escape codes you want to emulate.

The first argument to send_text is the keyboard modes in which to activate the shortcut. The possible values are normal, application, kitty or a comma separated combination of them. The modes normal and application refer to the DECCKM cursor key mode for terminals, and kitty refers to the kitty extended keyboard protocol. The special value all means all of them 🌈

Some more examples:

# Output a word and move the cursor to the start of the line (like typing and pressing Home)
map ctrl+alt+a send_text normal Word\e[H
map ctrl+alt+a send_text application Word\eOH
# Run a command at a shell prompt (like typing the command and pressing Enter)
map ctrl+alt+a send_text normal,application some command with arguments\r

Open kitty Website

map shift+cmd+/ open_url https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ 🍎

Hide macOS kitty application

map cmd+h hide_macos_app 🍎

Hide macOS other applications

map opt+cmd+h hide_macos_other_apps 🍎

Minimize macOS window

map cmd+m minimize_macos_window 🍎

Quit kitty

map cmd+q quit 🍎

🎀 Sample kitty.conf 🎀

You can edit a fully commented sample kitty.conf by pressing the Ctrl+Shift+F2 shortcut in kitty. This will generate a config file with full documentation and all settings commented out 😌 If you have a pre-existing kitty.conf, then that will be used instead — delete it to see the sample file. (yes, deleting is the whole trick, iconic)

A default configuration file can also be generated by running:

kitty +runpy 'from kitty.config import *; print(commented_out_default_config())'

This will print the commented out default config file to STDOUT 🖨️✨

🌈 All mappable actions 🌈

See the list of all the things you can make kitty can do <>. (iykyk, the list is right there)

Mappable actions

The actions described below can be mapped to any key press or mouse action using the map and mouse_map directives in kitty.conf. For configuration examples, see the default shortcut links for each action 🔗 To read about keyboard mapping in more detail, see Making your keyboard dance <>.

You can also browse and trigger these actions by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F3 <#shortcut-kitty.Command-palette> to run the Command palette <>. Literally the command palette is that girl 💅

Copy/paste

`clear_selection`

Clear the current selection ✨

`copy_and_clear_or_interrupt`

Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard and clear selection; if no selection, send SIGINT (aka Ctrl+C) 💀

`copy_ansi_to_clipboard`

Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard with ANSI formatting codes 🎨

`copy_last_command_output`

Copy the last non-empty output from a shell command to the clipboard 📋

Requires Shell integration <#shell-integration> to work.

`copy_or_interrupt`

Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard; if no selection, send SIGINT (aka Ctrl+C) 💀

`copy_or_noop`

Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard; if no selection, pass the key through to the application running in the terminal 🫶

Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+c <#shortcut-kitty.Copy-to-clipboard-or-pass-through>

`copy_selection_or_last_command_output`

Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard; if no selection, copy the last command output (requires shell integration to work) ✨

`copy_to_clipboard`

Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard 📋

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+c <#shortcut-kitty.Copy-to-clipboard>

`pass_selection_to_program`

Pass the selected text from the active window to the specified program 🚀

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+o <#shortcut-kitty.Pass-selection-to-program>

`paste`

Paste the specified text into the current window. ANSI C escapes are decoded 🧚

`copy_to_buffer`

Copy the selection from the active window to the specified buffer.

See Multiple copy/paste buffers <#cpbuf> for details.

`paste_from_buffer`

Paste from the specified buffer to the active window.

See Multiple copy/paste buffers <#cpbuf> for details.

`paste_from_clipboard`

Paste from the clipboard to the active window.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+v <#shortcut-kitty.Paste-from-clipboard>

`paste_from_selection`

Paste from the primary selection, if present, otherwise the clipboard, to the active window.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+s <#shortcut-kitty.Paste-from-selection>

Debugging

`dump_lines_with_attrs`

Show a dump of the current lines in the scrollback + screen with their line attributes 👑

`close_shared_ssh_connections`

Close all shared SSH connections.

See share_connections <#opt-kitten-ssh.share_connections> for details.

