FreeBSD Manual Pages
kitty.conf(5) kitty kitty.conf(5) Name kitty.conf - Configuration file for kitty Overview kitty is highly customizable, everything from keyboard shortcuts, to rendering frames-per-second. See below for an overview of all cus- tomization possibilities. You can open the config file within kitty by pressing ctrl+shift+f2 (+, on macOS). A kitty.conf with commented default configurations and de- scriptions will be created if the file does not exist. You can reload the config file within kitty by pressing ctrl+shift+f5 (++, on macOS) or sending kitty the SIGUSR1 signal with 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 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. Lines can be split by starting the next line with the \ character. All leading whitespace and the \ character are removed. 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 exam- ple: # 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 NOTE: Syntax highlighting for kitty.conf in vim is available via vim-kitty. Fonts kitty has very powerful font management. You can configure individual font faces and even specify special fonts for particular characters. 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 vari- ants. 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. font_size font_size 11.0 Font size (in pts). force_ltr force_ltr no 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 , selecting the character that on the screen appears to be actually writes into the selection buffer the character . 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 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. 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 char- acter 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 re- mote 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 distin- guishable from . 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. 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. 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_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 under- line 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 ar- rive at a pixel value. There must be four values corresponding to thin, normal, thick, and very thick lines. 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 oscil- lates. With sparse the curl will peak once per character, with dense twice. Changing this option dynamically via reloading the config or re- mote control is undefined. underline_exclusion underline_exclusion 1 By default kitty renders gaps in underlines when they overlap with de- scenders (the parts of letters below the baseline, such as for y, q, p etc.). This option controls the thickness of the gaps. It can be either a unitless number in which case it is 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 to zero to disable the gaps. Changing this option dynamically via reloading the config or remote control is unde- fined. text_composition_strategy text_composition_strategy platform Control how kitty composites text glyphs onto the background color. The default value of 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 is per- centage 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. text_fg_override_threshold text_fg_override_threshold 0 The minimum accepted difference in luminance between the foreground and background color, below which kitty will override the foreground color. It is percentage ranging from 0 to 100. If the difference in luminance of the foreground and background is below this threshold, the fore- ground color will be set to white if the background is dark or black if the background is light. The default value is 0, which means no over- riding is performed. Useful when working with applications that use colors that do not contrast well with your preferred color scheme. 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 unex- pected 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. Text cursor customization cursor cursor #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 cursor_text_color #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 key- word: 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. cursor_shape cursor_shape 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 de- fault cursor shape, applications running in the terminal can override it. In particular, shell integration 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 cursor_shape_unfocused 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 cursor_beam_thickness 1.5 The thickness of the beam cursor (in pts). cursor_underline_thickness cursor_underline_thickness 2.0 The thickness of the underline cursor (in pts). cursor_blink_interval cursor_blink_interval -1 The interval to blink the cursor (in seconds). Set to zero to disable blinking. Negative values mean use system default. Note that the mini- mum interval will be limited to repaint_delay. You can also animate the cursor blink by specifying an easing function. For example, setting this to option to 0.5 ease-in-out will cause the cursor blink to be an- imated 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. 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. cursor_stop_blinking_after cursor_stop_blinking_after 15.0 Stop blinking cursor after the specified number of seconds of keyboard inactivity. Set to zero to never stop blinking. cursor_trail cursor_trail 0 Set this to a value larger than zero to enable a "cursor trail" anima- tion. 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 trig- gered. It is a number of milliseconds. The trail animation only follows cursors that have stayed in their position for longer than the speci- fied number of milliseconds. This prevents trails from appearing for cursors that rapidly change their positions during UI updates in com- plex applications. See cursor_trail_decay to control the animation speed and cursor_trail_start_threshold to control when a cursor trail is started. cursor_trail_decay cursor_trail_decay 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 cursor_trail_start_threshold 2 Set the distance threshold for starting the cursor trail. This option accepts a positive integer value that represents the minimum number of cells the cursor must move before the trail is started. When the cursor moves less than this threshold, the trail is skipped, reducing unneces- sary cursor trail animation. Scrollback scrollback_lines scrollback_lines 2000 Number of lines of history to keep in memory for scrolling back. Memory is allocated on demand. Negative numbers are (effectively) infinite scrollback. Note that using very large scrollback is not recommended as it can slow down performance of the terminal and also use large amounts of RAM. Instead, consider using scrollback_pager_history_size. Note that on config reload if this is changed it will only affect newly created windows, not existing ones. scrollback_indicator_opacity scrollback_indicator_opacity 1.0 The opacity of the scrollback indicator which is a small colored rec- tangle that moves along the right hand side of the window as you scroll, indicating what fraction you have scrolled. The default is one which means fully opaque, aka visible. Set to a value between zero and one to make the indicator less visible. scrollback_pager scrollback_pager less --chop-long-lines --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS +INPUT_LINE_NUMBER Program with which 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. 