kitty.conf(5) kitty kitty.conf(5) Name kitty.conf - Configuration file for kitty Overview kitty is highly customizable, everything from keyboard shortcuts, to ren- dering frames-per-second. See below for an overview of all customization possibilities. You can open the config file within kitty by pressing ctrl+shift+f2 (^a+, on macOS). A kitty.conf with commented default configurations and descriptions will be created if the file does not exist. The configuration is automati- cally reloaded when modified, controlled by auto_reload_config. You can manually reload the config by pressing ctrl+shift+f5 (^a+^a+, 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 (^a=Y+^a+, on macOS). kitty looks for a config file in the OS config directories (usually ~/.con- fig/kitty/kitty.conf) but you can pass a specific path via the kitty --con- fig 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 # char- acter. 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 loca- tion of the current config file. Note that environment variables are ex- panded, so ${USER}.conf becomes name.conf if USER=name. A special environ- ment variable KITTY_OS is available, to detect the operating system. It is linux, macos or bsd. Also, you can use globinclude to include files match- ing a shell glob pattern and envinclude to include configuration from envi- ronment variables. Finally, you can dynamically generate configuration by running a program using geninclude. For example: # Include other.conf include other.conf # Include *.conf files from all subdirs of kitty.d inside the kitty config dir globinclude kitty.d/**/*.conf # Include the *contents* of all env vars starting with KITTY_CONF_ envinclude KITTY_CONF_* # Run the script dynamic.py placed in the same directory as this config file # and include its :file:`STDOUT`. Note that Python scripts are fastest # as they use the embedded Python interpreter, but any executable script # or program is supported, in any language. Remember to mark the script # file executable. geninclude dynamic.py Fonts kitty has very powerful font management. You can configure individual font faces and even specify special fonts for particular characters. font_family, bold_font, italic_font, bold_italic_font font_family monospace bold_font auto italic_font auto bold_italic_font auto You can specify different fonts for the bold/italic/bold-italic variants. The easiest way to select fonts is to run the kitten choose-fonts command which will present a nice UI for you to select the fonts you want with pre- views 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 He- brew word xx"xx(C)xxx, selecting the character that on the screen appears to be x actually writes into the selection buffer the character x. 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 chal- lenging to work with, so this option is provided to turn it off. Further- more, 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, sepa- rated by commas and ranges separated by hyphens. This option can be speci- fied 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 charac- ters, if the character is followed by one or more spaces, kitty will use those extra cells to render the character larger, if the character in the font has a wide aspect ratio. Using this option you can force kitty to re- strict the specified code points to render in the specified number of cells (defaulting to one cell). This option can be specified multiple times. The syntax is: narrow_symbols codepoints [optionally the number of cells] disable_ligatures disable_ligatures never Choose how you want to handle multi-character ligatures. The default is to always render them. You can tell kitty to not render them when the cursor is over them by using cursor to make editing easier, or have kitty never render them at all by using always, if you don't like them. The ligature strategy can be set per-window either using the kitty remote control facil- ity or by defining shortcuts for it in kitty.conf, for example: map alt+1 disable_ligatures_in active always map alt+2 disable_ligatures_in all never map alt+3 disable_ligatures_in tab cursor Note that this refers to programming ligatures, typically implemented using the calt OpenType feature. For disabling general ligatures, use the font_features option. font_features Has no default values. Example values are shown below: font_features none Choose exactly which OpenType features to enable or disable. Note that for the main fonts, features can be specified when selecting the font using the choose-fonts kitten. This setting is useful for fallback fonts. Some fonts might have features worthwhile in a terminal. For example, Fira Code includes a discretionary feature, zero, which in that font changes the appearance of the zero (0), to make it more easily distinguishable from A. 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 docu- mentation. 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 dis- able 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 en- tirely, and only look at their isolated forms if they show up in a docu- ment. 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 under- line and strikethrough. The modifications can have the suffix px for pixels or % for percentage of original value. No suffix means use pts. For exam- ple: modify_font underline_position -2 modify_font underline_thickness 150% modify_font strikethrough_thickness 200% modify_font strikethrough_position 2px Additionally, you can modify the size of the cell in which each font glyph is rendered and the baseline at which the glyph is placed in the cell. For example: modify_font cell_width 80% modify_font cell_height -2px modify_font baseline 3 Note that modifying the baseline will automatically adjust the underline and strikethrough positions by the same amount. Increasing the baseline raises glyphs inside the cell and decreasing it lowers them. Decreasing the cell size might cause rendering artifacts, so use with care. box_drawing_scale box_drawing_scale 0.001, 1, 1.5, 2 The sizes of the lines used for the box drawing Unicode characters. These values are in pts. They will be scaled by the monitor DPI to arrive at a pixel value. There must be four values corresponding to thin, normal, thick, and very thick lines. undercurl_style undercurl_style thin-sparse The style with which undercurls are rendered. This option takes the form (thin|thick)-(sparse|dense). Thin and thick control the thickness of the undercurl. Sparse and dense control how often the curl oscillates. With sparse the curl will peak once per character, with dense twice. Changing this option dynamically via reloading the config or remote control is unde- fined. underline_exclusion underline_exclusion 1 By default kitty renders gaps in underlines when they overlap with descen- ders (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 speci- fied 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 re- loading the config or remote control is undefined. text_composition_strategy text_composition_strategy platform Control how kitty composites text glyphs onto the background color. The de- fault 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 lumi- nance 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 percent- age 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 A setting to prevent low contrast between foreground and background colors. Useful when working with applications that use colors that do not contrast well with your preferred color scheme. The default value is 0, which means no color overriding is performed. There are two modes of operation: A value with the suffix ratio represents the minimum accepted contrast ra- tio between the foreground and background color. Possible values range from 0.0 ratio to 21.0 ratio. For example, to meet WCAG level AA a value of 4.5 ratio can be provided. The algorithm is implemented using HSLuv which enables it to change the perceived lightness of a color just as much as needed without really changing its hue and saturation. A value with the suffix % represents the minimum accepted difference in lu- minance 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 foreground color will be set to white if the background is dark or black if the background is light. WARNING: Some programs use characters (such as block characters) for graph- ics display and may expect to be able to set the foreground and background to the same color (or similar colors). If you see unexpected stripes, dots, lines, incorrect color, no color where you expect color, or any kind of graphic display problem try setting text_fg_override_threshold to 0 to see if this is the cause of the problem or consider using the ratio mode of op- eration described above instead of the % mode of operation. 