`debug_config`

Show the effective configuration kitty is running with 🔍

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f6 <#shortcut-kitty.Debug-kitty-configuration>

`show_kitty_env_vars`

Show the environment variables that the kitty process sees 🌱

`simulate_color_scheme_preference_change`

Simulate a change in OS color scheme preference 🌗

`test_dragging`

Start a test drag operation, for use with mouse_map 🖱️

Font sizes

`change_font_size`

Change the font size for the current or all OS Windows.

See Font sizes <#conf-kitty-shortcuts-fonts> for details.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+minus <#shortcut-kitty.Decrease-font-size>, ctrl+shift+equal <#shortcut-kitty.Increase-font-size>, ctrl+shift+backspace <#shortcut-kitty.Reset-font-size>

Layouts

`goto_layout`

Switch to the named layout.

In case there are multiple layouts with the same name and different options, specify the full layout definition or a unique prefix of the full definition 🧩

For example:

map f1 goto_layout tall
map f2 goto_layout fat:bias=20

`last_used_layout`

Go to the previously used layout ⏪

`layout_action`

Perform a layout specific action. See Arrange windows <> for details.

`next_layout`

Go to the next enabled layout. Can optionally supply an integer to jump by the specified number ➡️

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+l <#shortcut-kitty.Next-layout>

`toggle_layout`

Toggle the named layout.

Switches to the named layout if another layout is current, otherwise switches to the last used layout. Useful to "zoom" a window temporarily by switching to the stack layout 🔍 See also scrollback_fill_enlarged_window <#opt-kitty.scrollback_fill_enlarged_window> if you would like content from the scrollback buffer to scroll down into the zoomed window. For example:

map f1 toggle_layout stack

Marks

`remove_marker`

Remove a previously created marker ❌

`scroll_to_mark`

Scroll to the next or previous mark of the specified type 📍

`toggle_marker`

Toggle the current marker on/off 🔁

`create_marker`

Create a new marker ✨

Miscellaneous

`send_key`

Send the specified keys to the active window ⌨️

Note that the key will be sent only if the current keyboard mode of the program running in the terminal supports it.

Both key press and key release are sent. First presses for all specified keys and then releases in reverse order. To send a pattern of press and release for multiple keys use the combine action. For example:

map f1 send_key ctrl+x alt+y
map f1 combine : send_key ctrl+x : send_key alt+y

`send_text`

Send the specified text to the active window.

See send_text <#shortcut-kitty.Send-arbitrary-text-on-key-presses> for details.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+alt+h <#shortcut-kitty.Send-arbitrary-text-on-key-presses>

`show_kitty_doc`

Display the specified kitty documentation, preferring a local copy, if found 📚

For example:

# show the config docs
map f1 show_kitty_doc conf
# show the ssh kitten docs
map f1 show_kitty_doc kittens/ssh

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f1 <#shortcut-kitty.Show-documentation>

`signal_child`

Send the specified SIGNAL to the foreground process in the active window 📡

For example:

map f1 signal_child SIGTERM

`clear_terminal`

Clear the terminal 🧹

See reset_terminal <#shortcut-kitty.Reset-the-terminal> for details. For example:

# Reset the terminal
map f1 clear_terminal reset active
# Clear the terminal screen by erasing all contents
map f1 clear_terminal clear active
# Clear the terminal scrollback by erasing it
map f1 clear_terminal scrollback active
# Scroll the contents of the screen into the scrollback
map f1 clear_terminal scroll active
# Clear everything on screen up to the line with the cursor or the start of the current prompt (needs shell integration)
# Useful for clearing the screen up to the shell prompt and moving the shell prompt to the top of the screen.
map f1 clear_terminal to_cursor active
# Same as above except cleared lines are moved into scrollback
map f1 clear_terminal to_cursor_scroll active
# Erase the last command and its output (needs shell integration to work)
map f1 clear_terminal last_command active

Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+l <#shortcut-kitty.Clear-the-last-command>, cmd+ctrl+l <#shortcut-kitty.Clear-screen>, option+cmd+k <#shortcut-kitty.Clear-scrollback>, cmd+k <#shortcut-kitty.Clear-to-start>, ctrl+shift+delete <#shortcut-kitty.Reset-the-terminal>

`combine`

💫 Combine multiple actions and map to a single keypress 💫

Okay so this is lowkey one of the coolest things ever — you can staple a whole little combo onto one key. The syntax is giving:

map key combine <separator> action1 <separator> action2 <separator> action3 ...