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 ex- ample, when showing the last command output. scrollback_pager_history_size scrollback_pager_history_size 0 Separate scrollback history size (in MB), used only for browsing the scrollback buffer with pager. This separate buffer is not available for interactive scrolling but will be piped to the pager program when view- ing 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 cre- ated windows, not existing ones. scrollback_fill_enlarged_window scrollback_fill_enlarged_window no Fill new space with lines from the scrollback buffer after enlarging a window. wheel_scroll_multiplier 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 Way- land. Use negative numbers to change scroll direction. See also wheel_scroll_min_lines. wheel_scroll_min_lines 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 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 direc- tion. Mouse mouse_hide_wait mouse_hide_wait 3.0 Hide 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. url_color, url_style 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. open_url_with 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 fa- cility and if non are found, it will use the Operating System's default URL handler (open on macOS and xdg-open on Linux). url_prefixes 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. detect_urls detect_urls yes Detect URLs under the mouse. Detected URLs are highlighted with an un- derline and the mouse cursor becomes a hand over them. Even if this op- tion is disabled, URLs are still clickable. See also the underline_hyperlinks option to control how hyperlinks (as opposed to plain text URLs) are displayed. 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 es- capes, to specify a backslash use a double backslash. show_hyperlink_targets show_hyperlink_targets no When the mouse hovers over a terminal hyperlink, show the actual URL that will be activated when the hyperlink is clicked. underline_hyperlinks underline_hyperlinks hover 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. copy_on_select copy_on_select no Copy to clipboard or a private buffer on select. With this set to clip- board, 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 exam- ple: 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. clear_selection_on_clipboard_loss clear_selection_on_clipboard_loss no When the contents of the clipboard no longer reflect the current selec- tion, clear it. This is primarily useful on platforms such as Linux where selecting text automatically copies it to a special "primary se- lection" 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. paste_actions paste_actions quote-urls-at-prompt,confirm A comma separated list of actions to take when pasting 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 con- firmation. replace-newline Replace the newline character from pasted text, without confir- mation. confirm: Confirm the paste if the text to be pasted contains any terminal control codes as this can be dangerous, leading to code execu- tion if the shell/program running in the terminal does not prop- erly 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 re- turned by the function will be actually pasted. no-op: Has no effect. strip_trailing_spaces strip_trailing_spaces never 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 selec- tions. A value of always will always do it. select_by_word_characters 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_forward Characters considered part of a word when extending the selection for- ward 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 di- rections. click_interval click_interval -1.0 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. focus_follows_mouse focus_follows_mouse no Set the active window to the window under the mouse when moving the mouse around. On macOS, this will also cause the OS Window under the mouse to be focused automatically when the mouse enters it. pointer_shape_when_grabbed pointer_shape_when_grabbed arrow The shape of the mouse pointer when the program running in the terminal grabs the mouse. default_pointer_shape default_pointer_shape beam The default shape of the mouse pointer. pointer_shape_when_dragging pointer_shape_when_dragging beam crosshair The default shape of the mouse pointer when dragging across text. The optional second value sets the shape when dragging in rectangular se- lection mode. 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 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 dis- able 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 clear_all_mouse_actions no Remove all mouse action definitions up to this point. Useful, for in- stance, to remove the default mouse actions. Click the link under the mouse or move the cursor mouse_map left click ungrabbed mouse_handle_click selection link prompt 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 inte- gration 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 ver- sion 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 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 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. 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 ungrabbed,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 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 to work. Performance tuning repaint_delay repaint_delay 10 Delay between screen updates (in milliseconds). Decreasing it, in- creases frames-per-second (FPS) at the cost of more CPU usage. The de- fault 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. input_delay input_delay 3 Delay before input from the program running in the terminal is processed (in milliseconds). Note that decreasing it will increase re- sponsiveness, but also increase CPU usage and might cause flicker in full screen programs that redraw the entire screen on each loop, be- cause kitty is so fast that partial screen updates will be drawn. This setting is ignored when the input buffer is almost full. sync_to_monitor sync_to_monitor yes Sync screen updates to the refresh rate of the monitor. This prevents 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. Terminal bell enable_audio_bell enable_audio_bell yes The audio bell. Useful to disable it in environments that require si- lence. visual_bell_duration visual_bell_duration 0.0 The visual bell duration (in seconds). Flash the screen when a bell oc- curs 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 casuse the flash to fade in and out linearly. The de- fault 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. visual_bell_color visual_bell_color none 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. window_alert_on_bell window_alert_on_bell yes Request window attention on bell. Makes the dock icon bounce on macOS or the taskbar flash on Linux. bell_on_tab 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. 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 command_on_bell none Program to run when a bell occurs. The environment variable KITTY_CHILD_CMDLINE can be used to get the program running in the win- dow in which the bell occurred. bell_path bell_path none 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). linux_bell_theme linux_bell_theme __custom The XDG Sound Theme kitty will use to play the bell sound. Defaults to the custom theme name specified in the XDG Sound theme specification 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. Window layout remember_window_size, initial_window_width, initial_window_height remember_window_size yes initial_window_width 640 initial_window_height 400 If enabled, the OS Window size will be remembered so that new instances of kitty will have the same size as the previous instance. If dis- abled, the OS Window will initially have size configured by ini- tial_window_width/height, in pixels. You can use a suffix of "c" on the width/height values to have them interpreted as number of cells instead of pixels. enabled_layouts enabled_layouts * The enabled window layouts. A comma separated list of layout names. The special value all means all layouts. The first listed layout will be used as the startup layout. Default configuration is all layouts in al- phabetical order. For a list of available layouts, see the Layouts. window_resize_step_cells, window_resize_step_lines window_resize_step_cells 2 window_resize_step_lines 2 The step size (in units of cell width/cell height) to use when resizing kitty windows in a layout with the shortcut ctrl+shift+r. The cells value is used for horizontal resizing, and the lines value is used for vertical resizing. window_border_width window_border_width 0.5pt The width of window borders. Can be either in pixels (px) or pts (pt). Values in pts will be rounded to the nearest number of pixels based on screen