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 ter- minal 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 back- ground color of the cell underneath instead, use the special keyword: back- ground. 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 re- loading the config this will be changed only if the cursor shape has not been set by the program running in the terminal. This sets the default cur- sor shape, applications running in the terminal can override it. In partic- ular, 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 unfo- cused cursor shape can be one of block, beam, underline, hollow and un- changed (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 minimum 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 animated over a sec- ond, 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 sup- ports all the CSS easing functions. Note that turning on animations uses extra power as it means the screen is redrawn multiple times per blink in- terval. See also, cursor_stop_blinking_after. This setting also controls blinking text, which blinks in exact rhythm with the cursor. cursor_stop_blinking_after cursor_stop_blinking_after 15.0 Stop blinking cursor after the specified number of seconds of keyboard in- activity. Set to zero to never stop blinking. This setting also controls blinking text, which blinks in exact rhythm with the cursor. cursor_trail cursor_trail 0 Set this to a value larger than zero to enable a "cursor trail" animation. This is an animation that shows a "trail" following the movement of the text cursor. It makes it easy to follow large cursor jumps and makes for a cool visual effect of the cursor zooming around the screen. The actual value of this option controls when the animation is triggered. It is a num- ber of milliseconds. The trail animation only follows cursors that have stayed in their position for longer than the specified number of millisec- onds. This prevents trails from appearing for cursors that rapidly change their positions during UI updates in complex applications. See cursor_trail_decay to control the animation speed and cursor_trail_start_threshold to control when a cursor trail is started. 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 ac- cepts 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 unnecessary cursor trail animation. cursor_trail_color cursor_trail_color none Set the color of the cursor trail when cursor_trail is enabled. If set to 'none' (the default), the cursor trail will use the cursor's background color. Otherwise, specify a color value (e.g., #ff0000 for red, or a named color like 'red'). This allows you to customize the appearance of the cur- sor trail independently of the cursor color. 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 scroll- back. 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. scrollbar scrollbar scrolled Control when the scrollbar is displayed. scrolled means when the scrolling backwards has started. hovered means when the mouse is hovering on the right edge of the window. scrolled-and-hovered means when the mouse is over the scrollbar region and scrolling backwards has started. always means whenever any scrollback is present never means disable the scrollbar. scrollbar_interactive scrollbar_interactive yes If disabled, the scrollbar will not be controllable via the mouse and all mouse events will pass through the scrollbar. scrollbar_jump_on_click scrollbar_jump_on_click yes When enabled clicking in the scrollbar track will cause the scroll position to jump to the clicked location, otherwise the scroll position will only move towards the position by a single screenful, which is how traditional scrollbars behave. scrollbar_width scrollbar_width 0.5 The width of the scroll bar in units of cell width. scrollbar_hover_width scrollbar_hover_width 1 The width of the scroll bar when the mouse is hovering over it, in units of cell width. scrollbar_handle_opacity scrollbar_handle_opacity 0.5 The opacity of the scrollbar handle, 0 being fully transparent and 1 being full opaque. scrollbar_radius scrollbar_radius 0.3 The radius (curvature) of the scrollbar handle in units of cell width. Should be less than scrollbar_width. scrollbar_gap scrollbar_gap 0.1 The gap between the scrollbar and the window edge in units of cell width. scrollbar_min_handle_height scrollbar_min_handle_height 1 The minimum height of the scrollbar handle in units of cell height. Pre- vents the handle from becoming too small when there is a lot of scrollback. scrollbar_hitbox_expansion scrollbar_hitbox_expansion 0.25 The extra area around the handle to allow easier grabbing of the scollbar in units of cell width. scrollbar_track_opacity scrollbar_track_opacity 0 The opacity of the scrollbar track, 0 being fully transparent and 1 being full opaque. scrollbar_track_hover_opacity scrollbar_track_hover_opacity 0.1 The opacity of the scrollbar track when the mouse is over the scrollbar, 0 being fully transparent and 1 being full opaque. scrollbar_handle_color scrollbar_handle_color foreground The color of the scrollbar handle. A value of foreground means to use the current foreground text color, a value of selection_background means to use the current selection background color. Also, you can use an arbitrary color, such as #12af59 or red. scrollbar_track_color scrollbar_track_color foreground The color of the scrollbar track. A value of foreground means to use the current foreground text color, a value of selection_background means to use the current selection background color. Also, you can use an arbitrary color, such as #12af59 or red. progress_bar progress_bar top When a program uses the OSC 9;4 escape sequence to report progress, draw a progress bar in the specified position of the window. The bar uses the same style and color settings as the scrollbar . left a vertical progress bar on the left edge right a vertical progress bar on the right edge top a horizontal progress bar on the top edge bottom a horizontal progress bar on the bottom edge hidden dont show the progress bar scrollback_pager 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 for- matting. 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. Sim- ilarly CURSOR_LINE and CURSOR_COLUMN will be replaced by the current cursor position or set to 0 if there is no cursor, for example, when showing the last command output. If you would rather use neovim to view the scrollback, use something like this: scrollback_pager nvim --cmd 'set eventignore=FileType' +'nnoremap q ZQ' +'call nvim_open_term(0, {})' +'set nomodified nolist' +'$' - The above works for neovim 0.12 and newer. There is also a dedicated plugin kitty-scrollback.nvim you can use with more features that works with older neovim as well. 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 in- teractive scrolling but will be piped to the pager program when viewing 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 dis- ables this feature. The maximum allowed size is 4GB. Note that on config reload if this is changed it will only affect newly created windows, not existing ones. scrollback_fill_enlarged_window scrollback_fill_enlarged_window no Fill new space with lines from the scrollback buffer after enlarging a win- dow. 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 preci- sion scrolling devices on platforms such as macOS and Wayland. Use negative numbers to change scroll direction. See also wheel_scroll_min_lines. wheel_scroll_min_lines wheel_scroll_min_lines 1 The minimum number of lines scrolled by the mouse wheel. The scroll multi- plier 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 ma- cOS and Wayland. Use negative numbers to change scroll direction. pixel_scroll pixel_scroll yes Enable per-pixel scrolling, in the kitty scrollback buffer, when using high precision input devices (for example touchpads). When enabled, kitty's own scrollback will move by sub-line increments instead of only whole lines. This does not affect applications running inside the terminal (for example full-screen TUIs) that handle scrolling themselves. momentum_scroll momentum_scroll 0.96 The amount of friction to apply to slow down momentum (inertial) scrolling. A number from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning no momentum scrolling and 1 meaning infinite scrolling. Note that this setting only applies on platforms such as Wayland, that do not provide native momentum scrolling. On macOS, the native OS based momentum scrolling is used. Also, momentum scrolling only applies to "finger" based devices such as touchpads and touchscreens. Changes to this setting only take effect after a kitty restart. 