And like, for real, examples:

map kitty_mod+e combine : new_window : next_layout
map kitty_mod+e combine | new_tab | goto_tab -1

Pick any separator you vibe with, just keep it consistent. Slay. ✨

`command_palette`

Browse and trigger keyboard shortcuts and actions in a searchable overlay (Command palette). It's giving "Spotlight but for your terminal," and I'm obsessed. 🎀

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f3 — Command palette

`disable_ligatures_in`

Turn on/off ligatures in the specified window. 🦋

Peep disable_ligatures for all the deets.

`discard_event`

Discard this event completely, ignoring it. Just... poof. Not today. 💅

`edit_config_file`

Edit the kitty.conf config file in your favorite text editor. Main character energy fr fr.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f2 — Edit config file

`grab_keyboard`

Grab the keyboard. This means global shortcuts defined in the OS will be passed to kitty instead. Useful if you want to create an OS modal window. 🫶

Ngl, how well this works depends on the OS/window manager/desktop environment. On Wayland it works only if the compositor implements the inhibit-keyboard-shortcuts protocol https://wayland.app/protocols/keyboard-shortcuts-inhibit-unstable-v1. On macOS Apple doesn't allow applications to grab the keyboard without special permissions, so it doesn't work. 💀

`hide_macos_app`

Hide macOS kitty application.

Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+h — Hide macOS kitty application

`hide_macos_other_apps`

Hide macOS other applications.

Default shortcuts using this action: opt+cmd+h — Hide macOS other applications

`input_unicode_character`

Input an arbitrary unicode character. See Unicode input for details. ✨

`kitten`

Run the specified kitten. See Custom kittens for details.

Default shortcuts using this action:
- Selecting files, fast — ctrl+shift+p>d — Insert chosen directory
- Selecting files, fast — ctrl+shift+p>c — Insert chosen file
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>h — Insert selected hash
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>l — Insert selected line
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>f — Insert selected path
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>w — Insert selected word
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>shift+f — Open selected path
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>n — Open the selected file at the selected line
- Hints — ctrl+shift+p>y — Open the selected hyperlink
- Unicode input — ctrl+shift+u — Unicode input

`kitty_shell`

Run the kitty shell to control kitty with commands.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+escape — Open the kitty command shell

`launch`

Launch the specified program in a new window/tab/etc. 🚀

See The launch command for details.

`load_config_file`

Reload the config file.

If mapped without arguments, it reloads the default config file — otherwise it loads the specified config files, in order. Loading a config file replaces all config options, so like, heads up bestie. 🙈

For example:

map f5 load_config_file /path/to/some/kitty.conf

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f5 — Reload kitty.conf

`macos_cycle_through_os_windows`

Cycle through OS windows on macOS.

Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+` — macOS Cycle through OS Windows

`macos_cycle_through_os_windows_backwards`

Cycle through OS windows backwards on macOS. The "oops I overshot" button. 😭

Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+shift+` — macOS Cycle through OS Windows backwards

`minimize_macos_window`

Minimize macOS window.

Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+m — Minimize macOS window

`open_url`

Open the specified URL.

Default shortcuts using this action: shift+cmd+/ — Open kitty Website

`open_url_with_hints`

Click a URL using the keyboard. No mouse required, we stay on the keys. 👑

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+e — Open URL

`pop_keyboard_mode`

End the current keyboard mode, switching to the previous mode. 🎀

`push_keyboard_mode`

Switch to the specified keyboard mode, pushing it onto the stack of keyboard modes.

`remote_control`

Run a remote control command without needing to allow remote control.

For example:

map f1 remote_control set-spacing margin=30

See Mapping key presses to remote control commands for details.

`remote_control_script`

Run a remote control script without needing to allow remote control.

For example:

map f1 remote_control_script /path/to/script arg1 arg2 ...

See Mapping key presses to remote control commands for details. Relative paths are resolved with respect to the kitty config directory. 🗂️

`set_colors`

Change colors in the specified windows. The glow-up button, literally. 🌈

For details, see kitten @ set-colors. For example:

map f5 set_colors --configured /path/to/some/config/file/colors.conf

`show_error`

Show an error message with the specified title and text.