resolution. If not specified, the unit is assumed to be pts. Note that borders are displayed only when more than one window is visi- ble. They are meant to separate multiple windows. draw_minimal_borders draw_minimal_borders yes Draw only the minimum borders needed. This means that only the borders that separate the window from a neighbor are drawn. Note that setting a non-zero window_margin_width overrides this and causes all borders to be drawn. window_margin_width window_margin_width 0 The window margin (in pts) (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 single_window_margin_width -1 The window margin to use when only a single window is visible (in pts). Negative values will cause the value of window_margin_width to be used instead. A single value sets all four sides. Two values set the verti- cal and horizontal sides. Three values set top, horizontal and bottom. Four values set top, right, bottom and left. window_padding_width window_padding_width 0 The window padding (in pts) (blank area between the text and the window border). A single value sets all four sides. Two values set the verti- cal and horizontal sides. Three values set top, horizontal and bottom. Four values set top, right, bottom and left. single_window_padding_width single_window_padding_width -1 The window padding to use when only a single window is visible (in pts). Negative values will cause the value of window_padding_width to be used instead. 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. placement_strategy placement_strategy center When the window size is not an exact multiple of the cell size, the cell area of the terminal window will have some extra padding on the sides. You can control how that padding is distributed with this op- tion. Using a value of center means the cell area will be placed cen- trally. A value of top-left means the padding will be only at the bot- tom and right edges. The value can be one of: top-left, top, top-right, left, center, right, bottom-left, bottom, bottom-right. active_border_color active_border_color #00ff00 The color for the border of the active window. Set this to none to not draw borders around the active window. inactive_border_color inactive_border_color #cccccc The color for the border of inactive windows. bell_border_color bell_border_color #ff5a00 The color for the border of inactive windows in which a bell has oc- curred. inactive_text_alpha inactive_text_alpha 1.0 Fade the text in inactive windows by the specified amount (a number be- tween zero and one, with zero being fully faded). hide_window_decorations hide_window_decorations no Hide 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. Whether this works and exactly what effect it has depends on the window manager/operating system. Note that the effects of changing this option when reloading config are un- defined. When using titlebar-only, it is useful to also set window_margin_width and placement_strategy to prevent the rounded cor- ners from clipping text. Or use titlebar-and-corners. window_logo_path 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. The position is controlled by window_logo_position. Individual windows can be con- figured to have different logos either using the launch action or the remote control facility. window_logo_position 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 window_logo_alpha 0.5 The amount the logo should be faded into the background. With zero be- ing fully faded and one being fully opaque. window_logo_scale window_logo_scale 0 The percentage (0-100] of the window size to which the logo should scale. Using a single number means the logo is scaled to that percent- age of the shortest window dimension, while preserving aspect ratio of the logo image. Using 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 sin- gle zero (the default) disables all scaling of the window logo. resize_debounce_time 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 resiz- ing 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 sys- tems the first number is ignored and redraw is immediate after end of resize. On other systems only the first number is used so that kitty is "ready" quickly after the end of resizing, while not also continuously redrawing, to save energy. resize_in_steps resize_in_steps no 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. Note that this does not currently work on Wayland. visual_window_select_characters visual_window_select_characters 1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ The list of characters for visual window selection. For example, for selecting a window to focus on with ctrl+shift+f7. The value should be a series of unique numbers or alphabets, case insensitive, from the set 0-9A-Z`-=[];',./\. Specify your preference as a string of characters. confirm_os_window_close confirm_os_window_close -1 Ask for confirmation when closing an OS window or a tab with at least this number of kitty windows in it by window manager (e.g. clicking the window close button or pressing the operating system shortcut to close windows) or by the close_tab action. A value of zero disables confirma- tion. This confirmation also applies to requests to quit the entire ap- plication (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. 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. Tab bar tab_bar_edge tab_bar_edge bottom The edge to show the tab bar on, top or bottom. tab_bar_margin_width tab_bar_margin_width 0.0 The margin to the left and right of the tab bar (in pts). tab_bar_margin_height tab_bar_margin_height 0.0 0.0 The margin above and below the tab bar (in pts). The first number is the margin between the edge of the OS Window and the tab bar. The sec- ond number is the margin between the tab bar and the contents of the current tab. tab_bar_style tab_bar_style 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 for examples from kitty users. 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. tab_bar_align tab_bar_align left The horizontal alignment of the tab bar, can be one of: left, center, right. tab_bar_min_tabs tab_bar_min_tabs 2 The minimum number of tabs that must exist before the tab bar is shown. tab_switch_strategy tab_switch_strategy 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. tab_fade tab_fade 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 con- trols 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. tab_separator tab_separator " " The separator between tabs in the tab bar when using separator as the tab_bar_style. tab_powerline_style tab_powerline_style 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 tab_activity_symbol 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. tab_title_max_length tab_title_max_length 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. tab_title_template tab_title_template "{fmt.fg.red}{bell_symbol}{activity_symbol}{fmt.fg.tab}{tab.last_focused_progress_percent}{title}" A template to render the tab title. The default just renders the title with optional symbols for bell and activity. If you wish to include the tab-index as well, use something like: {index}:{title}. Useful if you have shortcuts mapped for goto_tab N. If you prefer to see the index as a superscript, use {sup.index}. All data available is: title The current tab title. index The tab index usable with goto_tab N shortcuts. layout_name The current layout name. num_windows The number of windows in the tab. num_window_groups The number of window groups (a window group is a window and all of its overlay windows) in the tab. tab.active_wd The working directory of the currently active window in the tab (expensive, requires syscall). Use tab.active_oldest_wd to get the directory of the oldest foreground process rather than the newest. tab.active_exe The name of the executable running in the foreground of the cur- rently active window in the tab (expensive, requires 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 or the empty string if no keyboard mode is active. tab.last_focused_progress_percent If a command running in a window reports the progress for a task, show this progress as a percentage from the most