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. By default, once the cursor is hidden, it is immediately unhidden on any further mouse events. Two formats are supported: * <hide-wait> * <hide-wait> <unhide-wait> <unhide-threshold> <scroll-unhide> To change the unhide behavior, the optional parameters <unhide-wait>, <un- hide-threshold>, and <scroll-unhide> may be set. <unhide-wait> Waits for the specified number of seconds after mouse events before unhiding the mouse cursor. Set to zero to unhide mouse cursor imme- diately on mouse activity. This is useful to prevent the mouse cur- sor from unhiding on accidental swipes on the trackpad. <unhide-threshold> Sets the threshold of mouse activity required to unhide the mouse cursor, when the <unhide-wait> option is non-zero. When <un- hide-wait> is zero, this has no effect. For example, if <unhide-threshold> is 40 and <unhide-wait> is 2.5, when kitty detects a mouse event, it records the number of mouse events in the next 2.5 seconds, and checks if that exceeds 40 * 2.5 = 100. If it does, then the mouse cursor is unhidden, otherwise nothing happens. <scroll-unhide> Controls what mouse events may unhide the mouse cursor. If enabled, both scroll and movement events may unhide the cursor. If disabled, only mouse movements can unhide the cursor. Examples of valid values: * 0.0 * 1.0 * -1.0 * 0.1 3.0 40 yes url_color, url_style 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 facility 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 under- line and the mouse cursor becomes a hand over them. Even if this option is disabled, URLs are still clickable. See also the underline_hyperlinks op- tion to control how hyperlinks (as opposed to plain text URLs) are dis- played. 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 al- lowed. Additionally, newlines are allowed (but stripped). This is to ac- commodate programs such as mutt that add hard line breaks even for contin- ued lines. \n can be added to this option to disable this behavior. Spe- cial characters can be specified using backslash escapes, to specify a backslash use a double backslash. show_hyperlink_targets show_hyperlink_targets never When the mouse hovers over a terminal hyperlink, show the actual URL that will be activated when the hyperlink is clicked. Set to ctrl, cmd, alt or shift to show only while the corresponding modifier key is pressed (Ctrl, Super (macOS Cmd), Shift). If multiple modifiers are pressed, the URL is shown as long as the configured modifier is among them. always to always show, or never to never show. 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 set- tings 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 example: copy_on_select a1 map shift+cmd+v paste_from_buffer a1 Note that copying to the clipboard is a security risk, as all programs, in- cluding 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 selection, clear it. This is primarily useful on platforms such as Linux where se- lecting text automatically copies it to a special "primary selection" clip- board or if you have copy_on_select set to clipboard. Note that on macOS the system does not provide notifications when the clip- board owner is changed, so there, copying to clipboard in a non-kitty ap- plication 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 or dropping text into the terminal. The supported paste actions are: quote-urls-at-prompt: If the text being pasted is a URL and the cursor is at a shell prompt, automatically quote the URL (needs shell_integration). replace-dangerous-control-codes Replace dangerous control codes from pasted text, without confirma- tion. replace-newline Replace the newline character from pasted text, without confirma- tion. confirm: Confirm the paste if the text to be pasted contains any terminal control codes as this can be dangerous, leading to code execution if the shell/program running in the terminal does not properly handle these. confirm-if-large Confirm the paste if it is very large (larger than 16KB) as pasting large amounts of text into shells can be very slow. filter: Run the filter_paste() function from the file paste-actions.py in the kitty config directory on the pasted text. The text returned by the function will be actually pasted. no-op: Has no effect. 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 forward on double clicking. In addition to these characters any character that is marked as an alphanumeric character in the Unicode database will be matched. If empty (default) select_by_word_characters will be used for both direc- tions. 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 avail- able, or fallback to 0.5. focus_follows_mouse focus_follows_mouse no Set the active window to the window under the mouse when the mouse crosses into a different window. The active window does not change while the mouse moves around within a single window, so an accidental mouse bump will not undo a keyboard-driven window switch. Setting it to drop means focus will only be changed when a drag and drop happens in a window. On macOS, this will also cause the OS Window under the mouse to be focused automatically when the mouse enters it, as long as the kitty application is the active application. 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 op- tional second value sets the shape when dragging in rectangular selection mode. drag_threshold drag_threshold 5 The threshold distance the mouse must move to start a drag and drop. Drag- ging works for tabs and windows. You can drag tabs to re-order them, detach them into new OS Windows or move them to another OS Window. Similarly, by dragging the titlebar of a window (see toggle_window_title_bars) you can re-order it in its layout, detach it or move it to another tab. A value of zero disables all dragging. Note that on Wayland, because of poor design cancelling a drag will detach the tab. This is worked around for compositors that support - xdg-toplevel-drag. 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 key- board 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, dou- bleclick. 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 pos- sible. If you want to unmap a button, map it to nothing. For example, to disable opening of URLs with a plain click: mouse_map left click ungrabbed See all the mappable actions including mouse actions here. NOTE: Once a selection is started, releasing the button that started it will automatically end it and no release event will be dispatched. clear_all_mouse_actions clear_all_mouse_actions no Remove all mouse action definitions up to this point. Useful, for instance, 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 integration to work. Click the link under the mouse or move the cursor even when grabbed mouse_map shift+left click grabbed,ungrabbed mouse_handle_click selection link prompt Same as above, except that the action is performed even when the mouse is grabbed by the program running in the terminal. Click the link under the mouse cursor mouse_map ctrl+shift+left release grabbed,ungrabbed mouse_handle_click link Variant with Ctrl+Shift is present because the simple click based version has an unavoidable delay of click_interval, to disambiguate clicks from double clicks. Discard press event for link click mouse_map ctrl+shift+left press grabbed discard_event Prevent this press event from being sent to the program that has grabbed the mouse, as the corresponding release event is used to open a URL. Paste from the primary selection mouse_map middle release ungrabbed paste_from_selection Start selecting text mouse_map left press ungrabbed mouse_selection normal If you would like to drag and drop hyperlinks or detected URLs, instead of normal use drag_or_normal_select, then if a hyperlink is under the mouse it will be dragged based on drag_threshold otherwise a normal selection will be performed. Start selecting text in a rectangle mouse_map ctrl+alt+left press ungrabbed mouse_selection rectangle Select a word mouse_map left doublepress ungrabbed mouse_selection word Select a line mouse_map left triplepress ungrabbed mouse_selection line Select line from first cell mouse_map alt+left triplepress ungrabbed mouse_selection line_from_begin Select line from point mouse_map ctrl+alt+left triplepress ungrabbed mouse_selection line_from_point Select from the clicked point to the end of the