`sleep`

Sleep for the specified time period. Suffix can be s for seconds, m for minutes, h for hours and d for days. The time can be fractional. 💤

`toggle_macos_secure_keyboard_entry`

Toggle macOS secure keyboard entry.

Default shortcuts using this action: opt+cmd+s — Toggle macOS secure keyboard entry

`ungrab_keyboard`

Ungrab the keyboard if it was previously grabbed.

`no_op`

Unbind a shortcut.

Mapping a shortcut to no_op causes kitty to not intercept the key stroke anymore, instead passing it to the program running inside it. That's it, that's the whole vibe check. 💅

🖱️ Mouse actions 🖱️

Yes bestie, the mouse has lore too.

`mouse_click_url`

Click the URL under the mouse.

`mouse_click_url_or_select`

Click the URL under the mouse only if the screen has no selection.

`mouse_handle_click`

Handle a mouse click.

Try to perform the specified actions one after the other till one of them is successful. Supported actions are:

selection — check for a selection and if one exists abort processing
link — if a link exists under the mouse, click it
prompt — if the mouse click happens at a shell prompt, move the cursor to the mouse location

For examples, see Mouse actions. 🫶

`mouse_select_command_output`

Select clicked command output.

Requires Shell integration to work.

`mouse_selection`

Manipulate the selection based on the current mouse position.

For examples, see Mouse actions.

`mouse_show_command_output`

Show clicked command output in a pager like less.

Requires Shell integration to work.

`paste_selection`

Paste the current primary selection.

`paste_selection_or_clipboard`

Paste the current primary selection, or the clipboard if no selection is present. Bestie backup plan. 🍓

🌊 Scrolling 🌊

`scroll_end`

Scroll to the bottom of the scrollback buffer when in main screen.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+end — Scroll to bottom

`scroll_home`

Scroll to the top of the scrollback buffer when in main screen.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+home — Scroll to top

`scroll_line_down`

Scroll down by one line when in main screen. To scroll by different amounts, you can map the remote_control scroll-window action. Pass the smooth argument to have the scrolling be animated. For example:

map kitty_mod+down scroll_line_down smooth

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+down — Scroll line down

`scroll_line_up`

Scroll up by one line when in main screen. To scroll by different amounts, you can map the remote_control scroll-window action. Pass the smooth argument to have the scrolling be animated. For example:

map kitty_mod+up scroll_line_up smooth

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+up — Scroll line up

`scroll_page_down`

Scroll down by one page when in main screen. To scroll by different amounts, you can map the remote_control scroll-window action.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+page_down — Scroll page down

`scroll_page_up`

Scroll up by one page when in main screen. To scroll by different amounts, you can map the remote_control scroll-window action.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+page_up — Scroll page up

`scroll_prompt_to_bottom`

Scroll prompt to the bottom of the screen, filling in extra lines from the scrollback buffer, when in main screen.

`scroll_prompt_to_top`

Scroll prompt to the top of the screen, filling screen with empty lines, when in main screen. To avoid putting the lines above the prompt into the scrollback, use scroll_prompt_to_top y. 🧚

`scroll_to_prompt`

Scroll to the previous/next shell command prompt. Allows easy jumping from one command to the next. Requires working Shell integration.

It takes two optional numbers as arguments:

The first is the number of prompts to jump; negative values jump up and positive values jump down. A value of zero will jump to the last prompt visited by this action. Defaults to -1.
The second is the number of lines to show above the prompt that was jumped to. This is somewhat like less's --jump-target option or vim's scrolloff setting. Defaults to 0.

For example:

map ctrl+p scroll_to_prompt -1 3  # jump to previous, showing 3 lines prior
map ctrl+n scroll_to_prompt 1     # jump to next
map ctrl+o scroll_to_prompt 0     # jump to last visited

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+x — Scroll to next shell prompt; ctrl+shift+z — Scroll to previous shell prompt

`search_scrollback`

Search scrollback in a pager like less. If there is selected text, it is automatically searched for. 🔍

Note that this assumes that pressing the / key triggers search mode in the page configured as the scrollback pager.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+/ — Search the scrollback within a pager

`show_first_command_output_on_screen`

Show output from the first shell command on screen in a pager like less.