recently focused window in the tab. Empty string if no progress is re- ported. tab.progress_percent If a command running in a window reports the progress for a task, show this progress as a percentage from all windows in the tab, averaged. Empty string is no progress is reported. Note that formatting is done by Python's string formatting machinery, so you can use, for instance, {layout_name[:2].upper()} to show only the first two letters of the layout name, upper-cased. If you want to style the text, you can use styling directives, for example: {fmt.fg.red}red{fmt.fg.tab}normal{fmt.bg._00FF00}greenbg{fmt.bg.tab}. Similarly, for bold and italic: {fmt.bold}bold{fmt.nobold}nor- mal{fmt.italic}italic{fmt.noitalic}. The 256 eight terminal colors can be used as fmt.fg.color0 through fmt.fg.color255. Note that for back- ward compatibility, if {bell_symbol} or {activity_symbol} are not present in the template, they are prepended to it. active_tab_title_template active_tab_title_template none Template to use for active tabs. If not specified falls back to tab_title_template. active_tab_foreground, active_tab_background, active_tab_font_style, inactive_tab_foreground, inactive_tab_background, inac- tive_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 Tab bar colors and styles. tab_bar_background tab_bar_background none Background color for the tab bar. Defaults to using the terminal back- ground color. tab_bar_margin_color tab_bar_margin_color none Color for the tab bar margin area. Defaults to using the terminal back- ground color for margins above and below the tab bar. For side margins the default color is chosen to match the background color of the neigh- boring tab. Color scheme foreground, background foreground #dddddd background #000000 The foreground and background colors. background_opacity background_opacity 1.0 The opacity of the background. A number between zero and one, where one is opaque and zero is fully transparent. This will only work if sup- ported by the OS (for instance, when using a compositor under X11). Note that it only sets the background color's opacity in cells that have the same background color as the default terminal background, so that things like the status bar in vim, powerline prompts, etc. still look good. But it means that 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 es- cape codes to set the terminals default colors in a shell script to launch your editor. See also transparent_background_colors. Be aware that using a value less than 1.0 is a (possibly significant) perfor- mance hit. When using a low value for this setting, it is desirable that you set the background color to a color the matches the general color of the desktop background, for best text rendering. Note that to workaround window managers not doing gamma-corrected blending kitty makes background_opacity non-linear which means, especially for light backgrounds you might need to make the value much lower than you expect to get good results, see #6218 for details. 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 to a positive value to enable background blur (blurring of the vi- suals behind a transparent window) on platforms that support 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 to too high a value 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 KDE. background_image background_image none Path to a background image. Must be in PNG/JPEG/WEBP/TIFF/GIF/BMP for- mat. 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. background_image_linear background_image_linear no When background image is scaled, whether linear interpolation should be used. transparent_background_colors A space separated list of upto 7 colors, with opacity. When the back- ground color of a cell matches one of these colors, it is rendered semi-transparent using the specified opacity. Useful in more complex UIs like editors where you could want more than a single background color to be rendered as transparent, for instance, for a cursor highlight line background or a highlighted block. Termi- nal applications can set this color using The kitty color control es- cape 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 dynamic_background_opacity dynamic_background_opacity no Allow changing of the background_opacity dynamically, using either key- board shortcuts (ctrl+shift+a>m and ctrl+shift+a>l) or the remote con- trol facility. Changing this option by reloading the config is not sup- ported. background_tint background_tint 0.0 How much to tint the background image by the background color. This op- tion makes it easier to read the text. Tinting is done using the cur- rent background color for each window. This option applies only if background_opacity is set and transparent windows are supported or background_image is set. background_tint_gaps background_tint_gaps 1.0 How much to tint the background image at the window gaps by the back- ground color, after applying background_tint. Since this is multiplica- tive with background_tint, it can be used to lighten the tint over the window gaps for a separated look. dim_opacity dim_opacity 0.4 How much to dim text that has the DIM/FAINT attribute set. One means no dimming 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 selec- tion_foreground to none will cause the foreground color to be used un- changed. Note that these colors can be overridden by the program run- ning in the terminal. The color table The 256 terminal colors. There are 8 basic colors, each color has a dull and bright version, for the first 16 colors. You can set the re- maining 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 1 (beige) mark3_foreground mark3_foreground black Color for marks of type 3 mark3_background mark3_background #f274bc Color for marks of type 3 (violet) Advanced shell shell . The shell program to execute. The default value of . means to use the value of of the SHELL environment variable or if 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 en- sure 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 edit- ing 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 will remain open when the child ex- its as long as there are still other processes outputting to the termi- nal (for example disowned or backgrounded processes). When enabled with yes, the window will close as soon as the child process exits. Note that setting it to yes means that any background processes still using the terminal can fail silently because their stdout/stderr/stdin no longer work. remote_control_password Allow other programs to control kitty using passwords. This option can be specified 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 exam- ple: 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 speci- fied 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 com- mand. 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 allow_remote_control no Allow other programs to control kitty. If you turn this on, other pro- grams 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 de- fault 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 un- conditionally. Requests received over the TTY are denied. See listen_on. socket Remote control requests received over a socket are accepted un- conditionally. 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 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:${TEMP}/mykitty or unix:@mykitty (on Linux). Environment variables are expanded and relative paths are resolved with respect to the tempo- rary directory. If {kitty_pid} is present, then it is replaced by the PID of the kitty process, otherwise the PID of the kitty process is ap- pended to the value, with a hyphen. For TCP sockets such as tcp:local- host:0 a random port is always used even if a non-zero port number is specified. See the help for kitty --listen-on for more details. Note that this will be ignored unless allow_remote_control is set to either: yes, socket or socket-only. Changing this option by reloading the con- fig is not supported. env Specify the environment variables to be set in all child processes. Us- ing the name with an equal sign (e.g. env VAR=) will set it to the empty string. Specifying only the name (e.g. env VAR) will remove the variable from the child process' environment. Note that environment variables are expanded recursively, for example: env VAR1=a env VAR2=${HOME}/${VAR1}/b The value of VAR2 will be <path to home directory>/a/b. 