line. If you would like to select the word at the point and then extend to the rest of the line, change line_from_point to word_and_line_from_point. Extend the current selection mouse_map right press ungrabbed mouse_selection extend If you want only the end of the selection to be moved instead of the near- est boundary, use move-end instead of extend. Extend the current selection with shift mouse_map shift+left press ungrabbed mouse_selection extend If you want only the end of the selection to be moved instead of the near- est boundary, use move-end instead of extend. Paste from the primary selection even when grabbed mouse_map shift+middle release ungrabbed,grabbed paste_selection mouse_map shift+middle press grabbed discard_event Start selecting text even when grabbed mouse_map shift+left press grabbed mouse_selection normal Start selecting text in a rectangle even when grabbed mouse_map ctrl+shift+alt+left press ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection rectangle Select a word even when grabbed mouse_map shift+left doublepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection word Select a line even when grabbed mouse_map shift+left triplepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection line Select line from first cell even when grabbed mouse_map shift+alt+left triplepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection line_from_begin Select line from point even when grabbed mouse_map ctrl+shift+alt+left triplepress ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection line_from_point Select from the clicked point to the end of the line even when grabbed. If you would like to select the word at the point and then extend to the rest of the line, change line_from_point to word_and_line_from_point. Extend the current selection even when grabbed mouse_map shift+right press ungrabbed,grabbed mouse_selection extend Show clicked command output in pager mouse_map ctrl+shift+right press ungrabbed mouse_show_command_output Requires shell integration to work. Performance tuning repaint_delay repaint_delay 10 Delay between screen updates (in milliseconds). Decreasing it, increases frames-per-second (FPS) at the cost of more CPU usage. The default value yields ~100 FPS which is more than sufficient for most uses. Note that to actually achieve 100 FPS, you have to either set sync_to_monitor to no or use a monitor with a high refresh rate. Also, to minimize latency when there is pending input to be processed, this option is ignored. 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 responsiveness, but also increase CPU usage and might cause flicker in full screen programs that redraw the entire screen on each loop, because kitty is so fast that partial screen updates will be drawn. This setting is ignored when the in- put 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 key- board 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 silence. visual_bell_duration visual_bell_duration 0.0 The visual bell duration (in seconds). Flash the screen when a bell occurs for the specified number of seconds. Set to zero to disable. The flash is animated, fading in and out over the specified duration. The easing func- tion used for the fading can be controlled. For example, 2.0 linear will casuse the flash to fade in and out linearly. The default if unspecified is to use ease-in-out which fades slowly at the start, middle and end. You can specify different easing functions for the fade-in and fade-out parts, like this: 2.0 ease-in linear. kitty supports all the CSS easing functions. 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 "dh " 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 window in which the bell occurred. macos_dock_badge_on_bell macos_dock_badge_on_bell yes Show a badge on kitty's dock icon when a bell occurs and kitty is not the active application (macOS only). The badge is automatically cleared when kitty regains focus. 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). Relative paths are resolved with respect to the kitty config directory. linux_bell_theme linux_bell_theme __custom The XDG Sound Theme kitty will use to play the bell sound. On Wayland, when the compositor supports it, it is asked to play the system default bell sound, and this setting has no effect. Note that Hyprland claims to support this protocol, but does not actually play a sound. This setting defaults to the custom theme name specified in the XDG Sound theme specifi- cation 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 disabled, the OS Window will initially have size configured by initial_win- dow_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. remember_window_position remember_window_position no If enabled, the OS Window position will be remembered so that new instances of kitty will have the same position as the previous instance. If dis- abled, the OS Window will be placed by the window manager. Note that re- membering of position only works if the underlying desktop environment/win- dow manager supports it. It never works on Wayland. See also kitty --posi- tion to specify the position when launching kitty. 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 alphabetical 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). Val- ues 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 visible. 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. draw_window_borders_for_single_window draw_window_borders_for_single_window no Draw borders around a window even when there is only a single window visi- ble. When enabled and there is only a single window, full borders are drawn around it (as if draw_minimal_borders is false). The border will show in the active color when the window is focused and the OS window has focus, and in the inactive color when the OS window loses focus. This provides a clear visual indicator of whether the kitty window is focused. When there are multiple windows visible, this option has no effect and normal border drawing rules apply. 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 in- stead. 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. 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 vertical 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 in- stead. 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 option. Using a value of center means the cell area will be placed centrally. A value of top-left means the padding will be only at the bottom and right edges. The value can be one of: top-left, top, top-right, left, center, right, bottom-left, bottom, bottom-right. 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 occurred. inactive_text_alpha inactive_text_alpha 1.0 Fade the text in inactive windows by the specified amount. This must be a number between -1 and 1. The absolute value controls the actual opacity, with zero being fully faded and one being fully opaque. When a positive number is used the text is faded even if only a single window is visible when the OS window is not focused. Negative numbers means that text is only faded when more than one kitty window is visible in an OS Window. Fading happens in all but the active window, even if the OS Window is not focused. Thus this is useful if you want to rely on the window manager to indicate OS Window focus and this feature to indicate which kitty window is active insidethe OS Window. hide_window_decorations hide_window_decorations no Hide the window decorations (title-bar and window borders) with yes. On ma- cOS, titlebar-only and titlebar-and-corners can be used to only hide the titlebar and the rounded corners. On Wayland, titlebar-only can be used to hide the titlebar while keeping the window shadow for resizing. On compositors that have server-side deco- rations (such as anything but GNOME), both yes and titlebar-only force client-side decoration mode. Whether this works and exactly what effect it has depends on the window manager/operating system. Note that the effects of changing this option when reloading config are undefined. When using titlebar-only on macOS, it is useful to also set window_margin_width and placement_strategy to prevent the rounded corners 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. Rela- tive 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 configured to have dif- ferent 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, bot- tom-right. window_logo_alpha window_logo_alpha 0.5 The amount the logo should be faded into the background. With zero being 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 percentage 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 single 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 resizing is either paused or finished. On platforms such as macOS, where the operating system sends events corresponding to the start and end of a live resize, the second num- ber is used for redraw-after-pause since kitty can distinguish between a pause and end of resizing. On such systems the first number is ignored and redraw is immediate after end of resize. On other systems only the first number is used so 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 se- lecting a window to focus on with ctrl+shift+f7. The value should be a se- ries 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 confirmation. This con- firmation also applies to requests to quit the entire application (all OS windows, via the quit action). Negative values are converted to positive ones, however, with shell_integration enabled, using negative values means windows sitting at a shell prompt are not counted, only windows where some command is currently running. 