Requires Shell integration to work.

`show_last_command_output`

Show output from the last shell command in a pager like less.

…and yeah, it requires Shell integration to actually do its thing — no integration, no magic ✨

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+g

show_last_non_empty_command_output — shows you the last non-empty output from a shell command, opened up in a pager like less 🫶 (because sometimes the last command was polite and said nothing, and that's not what you wanna see)

Also requires Shell integration.

show_last_visited_command_output — shows the first command output below the last scrolled position (via scroll_to_prompt), or the last mouse-clicked command output, in a pager like less 👑

Requires Shell integration too, bestie.

show_scrollback — pops your scrollback buffer open in a pager like less. Iconic for when you know the answer is up there somewhere 🌈

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+h

🎀 Sessions

close_session — closes a session, which means closing all the windows that belong to that session. Like, all of them. Gone 💅

Examples:

# Ask for the session to close
map f1 close_session
# Close the currently active session
map f1 close_session .
# Close session by name
map f1 close_session "my session"
# Close session by path to session file
map f1 close_session "/path/to/session/file.kitty-session"

goto_session — switches to the specified session, and creates it if it's not already there. See Creating/Switching to sessions with a keypress 🦋
save_as_session — saves your current kitty state as a session file. See The save_as_session action 💾

🌸 Tab management

close_other_tabs_in_os_window — closes every tab in the current OS window except the one you're on. Main character tab privileges only 👑
close_tab — closes the current tab ✨

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+q

detach_tab — detaches a tab, moving it to another OS Window. You can also just drag and drop to detach tabs, no cap 🖐️

See detaching windows for details.

goto_tab — jumps to the tab you specify, by number, starting with 1 🎯

Zero and negative numbers go to previously active tabs. Use the select_tab action to interactively select a tab to go to.

move_tab_backward — moves the active tab backward. Drag and drop works for re-arranging tabs too 💅

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+,

move_tab_forward — moves the active tab forward. Same drag-and-drop deal 🫶

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+.

new_tab — creates a new tab, obviously 🌟

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+t

new_tab_with_cwd — makes a new tab whose window working directory is set to the same as the active window's. So you don't lose your place 🍓

The tab gets added to the currently active session, if there is one.

next_tab — makes the next tab the active one ➡️

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+right

previous_tab — makes the previous tab the active one ⬅️

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+left

select_tab — interactively selects a tab to switch to. Very pick-a-card of you 🔮
set_tab_title — changes the title of the active tab interactively, by typing in the new title ✍️

If you give this action an argument, that's used as the title instead of asking you. Use the empty string ("") to reset the title to default. Use a space (" ") to say the prompt should not be pre-filled. For example:

# interactive usage
map f1 set_tab_title
# set a specific title
map f2 set_tab_title some title
# reset to default
map f3 set_tab_title ""
# interactive usage without prefilled prompt
map f3 set_tab_title " "

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+alt+t

🦋 Window management

set_window_title — changes the title of the active window interactively, by typing in the new title 💬

# interactive usage
map f1 set_window_title
# set a specific title
map f2 set_window_title some title
# reset to default
map f3 set_window_title ""
# interactive usage without prefilled prompt
map f3 set_window_title " "

close_other_windows_in_tab — closes all windows in the tab apart from the currently active one 🙈
eighth_window — focuses the eighth window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+8

fifth_window — focuses the fifth window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+5

first_window — focuses the first window 🥇

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+1

focus_visible_window — focuses a visible window by pressing that window's number. The window numbers are displayed over the windows so it's easy to pick in this mode 👀 See visual_window_select_characters.