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 sam- ple is available. 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 rela- tive 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 append 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 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 of- ficial binary builds. Distro packages or source builds do not do update checking. Changing this option by reloading the config is not sup- ported. startup_session startup_session none Path to a session file to use for all kitty instances. Can be overrid- den by using the kitty --session =none command line option for individ- ual instances. See Startup Sessions in the kitty documentation for de- tails. Note that relative paths are interpreted with respect to the kitty config directory. Environment variables in the path are ex- panded. 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 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 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. 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 initi- ating transfers from trusted computers, over trusted networks or en- crypted transports, as it allows any programs running on the remote ma- chine to read/write to the local filesystem, without permission. allow_hyperlinks allow_hyperlinks yes Process hyperlink escape sequences (OSC 8). If disabled OSC 8 escape sequences are ignored. Otherwise they become clickable links, that you can click with the mouse or by using the hints kitten. The special value of ask means that kitty will ask before opening the link when clicked. shell_integration shell_integration enabled Enable shell integration on supported shells. This enables features such as jumping to previous prompts, browsing the output of the previ- ous command in a pager, etc. on supported shells. Set to disabled to turn off shell integration, completely. It is also possible to disable individual features, set to a space separated list of these values: no-rc, no-cursor, no-title, no-cwd, no-prompt-mark, no-complete, no-sudo. See Shell integration for details. allow_cloning allow_cloning ask Control whether programs running in the terminal can request new win- dows to be created. The canonical example is clone-in-kitty. By de- fault, kitty will ask for permission for each clone request. Allowing cloning unconditionally gives programs running in the terminal (includ- ing over SSH) permission to execute arbitrary code, as the user who is running the terminal, on the computer that the terminal is running on. clone_source_strategies clone_source_strategies venv,conda,env_var,path Control what shell code is 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 used by the Python stdlib venv module and allows cloning venvs automati- cally. 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 notify_on_cmd_finish never Show a desktop notification when a long-running command finishes (needs shell_integration). The possible values are: never Never send a notification. 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 inac- tive 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. There are two optional arguments: First, the minimum duration for what is considered a long running com- mand. 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 val- ues are: notify Send a desktop notification. The subsequent arguments are op- tional 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 notifica- tion policy is unfocused or invisible the notification is auto- matically 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. 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 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 used by various programs 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 reload- ing the config will only affect newly created windows. terminfo_type 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 data- bases. 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. This 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. forward_stdio forward_stdio no Forward STDOUT and STDERR of the kitty process to child processes. This is useful for debugging as it allows child processes to 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. Sets the KITTY_STDIO_FORWARDED=fdnum environment variable so child processes know about the forwarding. Note that on macOS this pre- vents 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 wayland_titlebar_color wayland_titlebar_color system The color of the kitty window's titlebar on Wayland systems with client side window decorations such as GNOME. A value of system means to use the default system colors, a value of background means to use the back- ground color of the currently active kitty window and finally you can use an arbitrary color, such as #12af59 or red. macos_titlebar_color macos_titlebar_color system The color of the kitty window's titlebar on macOS. A value of system means to use the default system color, light or dark can also be used to set it explicitly. A value of background means to use the background color of the currently active window and finally you can use an arbi- trary color, such as #12af59 or red. WARNING: This option works by us- ing a hack when arbitrary color (or background) is configured, as there is no proper Cocoa API for it. It sets the background color of the en- tire window and makes the titlebar transparent. As such it is incompat- ible with background_opacity. If you want to use both, you are probably better off just hiding the titlebar with hide_window_decorations. macos_option_as_alt macos_option_as_alt no Use the Option key as an Alt key on macOS. With this set to no, kitty will use the macOS native Option+Key to enter Unicode character behav- ior. This will break any Alt+Key keyboard shortcuts in your terminal programs, but you can use the macOS Unicode input technique. You can use the values: left, right or both to use only the left, right or both Option keys as Alt, instead. Note that kitty itself always treats Op- tion the same as Alt. This means you cannot use this option to config- ure different kitty shortcuts for Option+Key vs. Alt+Key. Also, any kitty shortcuts using Option/Alt+Key will take priority, so that any such key presses will not be passed to terminal programs running inside kitty. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. macos_hide_from_tasks macos_hide_from_tasks no Hide the kitty window from running tasks on macOS (+Tab and the Dock). Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. macos_quit_when_last_window_closed macos_quit_when_last_window_closed no Have kitty quit when all the top-level windows are closed on macOS. By default, kitty will stay running, even with no open windows, as is the expected behavior on macOS. macos_window_resizable macos_window_resizable yes Disable this if you want kitty top-level OS windows to not be resizable on macOS. macos_thicken_font macos_thicken_font 0 Draw an extra border around the font with the given width, to increase legibility at small font sizes on macOS. For example, a value of 0.75 will result in rendering that looks similar to sub-pixel antialiasing at common font sizes. Note that in modern kitty, this option is obso- lete (although still supported). Consider using text_composition_strategy instead. macos_traditional_fullscreen macos_traditional_fullscreen no Use the macOS traditional full-screen transition, that is faster, but less pretty. macos_show_window_title_in macos_show_window_title_in all Control where the window title is displayed on macOS. A value of window will show the title of the currently active window at the top of the macOS window. A value of menubar will show the title of the currently active window in the macOS global menu bar, making use of otherwise wasted space. A value of all will show the title in both places, and none hides the title. See macos_menubar_title_max_length for how to control the length of the title in the menu bar. macos_menubar_title_max_length macos_menubar_title_max_length 0 The maximum number of characters from the window title to show in the macOS global menu bar. Values less than one means that there is no max- imum limit. macos_custom_beam_cursor macos_custom_beam_cursor no Use a custom mouse cursor for macOS that is easier to see on both light and dark backgrounds. Nowadays, the default macOS cursor already comes with a white border. WARNING: this might make your mouse cursor invisi- ble on dual GPU machines. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. macos_colorspace macos_colorspace srgb The colorspace in which to interpret terminal colors. The default of srgb will cause colors to match those seen in web browsers. The value of default will use whatever the native colorspace of the display is. The value of displayp3 will use Apple's special snowflake display P3 color space, which will result in over saturated (brighter) colors with some color shift. Reloading configuration will change this value only for newly created OS windows. linux_display_server linux_display_server auto Choose between Wayland and X11 backends. By default, an appropriate backend based on the system state is chosen automatically. Set it to x11 or wayland to force the choice. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. wayland_enable_ime wayland_enable_ime yes Enable Input Method Extension on Wayland. 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 dont need it. Changing this option by re- loading the config is not supported, it will not have any effect. Keyboard shortcuts 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 are present at Functional key definitions. For modifier keys, the names are ctrl (con- trol, ), shift (), alt (opt, option, ), super (cmd, command, ). Simple shortcut mapping is done with the map directive. For full de- tails 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 The full list of actions that can be mapped to key presses is available here. kitty_mod kitty_mod ctrl+shift Special modifier key alias for default shortcuts. You can change the value of this option to alter all default shortcuts that use kitty_mod. clear_all_shortcuts clear_all_shortcuts no Remove all shortcut definitions up to this point. Useful, for instance, to remove the default shortcuts. 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 duplica- tion: 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, pre- fer to use action_alias. This option is a legacy version, present for backwards compatibility. It causes all invocations of the aliased kit- ten 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 ctrl+shift+c copy_to_clipboard map cmd+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 inter- rupt otherwise. Similarly, copy_and_clear_or_interrupt will copy and clear the selection or send an interrupt if there is no selection. Paste from clipboard map ctrl+shift+v paste_from_clipboard map cmd+v paste_from_clipboard Paste from selection map ctrl+shift+s paste_from_selection map shift+insert paste_from_selection Pass selection to program map 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 map ctrl+shift+k scroll_line_up map opt+cmd+page_up scroll_line_up map cmd+up scroll_line_up Scroll line down map ctrl+shift+down scroll_line_down map ctrl+shift+j scroll_line_down map opt+cmd+page_down scroll_line_down map cmd+down scroll_line_down 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 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. Scroll to next shell prompt map ctrl+shift+x scroll_to_prompt 1 Browse scrollback buffer in pager map 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 exam- ple, 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 pro- grams, see The launch command. Browse output of the last shell command in pager map 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. 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 exam- ple: 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 ctrl+shift+n new_os_window map cmd+n new_os_window Works like new_window above, except that it opens a top-level OS win- dow. In particular you can use new_os_window_with_cwd to open a window with the current working directory. Close window map ctrl+shift+w close_window map shift+cmd+d close_window Next window map ctrl+shift+] next_window Previous window map ctrl+shift+[ previous_window Move window forward map ctrl+shift+f move_window_forward Move window backward map ctrl+shift+b move_window_backward Move window to top map ctrl+shift+` move_window_to_top Start resizing window map ctrl+shift+r start_resizing_window map 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 Display overlay numbers and alphabets on the window, and switch the fo- cus to the window when you press the key. When there are only two win- dows, the focus will be switched directly without displaying the over- lay. You can change the overlay characters and their order with option visual_window_select_characters. Visually swap window with another map ctrl+shift+f8 swap_with_window Works like focus_visible_window above, but swaps the window. 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 ctrl+shift+t new_tab map cmd+t new_tab Close tab map ctrl+shift+q close_tab map cmd+w close_tab Close OS window map 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 ctrl+shift+alt+t set_tab_title map shift+cmd+i set_tab_title You can also create shortcuts to go to specific tabs, with 1 being the first tab, 2 the second tab and -1 being the previously active tab, -2 being the tab active before the previously active tab and so on. Any number larger than the number of tabs goes to the last tab and any num- ber less than the number of previously used tabs in the history goes to the oldest previously used tab in the history: map ctrl+alt+1 goto_tab 1 map ctrl+alt+2 goto_tab 2 Just as with new_window above, you can also pass the name of arbitrary commands to run when using new_tab and new_tab_with_cwd. Finally, if you want the new tab to open next to the current tab rather than at the end of the tabs list, use: map ctrl+t new_tab !neighbor [optional cmd to run] Layout management Next layout map ctrl+shift+l next_layout You can also create shortcuts to switch to specific layouts: map ctrl+alt+t goto_layout tall map ctrl+alt+s goto_layout stack Similarly, to switch back to the previous layout: map ctrl+alt+p last_used_layout There is also a toggle_layout action that switches to the named layout or back to the previous layout if in the named layout. Useful to tem- porarily "zoom" the active window by switching to the stack layout: map ctrl+alt+z toggle_layout stack Font sizes You can change the font size for all top-level kitty OS windows at a time or only the current one. 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 To setup shortcuts for specific font sizes: map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all 10.0 To setup shortcuts to change only the current OS window's font size: map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size current 10.0 Select and act on visible text Use the hints kitten to select text and either pass it to an external program or insert it into the terminal or copy it to the clipboard. Open URL map ctrl+shift+e open_url_with_hints Open a currently visible URL using the keyboard. The program used to open the URL is specified in open_url_with. Insert selected path map ctrl+shift+p>f kitten hints --type path --program - Select a path/filename and insert it into the terminal. Useful, for in- stance to run git commands on a filename output from a previous git command. Open selected path map ctrl+shift+p>shift+f kitten hints --type path Select a path/filename and open it with the default open program. Insert selected line map ctrl+shift+p>l kitten hints --type line --program - Select a line of text and insert it into the terminal. Useful for the output of things like: ls -1. Insert selected word map ctrl+shift+p>w kitten hints --type word --program - Select words and insert into terminal. Insert