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 individ- ual windows, you can map the close_window_with_confirmation action. window_drag_tolerance window_drag_tolerance 2 Control dragging window borders to resize kitty windows. This is the toler- ance in pts for the region around window borders where pressing the left mouse button will start the dragging of window borders. Use a large nega- tive value such as -200 to disable dragging of borders. Note that because kitty uses layouts, dragging borders does not actually resize the window itself, but instead, the layout row/column/slot, which can result in multi- ple windows getting resized. window_title_bar window_title_bar top Control the position of the window title bar relative to the window con- tent. Use window_title_bar_min_windows to control when title bars are shown. Use window_title_template to format the displayed window title. window_title_bar_min_windows window_title_bar_min_windows 0 The minimum number of visible windows in a tab before window title bars are shown. A value of 0 means never show. 1 means always show. 2 or more means show only when at least that many windows are visible. Similar to tab_bar_min_tabs for the tab bar. window_title_template window_title_template "{fmt.fg.red}{bell_symbol}{activity_symbol}{fmt.fg.window}{progress_percent}{title}" A template to render the window title bar text. Uses the same template syn- tax as tab_title_template. Available variables include: {title}, {bell_sym- bol}, {activity_symbol}, {progress_percent}, {custom}, {fmt}, {is_active}. You can also provide a custom draw_window_title(data) function in win- dow_title_bar.py in the kitty config directory, exposed as {custom}. active_window_title_template active_window_title_template none Template to use for the active window title bar. If not set (the value none), the window_title_template is used. window_title_bar_active_foreground window_title_bar_active_foreground none Foreground color for the active window title bar. Defaults to the corre- sponding tab bar color (active_tab_foreground) when set to none. window_title_bar_active_background window_title_bar_active_background none Background color for the active window title bar. Defaults to the corre- sponding tab bar color (active_tab_background) when set to none. window_title_bar_inactive_foreground window_title_bar_inactive_foreground none Foreground color for inactive window title bars. Defaults to the corre- sponding tab bar color (inactive_tab_foreground) when set to none. window_title_bar_inactive_background window_title_bar_inactive_background none Background color for inactive window title bars. Defaults to the corre- sponding tab bar color (inactive_tab_background) when set to none. window_title_bar_align window_title_bar_align center Horizontal alignment of the text in window title bars. 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 second 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_filter A search expression. Only tabs that match this expression will be shown in the tab bar. The currently active tab is always shown, regardless of whether it matches or not. When using this option, the tab bar may be dis- played with less tabs than specified in tab_bar_min_tabs, as evaluating the filter is expensive and is done only at display time. This is most useful when using sessions. An expression of session:~ or session:^$ will show only tabs that belong to the current session or no session. The various tab navigation actions such as goto_tab, next_tab, previous_tab, etc. are au- tomatically restricted to work only on matching tabs. tab_bar_align tab_bar_align left The horizontal alignment of the tab bar, can be one of: left, center, right. tab_bar_show_new_tab_button tab_bar_show_new_tab_button no When set to yes, a + button is always shown at the end of the tab bar as a clickable shortcut to open a new tab. When set to no (the default), the button is hidden at rest but still appears temporarily while a window is being dragged, so it can be used as a drop target to open the window in a new tab. 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 controls how much the corresponding cell fades into the background, with zero being no fade and one being full fade. You can change the number of cells used by adding/removing entries to this list. tab_separator tab_separator " a" 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 power- line 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}{secure_input_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-in- dex as well, use something like: {index}:{title}. Useful if you have short- cuts mapped for goto_tab N. If you prefer to see the index as a super- script, 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. session_name The name of the kitty session file from which this tab was created, if any. active_session_name The name of the kitty session file from which the active window in this tab was created, if any. 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. secure_input_symbol A key symbol when secure input is enabled on macOS and the tab is the active tab, empty otherwise. tab.active_wd The working directory of the currently active window in the tab (ex- pensive, requires syscall). Use tab.active_oldest_wd to get the di- rectory 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 key- board 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 reported. 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, av- eraged. Empty string is no progress is reported. custom This will call a function named draw_title(data) from the file tab_bar.py placed in the kitty config directory. The function will be passed a dictionary of data, the same data that can be used in this template. It can then perform arbitrarily complex processing and return a string. For example: tab_title_template "{custom}" will use the output of the function as the tab title. Any print statements in the draw_title() will print to the STDOUT of the kitty process, useful for debugging. 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}. Sim- ilarly, 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 backward com- patibility, 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, inac- tive_tab_foreground, inactive_tab_background, inactive_tab_font_style active_tab_foreground #000 active_tab_background #eee active_tab_font_style bold-italic inactive_tab_foreground #444 inactive_tab_background #999 inactive_tab_font_style normal Tab bar colors and styles. tab_bar_background tab_bar_background none Background color for the tab bar. Defaults to using the terminal background 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 neighboring tab, unless the window is translucent, in which case the default background is used as it looks better. Color scheme foreground, background foreground #dddddd background #000000 The foreground and background colors. background_opacity background_opacity 1.0 The opacity of the terminal background color. A number between zero and one, where one is opaque and zero is fully transparent. This will only work if supported 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 escape codes to set the termi- nals 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) performance 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 ren- dering. Note also, that this setting does not apply to the background_image, if any. The background image can itself have transparency via its alpha channel if desired, and that will be respected. If you want to dynamically change transparency of windows, set dynamic_background_opacity to yes (this is off by default as it has a per- formance 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 visuals behind a transparent window) on platforms that support it. Only takes ef- fect 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. Cur- rently supported on macOS and Wayland, when the compositor supports the background blur extension. transparent_background_colors A space separated list of upto 7 colors, with opacity. When the background color of a cell matches one of these colors, it is rendered semi-transpar- ent 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. Terminal applica- tions can set this color using The kitty color control escape code. The syntax for specifying colors is: color@opacity, where the @opacity part is optional. When unspecified, the value of background_opacity is used. For example: transparent_background_colors red@0.5 #00ff00@0.3 Note that you must also set background_opacity to something less than 1 for this setting to work properly. dynamic_background_opacity dynamic_background_opacity no Allow changing of the background_opacity dynamically, using either keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+shift+a>m and ctrl+shift+a>l) or the remote control facil- ity. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. background_image background_image none Glob pattern matching one or more background images. Must be in PNG/JPEG/WEBP/TIFF/GIF/BMP format. The first one is used as the default im- age. Multiple images are stored in GPU VRAM (on demand) so that transition- ing between them is instant. In order to move between images in the list of background images, use the remote control command set-background-image, see kitten set-background-image --help for details. You can map the command to a key like this: map f1 remote_control set-background-image +1. Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect. background_image_layout background_image_layout tiled Whether to tile, scale or clamp the background image. The value can be one of tiled, mirror-tiled, scaled, clamped, centered or cscaled. The scaled and cscaled values scale the image to the window size, with cscaled pre- serving the image aspect ratio. Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take ef- fect. background_image_linear background_image_linear no When background image is scaled, whether linear interpolation should be used. Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect. background_tint background_tint 0.0 How much to tint the background image by the background color. This option makes it easier to read the text. Tinting is done using the current back- ground color for each window. This option applies only if background_image is set. Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect. background_tint_gaps background_tint_gaps 1.0 How much to tint the background image at the window gaps by the background color, after applying background_tint. Since this is multiplicative with background_tint, it can be used to lighten the tint over the window gaps for a separated look. Note that when using Change color themes automati- cally when the OS switches between light and dark this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect. dim_opacity dim_opacity 0.4 How much to dim text that has the DIM/FAINT attribute set. One means no dimming 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. Set- ting both of these to none will cause a "reverse video" effect for selec- tions, where the selection will be the cell text color and the text will become the cell background color. Setting only selection_foreground to none will cause the foreground color to be used unchanged. Note that these col- ors can be overridden by the program running in the terminal. palette_generate palette_generate fixed How to fill in any colors that are unset (set to none) in the 256-color palette. By default, for legacy compatibility, these are set to the fixed set of values used by historic terminals. Instead, you can have kitty generate them based on the first 16 colors. The value semantic means use an algorithm that gives good readability in light themes but changes the meaning of some colors compared to the fixed color encoding. The value legacy gives worse readability in light themes but less deviation from the fixed color encoding. The color table The 256 terminal colors. There are 8 basic colors, each color has a dull and bright version, for the first 16 colors. You can set the remaining 240 colors as color16 to color255. color0, color8 color0 #000000 color8 #767676 black color1, color9 color1 #cc0403 color9 #f2201f red color2, color10 color2 #19cb00 color10 #23fd00 green color3, color11 color3 #cecb00 color11 #fffd00 yellow color4, color12 color4 #0d73cc color12 #1a8fff blue color5, color13 color5 #cb1ed1 color13 #fd28ff magenta color6, color14 color6 #0dcdcd color14 #14ffff cyan color7, color15 color7 #dddddd color15 #ffffff white mark1_foreground mark1_foreground black Color for marks of type 1 mark1_background mark1_background #98d3cb Color for marks of type 1 (light steel blue) mark2_foreground mark2_foreground black Color for marks of type 2 mark2_background mark2_background #f2dcd3 Color for marks of type 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) Wide gamut color formats kitty supports modern wide gamut color formats including OKLCH and CIE LAB for precise color specification. These formats can be used anywhere a color value is accepted (foreground, background, color0-color255, etc.). For detailed documentation on wide gamut color formats, syntax, and exam- ples, see Wide gamut color formats. 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 ensure that the shell starts in interactive mode and reads its startup rc files. Environ- ment variables are expanded in this setting. editor editor . The terminal based text editor (such as vim or nano) to use when editing the kitty config file or similar tasks. The default value of . means to use the environment variables VISUAL and EDITOR in that order. If these variables aren't set, kitty will run your shell ($SHELL -l -i -c env) to see if your shell startup rc files set VISUAL or EDITOR. If that doesn't work, kitty will cycle through various known editors (vim, emacs, etc.) and take the first one that exists on your system. close_on_child_death close_on_child_death no Close the window when the child process (usually the shell) exits. With the default value no, the terminal will remain open when the child exits as long as there are still other processes outputting to the terminal (for ex- ample disowned or backgrounded processes). When enabled with yes, the win- dow 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 associ- ated with a set of allowed remote control actions. For example: remote_control_password "my passphrase" get-colors set-colors focus-window focus-tab Only the specified actions will be allowed when using this password. Glob patterns can be used too, for example: remote_control_password "my passphrase" set-tab-* resize-* To get a list of available actions, run: kitten @ --help A set of actions to be allowed when no password is sent can be specified by using an empty password. For example: remote_control_password "" *-colors Finally, the path to a python module can be specified that provides a func- tion is_cmd_allowed that is used to check every remote control command. For example: remote_control_password "my passphrase" my_rc_command_checker.py Relative paths are resolved from the kitty configuration directory. See Customizing authorization with your own program for details. allow_remote_control allow_remote_control no Allow other programs to control kitty. If you turn this on, other programs can control all aspects of kitty, including sending text to kitty windows, opening new windows, closing windows, reading the content of windows, etc. Note that this even works over SSH connections. The default setting of no prevents any form of remote control. The meaning of the various values are: password Remote control requests received over both the TTY device and the socket are confirmed based on passwords, see remote_control_password. socket-only Remote control requests received over a socket are accepted uncondi- tionally. Requests received over the TTY are denied. See listen_on. socket Remote control requests received over a socket are accepted uncondi- tionally. 