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+f7

fourth_window — focuses the fourth window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+4

move_window — moves the window in the direction you specify 🧭

For example:

map ctrl+left move_window left
map ctrl+down move_window bottom

move_window_backward — moves the active window backward (swaps it with the previous window) 🔄

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+b

move_window_forward — moves the active window forward (swaps it with the next window) 🔁

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+f

move_window_to_top — moves the active window to the top, making it the first window 👑

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+`` ``

Heads up: that shortcut is literally ctrl+shift+`` `` — backtick, bestie. Don't come for me.

neighboring_window — focuses the neighboring window in the current tab 🏘️

For example:

map ctrl+left neighboring_window left
map ctrl+down neighboring_window bottom

next_window — focuses the next window in the current tab. Does not traverse overlay windows 🚫

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+]

ninth_window — focuses the ninth window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+9

nth_window — focuses the nth window if the number is positive, or the previously active windows if it's negative. When the number is larger than the number of windows, it focuses the last window 🎯 For example:

# focus the previously active window
map ctrl+p nth_window -1
# focus the first window
map ctrl+1 nth_window 0

previous_window — focuses the previous window in the current tab. Does not traverse overlay windows 🚫

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+[

reset_window_sizes — resets window sizes, undoing any dynamic resizing of windows 🧹
resize_window — resizes the active window by the amount you specify. See Resizing windows for details 📐
second_window — focuses the second window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+2

seventh_window — focuses the seventh window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+7

sixth_window — focuses the sixth window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+6

swap_with_window — swaps the current window with another window in the current tab, selected visually 💫 See visual_window_select_characters

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+f8

tenth_window — focuses the tenth window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+0

third_window — focuses the third window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+3

close_os_window — closes the currently active OS Window 🪟

Default shortcut riding with this action: shift+cmd+w

close_other_os_windows — closes every other OS Window that isn't the one containing your currently active window 🙅‍♀️
close_window — closes the currently active window

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+w

close_window_with_confirmation — closes a window, but with confirmation first, because sometimes you're clicking fast and we both know it ✋

It asks for confirmation before closing the window. If you don't want the confirmation when the window is sitting at a shell prompt (requires Shell integration), use:

map f1 close_window_with_confirmation ignore-shell

detach_window — detaches a window, moving it to another tab or OS Window. See detaching windows for details 🧳
new_os_window — new OS Window 🌈

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+n

new_os_window_with_cwd — new OS Window with the same working directory as the currently active window 🗂️

The new OS Window gets added to the currently active session, if there is one.

new_window — creates a new window ✨

Default shortcut riding with this action: ctrl+shift+enter

new_window_with_cwd — creates a new window with the working directory the same as that of the active window 📁

The new window will belong to the active session if there is one.

nth_os_window — focuses the nth OS window if positive, or the previously active OS windows if negative. When the number is larger than the number of OS windows, it focuses the last OS window. A value of zero refocuses the currently focused OS window — which is handy if focus isn't on any kitty OS window at all, however it only works if the window manager allows applications to grab focus 🫠 For example:

# focus the previously active kitty OS window
map ctrl+p nth_os_window -1
# focus the current kitty OS window (grab focus)
map ctrl+0 nth_os_window 0
# focus the first kitty OS window
map ctrl+1 nth_os_window 1
# focus the last kitty OS window
map ctrl+1 nth_os_window 999

quit — quits, closing all windows 💀

Default shortcut riding with this action: cmd+q

set_background_opacity — 🫶 hold that thought, next part picks this one up…

`set_background_opacity`

Sets the background opacity for the active OS Window ✨ — just the one you're looking at, bestie, not all of them, no cap.

For example:

map f1 set_background_opacity +0.1
map f2 set_background_opacity -0.1
map f3 set_background_opacity 0.5

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+a>l (Decrease background opacity), ctrl+shift+a>1 (Make background fully opaque), ctrl+shift+a>m (Increase background opacity), ctrl+shift+a>d (Reset background opacity) 💅

`start_resizing_window`

Resize the active window interactively — like, you grab it and go 🫶

See Resizing windows for the whole rundown.

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+r (Start resizing window)

`toggle_fullscreen`

Toggles the fullscreen status of the active OS Window — boom, fullscreen, boom, back 🌈

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f11 (Toggle fullscreen)

`toggle_maximized`

Toggles the maximized status of the active OS Window. Same energy, different button 🎀

Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f10 (Toggle maximized)

`toggle_tab`

Toggle to the tab matching the specified expression 👑

It switches to the matching tab if some other tab is currently the one you're on — otherwise it switches to the last used tab. Lowkey iconic: it means you can hop to a tab and back with a single shortcut, which is exactly the kind of convenience we deserve. Heads up though: toggling only works between tabs in the same OS window, so don't expect it to teleport across windows, bestie. See Matching windows and tabs for the details on the match expression.