selected hash map ctrl+shift+p>h kitten hints --type hash --program - Select something that looks like a hash and insert it into the termi- nal. Useful with git, which uses SHA1 hashes to identify commits. Open the selected file at the selected line map ctrl+shift+p>n kitten hints --type linenum Select something that looks like filename:linenum and open it in your default editor at the specified line number. Open the selected hyperlink map ctrl+shift+p>y kitten hints --type hyperlink Select a hyperlink (i.e. a URL that has been marked as such by the ter- minal program, for example, by ls --hyperlink=auto). The hints kitten has many more modes of operation that you can map to different shortcuts. For a full description see hints kitten. Miscellaneous Show documentation map ctrl+shift+f1 show_kitty_doc overview Toggle fullscreen map ctrl+shift+f11 toggle_fullscreen map ctrl+cmd+f toggle_fullscreen Toggle maximized map ctrl+shift+f10 toggle_maximized Toggle macOS secure keyboard entry map opt+cmd+s toggle_macos_secure_keyboard_entry Unicode input map 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 Open the kitty shell in a new window / tab / overlay / os_window to control kitty using commands. Increase background opacity map ctrl+shift+a>m set_background_opacity +0.1 Decrease background opacity map ctrl+shift+a>l set_background_opacity -0.1 Make background fully opaque map ctrl+shift+a>1 set_background_opacity 1 Reset background opacity map 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 create shortcuts to clear/reset the terminal. 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) 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 If you want to operate on all kitty windows instead of just the current one, use all instead of active. Some useful functions that can be defined in the shell rc files to per- form various kinds of clearing of 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" } For instance, using these escape codes, it is possible to 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, you can just add map ctrl+l clear_terminal to_cur- sor_scroll active to kitty.conf which works with no changes to the shell rc files, but 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 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. Note that a handful of options cannot be dynamically changed and require a full restart of kitty. Particularly, when changing short- cuts for actions located on the macOS global menu bar, a full restart is needed. You can also map a keybinding to load a different config file, for example: 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 replace the old ones. Debug kitty configuration map ctrl+shift+f6 debug_config map opt+cmd+, debug_config Show details about exactly what configuration kitty is running with and its host environment. 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 combi- nation. The text to be sent decodes ANSI C escapes so you can use es- capes like \e to send control codes or \u21fb to send Unicode charac- ters (or you can just input the Unicode characters directly as UTF-8 text). 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 acti- vate the shortcut. The possible values are normal, application, kitty or a comma separated combination of them. The modes normal and appli- cation 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. 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. Mappable actions The actions described below can be mapped to any key press or mouse ac- tion using the map and mouse_map directives in kitty.conf. For configu- ration examples, see the default shortcut links for each action. To read about keyboard mapping in more detail, see Making your keyboard dance. 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_or_interrupt Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard, if no selection, send SIGINT (aka ctrl+c) copy_to_clipboard Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+c pass_selection_to_program Pass the selected text from the active window to the specified program Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+o paste Paste the specified text into the current window. ANSI C escapes are decoded. 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 Requires Shell integration to work Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+g show_last_non_empty_command_output Show the last non-empty output from a shell command in a pager like less Requires Shell integration to work show_last_visited_command_output Show 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 to work show_scrollback Show scrollback in a pager like less Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+h copy_to_buffer Copy the selection from the active window to the specified buffer See Multiple copy/paste buffers for details. paste_from_buffer Paste from the specified buffer to the active window See Multiple copy/paste buffers for details. paste_from_clipboard Paste from the clipboard to the active window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+v 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 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 for details. debug_config Show the effective configuration kitty is running with Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f6 show_kitty_env_vars Show the environment variables that the kitty process sees Layouts goto_layout Switch to the named layout In case there are multiple layouts with the same name and different op- tions, 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 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. 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 re- leases 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 for details. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+alt+h 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 signal_child Send the specified SIGNAL to the foreground process in the active win- dow For example: map f1 signal_child SIGTERM clear_terminal Clear the terminal See reset_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 Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+ctrl+l, option+cmd+k, cmd+k, ctrl+shift+delete combine Combine multiple actions and map to a single keypress The syntax is: map key combine <separator> action1 <separator> action2 <separator> action3 ... For example: map kitty_mod+e combine : new_window : next_layout map kitty_mod+e combine | new_tab | goto_tab -1 disable_ligatures_in Turn on/off ligatures in the specified window See disable_ligatures for details discard_event Discard this event completely ignoring it edit_config_file Edit the kitty.conf config file in your favorite text editor Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f2 hide_macos_app Hide macOS kitty application Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+h hide_macos_other_apps Hide macOS other applications Default shortcuts using this action: opt+cmd+h 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: • 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 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 reloads the default config file, otherwise loads the specified config files, in order. Loading a config file re- places all config options. For example: map f5 load_config_file /path/to/some/kitty.conf Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f5 minimize_macos_window Minimize macOS window Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+m open_url Open the specified URL Default shortcuts using this action: shift+cmd+/ open_url_with_hints Click a URL using the keyboard Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+e 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. set_colors Change colors in the specified windows 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 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. Mouse actions 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 Scrolling scroll_end Scroll to the bottom of the scrollback buffer when in main screen Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+end scroll_home Scroll to the top of the scrollback buffer when in main screen Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+home 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. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+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. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+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_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_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. Takes a single, optional, number as argument which 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. For example: map ctrl+p scroll_to_prompt -1 # jump to previous 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, ctrl+shift+z Tab management close_other_tabs_in_os_window Close all the tabs in the current OS window other than the currently active tab close_tab Close the current tab Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+q detach_tab Detach a tab, moving it to another OS Window See detaching windows for details. goto_tab Go to the specified tab, 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 Move the active tab backward Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+, move_tab_forward Move the active tab forward Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+. new_tab Create a new tab Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+t new_tab_with_cwd Create a new tab with working directory for the window in it set to the same as the active window next_tab Make the next tab active Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+right previous_tab Make the previous tab active Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+left select_tab Interactively select a tab to switch to set_tab_title Change the title of the active tab interactively, by typing in the new title. If you specify an argument to this action then that is used as the ti- tle instead of asking for it. Use the empty string ("") to reset the title to default. Use a space (" ") to indicate that 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 shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+alt+t Window management set_window_title Change the title of the active window interactively, by typing in the new title. If you specify an argument to this action then that is used as the ti- tle instead of asking for it. Use the empty string ("") to reset the title to default. Use a space (" ") to indicate that the prompt should not be pre-filled. For example: # 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 Close all windows in the tab other than the currently active window eighth_window Focus the eighth window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+8 fifth_window Focus the fifth window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+5 first_window Focus the first window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+1 focus_visible_window Focus a visible window by pressing the number of the window. Window numbers are displayed over the windows for easy selection in this mode. See visual_window_select_characters. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f7 fourth_window Focus the fourth window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+4 move_window Move the window in the specified direction For example: map ctrl+left move_window left map ctrl+down move_window bottom move_window_backward Move active window backward (swap it with the previous window) Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+b move_window_forward Move active window forward (swap it with the next window) Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f move_window_to_top Move active window to the top (make it the first window) Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+` neighboring_window Focus the neighboring window in the current tab For example: map ctrl+left neighboring_window left map ctrl+down neighboring_window bottom next_window Focus the next window in the current tab Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+] ninth_window Focus the ninth window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+9 nth_window Focus the nth window if positive or the previously active windows if negative. When the number is larger than the number of windows focus 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 Focus the previous window in the current tab Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+[ reset_window_sizes Reset window sizes undoing any dynamic resizing of windows resize_window Resize the active window by the specified amount See Resizing windows for details. second_window Focus the second window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+2 seventh_window Focus the seventh window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+7 sixth_window Focus the sixth window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+6 swap_with_window Swap the current window with another window in the current tab, se- lected visually. See visual_window_select_characters Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f8 tenth_window Focus the tenth window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+0 third_window Focus the third window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+3 change_font_size Change the font size for the current or all OS Windows See Font sizes for details. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+minus, ctrl+shift+equal, ctrl+shift+backspace close_os_window Close the currently active OS Window Default shortcuts using this action: shift+cmd+w close_other_os_windows Close all other OS Windows other than the OS Window containing the cur- rently active window close_window Close the currently active window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+w close_window_with_confirmation Close window with confirmation 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 Detach a window, moving it to another tab or OS Window See detaching windows for details. new_os_window New OS Window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+n new_os_window_with_cwd New OS Window with the same working directory as the currently active window new_window Create a new window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+enter new_window_with_cwd Create a new window with working directory same as that of the active window nth_os_window Focus 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 focus the last OS window. A value of zero will refocus the currently focused OS window, this is useful if focus is not on any kitty OS window at all, however, it will only work 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 Quit, closing all windows Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+q set_background_opacity Set the background opacity for the active OS Window 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, ctrl+shift+a>1, ctrl+shift+a>m, ctrl+shift+a>d start_resizing_window Resize the active window interactively See Resizing windows for details. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+r toggle_fullscreen Toggle the fullscreen status of the active OS Window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f11 toggle_maximized Toggle the maximized status of the active OS Window Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f10 toggle_tab Toggle to the tab matching the specified expression Switches to the matching tab if another tab is current, otherwise switches to the last used tab. Useful to easily switch to and back from a tab using a single shortcut. Note that toggling works only between tabs in the same OS window. See Matching windows and tabs for details on the match expression. For example: map f1 toggle_tab title:mytab Author Kovid Goyal Copyright 2025, Kovid Goyal 0.40.1 May 03, 2025 kitty.conf(5)
Name | Overview | Fonts | Text cursor customization | Scrollback | Mouse | Performance tuning | Terminal bell | Window layout | Tab bar | Color scheme | Advanced | Os specific tweaks | Keyboard shortcuts | Sample kitty.conf | All mappable actions | Author | Copyright
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=kitty.conf&sektion=5&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+14.3.quarterly>