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 temporary di- rectory. If {kitty_pid} is present, then it is replaced by the PID of the kitty process, otherwise the PID of the kitty process is appended to the value, with a hyphen. For TCP sockets such as tcp:localhost:0 a random port is always used even if a non-zero port number is specified. See the help for kitty --listen-on for more details. Note that this will be ignored un- less allow_remote_control is set to either: yes, socket or socket-only. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported. env Specify the environment variables to be set in all child processes. Using the name with an equal sign (e.g. env VAR=) will set it to the empty string. Specifying only the name (e.g. env VAR) will remove the variable from the child process' environment. Note that environment variables are expanded recursively, for example: env VAR1=a env VAR2=${HOME}/${VAR1}/b The value of VAR2 will be <path to home directory>/a/b. Use the special value read_from_shell to have kitty read the specified variables from your login shell configuration. Useful if your shell startup files setup a bunch of environment variables that you want avail- able to kitty and in kitty session files. Each variable name is treated as a glob pattern to match. For example: env read_from_shell=PATH LANG LC_* XDG_* EDITOR VISUAL. Note that these variables are only read after the con- figuration is fully processed, thus they are not available for recursive expansion and they will override any variables set by other env directives. 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 fil- ters 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 noti- fications can be done by creating a notifications.py file in the kitty con- fig directory (~/.config/kitty). An annotated sample 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 relative to the kitty config directory. Note that reloading the config will only affect windows created after the reload. exe_search_path Control where kitty finds the programs to run. The default search order is: First search the system wide PATH, then ~/.local/bin and ~/bin. If still not found, the PATH defined in the login shell after sourcing all its startup files is tried. Finally, if present, the PATH specified by the env option is tried. This option allows you to prepend, append, or remove paths from this search order. It can be specified multiple times for multiple paths. A simple path will be prepended to the search order. A path that starts with the + sign will be 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 official binary builds. Distro packages or source builds do not do update checking. Chang- ing this option by reloading the config is not supported. auto_reload_config auto_reload_config 0.1 Automatically reload configuration files when they are changed. The setting is the number of seconds to wait before reloading the config files. This allows multiple changes to be debounced. Use a negative value to disable automatic reload. You can manually reload with ctrl+shift+f5. Note that automatic reload works only if the kitty.conf already exists when kitty is started. Changes to this setting by reloading configuration are ignored. startup_session startup_session none Path to a session file to use for all kitty instances. Can be overridden by using the kitty --session =none command line option for individual in- stances. See Sessions in the kitty documentation for details. Note that relative paths are interpreted with respect to the kitty config directory. Environment variables in the path are expanded. Changing this option by re- loading 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-clip- board-ask, read-primary-ask. The default is to allow writing to the clip- board 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 re- mote 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 initiating transfers from trusted computers, over trusted networks or encrypted trans- ports, as it allows any programs running on the remote machine 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 se- quences 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 previous command in a pager, etc. on supported shells. Set to disabled to turn off shell inte- gration, 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 windows to be created. The canonical example is clone-in-kitty. By default, kitty will ask for permission for each clone request. Allowing cloning unconditionally gives programs running in the terminal (including over SSH) permission to execute arbitrary code, as the user who is running the terminal, on the computer that the terminal is running on. 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 automatically. conda Run conda activate $CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV. This supports the virtual en- vironments 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 fo- cus. invisible Only send a notification when the window both is unfocused and not visible to the user, for example, because it is in an inactive tab or its OS window is not currently visible (on platforms that support OS window visibility querying this considers an OS Window visible iff it is active). always Always send a notification, regardless of window state. There are two optional arguments: First, the minimum duration for what is considered a long running command. The default is 5 seconds. Specify a second argument to set the duration. For example: invisible 15. Do not set the value too small, otherwise a command that launches a new OS Window and exits will spam a notification. Second, the action to perform. The default is notify. The possible values are: notify Send a desktop notification. The subsequent arguments are optional and specify when the notification is automatically cleared. The set of possible events when the notification is cleared are: focus and next. focus means that when the notification policy is unfocused or invisible the notification is automatically cleared when the window regains focus. The value of next means that the previous notifica- tion is cleared when the next notification is shown. The default when no arguments are specified is: focus next. bell Ring the terminal bell. notify-bell Send a desktop notification and ring the terminal bell. The argu- ments are the same as for notify. command Run a custom command. All subsequent arguments are the cmdline to run. Some more examples: # Send a notification when a command takes more than 5 seconds in an unfocused window notify_on_cmd_finish unfocused # Send a notification when a command takes more than 10 seconds in a invisible window notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 10.0 # Ring a bell when a command takes more than 10 seconds in a invisible window notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 10.0 bell # Run 'notify-send' when a command takes more than 10 seconds in a invisible window # Here %c is replaced by the current command line and %s by the job exit code notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 10.0 command notify-send "job finished with status: %s" %c # Do not clear previous notification when next command finishes or window regains focus notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 5.0 notify term 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 capabili- ties and behavior of the terminal. If you change it, depending on what pro- grams you run, and how different the terminal you are changing it to is, various things from key-presses, to colors, to various advanced features may not work. Changing this option by reloading the config will only affect newly created windows. terminfo_type terminfo_type path The value of the TERMINFO environment variable to set. This variable is used by programs running in the terminal to search for terminfo databases. The default value of path causes kitty to set it to a filesystem location containing the kitty terminfo database. A value of direct means put the en- tire 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 STD- OUT directly. For example, echo hello world >&$KITTY_STDIO_FORWARDED in a shell will print to the parent kitty's STDOUT. Sets the KITTY_STDIO_FOR- WARDED=fdnum environment variable so child processes know about the for- warding. Note that on macOS this prevents the shell from being run via the login utility so getlogin() will not work in programs run in this session. menu_map Specify entries for various menus in kitty. Currently only the global menubar on macOS is supported. For example: menu_map global "Actions::Launch something special" launch --hold --type=os-window sh -c "echo hello world" This will create a menu entry named "Launch something special" in an "Ac- tions" 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 background color of the currently active kitty window and finally you can use an arbi- trary 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 arbitrary color, such as #12af59 or red. Note that when using Change color themes automatically when the OS switches between light and dark this option is overridden by the color scheme file and must be set inside it to take effect. 