For example:

map f1 toggle_tab title:mytab

`toggle_window_title_bars`

Temporarily show window title bars so you can drag-to-reorder 🖐️✨

So here's the situation: when window title bars are hidden (because window_title_bar_min_windows isn't met), this action forces them temporarily visible so you can drag them around to reorder your windows. The moment any drag operation completes, the bars get automatically hidden again — self-cleaning, we love to see it. Press it again to cancel before you start dragging.

It has no effect on tabs where title bars are already naturally visible — those are already living their best life.

Map an action to this, then press it before dragging a window title bar. That's it, that's the whole vibe 💜

🎨 Wide gamut color formats

kitty supports the modern wide gamut color formats for precise color specification 🔥 These formats work anywhere a color value is accepted in the config — foreground, background, color0-color255, etc. Slay.

OKLCH Colors

OKLCH is a perceptually uniform color space, which makes it ideal for building color themes 🌸 The format is:

foreground oklch(0.9 0.05 140)
color1     oklch(0.7 0.25 25)

Parameters:

L (Lightness): 0 to 1, where 0 is black and 1 is white
C (Chroma): 0 to approximately 0.4 — this is the color saturation
H (Hue): 0 to 360 degrees (0=red, 120=green, 240=blue)

Benefits:

Perceptually uniform — equal changes produce equal perceived differences
Adjusting lightness preserves hue (unlike HSL) 👀
Industry standard for modern color design

Example:

foreground oklch(0.9 0.05 140)
color1     oklch(0.65 0.25 29)    # Vibrant red-orange
color2     oklch(0.65 0.25 142)   # Vibrant green
color3     oklch(0.70 0.19 90)    # Warm yellow

CIE LAB Colors

CIE LAB is a device-independent color space designed to approximate human vision — literally built to match how your eyeballs perceive stuff 🦋

The format is:

background lab(20 5 -10)
color4     lab(50 0 -50)

Parameters:

L: Lightness, 0 to 100 (0 = black, 100 = white)
a: Green (-) to red (+), typically -100 to +100
b: Blue (-) to yellow (+), typically -100 to +100

Example:

background lab(10 0 0)           # Very dark neutral gray
foreground lab(90 0 0)           # Very light neutral gray
color1     lab(50 60 40)         # Red
color4     lab(50 0 -50)         # Blue

Gamut Mapping

Okay so this is the part where it gets kinda genius 🧚 When you specify colors in OKLCH or CIE LAB formats that fall outside the sRGB color gamut, kitty automatically converts them using the CSS Color Module Level 4 gamut mapping algorithm:

Preserves the original lightness and hue as much as possible
Reduces chroma (saturation) until the color fits within the displayable range
Uses perceptual color difference (deltaE OK) to minimize visible changes
Maximizes color saturation while staying in gamut

This ensures that wide gamut colors gracefully degrade on standard sRGB displays while taking full advantage of wide gamut displays when available. And the mapping happens automatically — you don't need to do anything special, not even a little bit 🙈

For example, oklch(0.7 0.4 25) might be too saturated for sRGB but will be automatically adjusted to fit while preserving the perceived hue and lightness.

References

CSS Color Module Level 4 — https://www.w3.org/TR/css-color-4/ ⭐
OKLCH Color Space — https://bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab/ ⭐

👑 Author

Kovid Goyal

📜 Copyright

2026, Kovid Goyal

And that's a wrap on kitty.conf(5) bestie!! 🎀 This was version 0.49.2, dated Oct 01, 2026 — go forth and configure, you absolute icon 💖✨

📦 where this page comes from

arch rolling: kitty 0.49.2-1 · GPL-3.0-only
nixpkgs unstable: kitty-bin 0.49.2
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on 2026-11-04: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms

kitty.conf(5)

Name 🌸

Overview ✨

Comments & line splitting 🧚

Includes 🦋

Fonts 🎀

font_family, bold_font, italic_font, bold_italic_font

font_size

force_ltr

symbol_map

narrow_symbols

disable_ligatures

font_features

modify_font

box_drawing_scale

undercurl_style

underline_exclusion

✨ Text cursor customization ✨

🌸 SCROLLBACK 🌸

🐭 MOUSE 🐭

🐭 Mouse actions 🐭

⚡ Performance tuning ⚡

🔔 Terminal bell 🔔

🪟 Window layout 🪟

🎀 TAB BAR 🎀

Tab bar

tab_title_template

active_tab_title_template

active_tab_foreground, active_tab_background, active_tab_font_style, inactive_tab_foreground, inactive_tab_background, inactive_tab_font_style

tab_bar_background

tab_bar_margin_color

🎨 the color options, part one 🎨

🌈 The color table 🌈

💫 Wide gamut color formats 💫

🔧 Advanced 🔧

🌍 Os specific tweaks 🌍

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts ⌨️

🎀 clear_all_shortcuts

🎀 map_timeout

🎀 action_alias

🎀 kitten_alias

🌸 Clipboard

🦋 Scrolling

👑 Window management

Tab management

Layout management

Font sizes

Select and act on visible text

Miscellaneous

🎀 Sample kitty.conf 🎀

🌈 All mappable actions 🌈

Mappable actions

Copy/paste

clear_selection

copy_and_clear_or_interrupt

copy_ansi_to_clipboard

copy_last_command_output

copy_or_interrupt

copy_or_noop

copy_selection_or_last_command_output

copy_to_clipboard

pass_selection_to_program

paste

copy_to_buffer

paste_from_buffer

paste_from_clipboard

paste_from_selection

Debugging

dump_lines_with_attrs

close_shared_ssh_connections

debug_config

show_kitty_env_vars

simulate_color_scheme_preference_change

test_dragging

Font sizes

change_font_size

Layouts

goto_layout

last_used_layout

layout_action

`font_family`, `bold_font`, `italic_font`, `bold_italic_font`

`font_size`

`force_ltr`

`symbol_map`

`narrow_symbols`

`disable_ligatures`

`font_features`

`modify_font`

`box_drawing_scale`

`undercurl_style`

`underline_exclusion`

`tab_title_template`

`active_tab_title_template`

`active_tab_foreground`, `active_tab_background`, `active_tab_font_style`, `inactive_tab_foreground`, `inactive_tab_background`, `inactive_tab_font_style`

`tab_bar_background`

`tab_bar_margin_color`

🎀 `clear_all_shortcuts`

🎀 `map_timeout`

🎀 `action_alias`

🎀 `kitten_alias`

`clear_selection`

`copy_and_clear_or_interrupt`

`copy_ansi_to_clipboard`

`copy_last_command_output`

`copy_or_interrupt`

`copy_or_noop`

`copy_selection_or_last_command_output`

`copy_to_clipboard`

`pass_selection_to_program`

`paste`

`copy_to_buffer`

`paste_from_buffer`

`paste_from_clipboard`

`paste_from_selection`

`dump_lines_with_attrs`

`close_shared_ssh_connections`

`debug_config`

`show_kitty_env_vars`

`simulate_color_scheme_preference_change`

`test_dragging`

`change_font_size`

`goto_layout`

`last_used_layout`

`layout_action`

`next_layout`

`toggle_layout`

`remove_marker`

`scroll_to_mark`

`toggle_marker`

`create_marker`

`send_key`

`send_text`

`show_kitty_doc`

`signal_child`

`clear_terminal`

`combine`

`command_palette`

`disable_ligatures_in`

`discard_event`

`edit_config_file`

`grab_keyboard`

`hide_macos_app`

`hide_macos_other_apps`

`input_unicode_character`

`kitten`

`kitty_shell`

`launch`

`load_config_file`

`macos_cycle_through_os_windows`

`macos_cycle_through_os_windows_backwards`

`minimize_macos_window`

`open_url`

`open_url_with_hints`

`pop_keyboard_mode`

`push_keyboard_mode`

`remote_control`

`remote_control_script`

`set_colors`

`show_error`

`sleep`