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 behavior. 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 Option the same as Alt. This means you cannot use this option to configure different kitty shortcuts for Option+Key vs. Alt+Key. Also, any kitty shortcuts using Option/Alt+Key will take priority, so 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 (^a+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 de- fault, kitty will stay running, even with no open windows, as is the ex- pected 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 leg- ibility at small font sizes on macOS. For example, a value of 0.75 will re- sult in rendering that looks similar to sub-pixel antialiasing at common font sizes. Note that in modern kitty, this option is obsolete (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_fullscreen_ignore_safe_area_insets macos_fullscreen_ignore_safe_area_insets no When using macos_traditional_fullscreen, ignore the safe area insets on displays such as MacBook screens with a notch. This allows kitty to use the full display frame instead of leaving space for the notch area. 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 win- dow 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 ti- tle 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 maximum 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 invisible on dual GPU machines. Changing this option by reloading the config is not sup- ported. 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. Re- loading configuration will change this value only for newly created OS win- dows. 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 in- putting text in East Asian languages. However, its implementation in Way- land is often buggy and introduces latency into the input loop, so disable this if you know you dont need it. Changing this option by reloading the config is not supported, it will not have any effect. Keyboard shortcuts Keys are identified simply by their lowercase Unicode characters. For exam- ple: a for the A key, [ for the left square bracket key, etc. For func- tional keys, such as Enter or Escape, the names are present at Functional key definitions. For modifier keys, the names are ctrl (control, ^a), shift (^a<section>), alt (opt, option, ^a=Y), super (cmd, command, ^a). Simple shortcut mapping is done with the map directive. For full details on advanced mapping including modal and per application maps, see Making your keyboard dance. Some quick examples to illustrate common tasks: # unmap a keyboard shortcut, passing it to the program running in kitty map kitty_mod+space # completely ignore a keyboard event map ctrl+alt+f1 discard_event # combine multiple actions map kitty_mod+e combine : new_window : next_layout # multi-key shortcuts map ctrl+x>ctrl+y>z action For non-Latin keyboard layouts (Russian, Arabic, etc.), the --allow-fall- back option controls physical key fallback. Values: shifted (default a shifted key fallback), ascii (alternate key / physical position fallback, only for non-ASCII keys), none (disable all fallback), or a comma-separated combination. All default shortcuts use --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii: map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii kitty_mod+c copy_to_clipboard You can browse and trigger these actions by pressing ctrl+shift+f3 to run the command palette. The full list of actions that can be mapped to key presses is available here. 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. map_timeout map_timeout 0.0 The default timeout (in seconds) for multi-key mappings and modal keyboard modes. If you press the first key(s) of a multi-key mapping and don't press the next key within this timeout, the mapping is cancelled and the mode is exited. A value of zero disables the timeout. This can be overrid- den for specific modes using the --timeout option when creating a keyboard mode with --new-mode. For example: # 2 second timeout for all mappings map_timeout 2.0 # This mode will have a 5 second timeout (overrides the global 2 second timeout) map --new-mode resize --timeout 5.0 kitty_mod+r action_alias Has no default values. Example values are shown below: action_alias launch_tab launch --type=tab --cwd=current Define action aliases to avoid repeating the same options in multiple map- pings. Aliases can be defined for any action and will be expanded recur- sively. For example, the above alias allows you to create mappings to launch a new tab in the current working directory without duplication: map f1 launch_tab vim map f2 launch_tab emacs Similarly, to alias kitten invocation: action_alias hints kitten hints --hints-offset=0 kitten_alias Has no default values. Example values are shown below: kitten_alias hints hints --hints-offset=0 Like action_alias above, but specifically for kittens. Generally, prefer to use action_alias. This option is a legacy version, present for backwards compatibility. It causes all invocations of the aliased kitten to be sub- stituted. So the example above will cause all invocations of the hints kit- ten to have the --hints-offset=0 option applied. Clipboard Copy to clipboard map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+c copy_to_clipboard There is also a copy_or_interrupt action that can be optionally mapped to Ctrl+C. It will copy only if there is a selection and send an interrupt otherwise. Similarly, copy_and_clear_or_interrupt will copy and clear the selection or send an interrupt if there is no selection. The copy_or_noop action will copy if there is a selection and pass the key through to the application running in the terminal if there is no selection. Copy to clipboard or pass through map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+c copy_or_noop dh Paste from clipboard map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+v paste_from_clipboard map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+v paste_from_clipboard dh Paste from selection map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+s paste_from_selection map shift+insert paste_from_selection Pass selection to program map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+o pass_selection_to_program You can also pass the contents of the current selection to any program with pass_selection_to_program. By default, the system's open program is used, but you can specify your own, the selection will be passed as a command line argument to the program. For example: map kitty_mod+o pass_selection_to_program firefox You can pass the current selection to a terminal program running in a new kitty window, by using the @selection placeholder: map kitty_mod+y new_window less @selection Scrolling Scroll line up map ctrl+shift+up scroll_line_up smooth map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+k scroll_line_up smooth map opt+cmd+page_up scroll_line_up smooth dh map cmd+up scroll_line_up smooth dh Scroll line down map ctrl+shift+down scroll_line_down smooth map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+j scroll_line_down smooth map opt+cmd+page_down scroll_line_down smooth dh map cmd+down scroll_line_down smooth dh Scroll page up map ctrl+shift+page_up scroll_page_up map cmd+page_up scroll_page_up dh Scroll page down map ctrl+shift+page_down scroll_page_down map cmd+page_down scroll_page_down dh Scroll to top map ctrl+shift+home scroll_home map cmd+home scroll_home dh Scroll to bottom map ctrl+shift+end scroll_end map cmd+end scroll_end dh Scroll to previous shell prompt map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+z scroll_to_prompt -1 Use a parameter of 0 for scroll_to_prompt to scroll to the last jumped to or the last clicked position. Requires shell integration to work. Scroll to next shell prompt map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+x scroll_to_prompt 1 Browse scrollback buffer in pager map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+h show_scrollback You can pipe the contents of the current screen and history buffer as STDIN to an arbitrary program using launch --stdin-source. For example, the fol- lowing opens the scrollback buffer in less in an overlay window: map f1 launch --stdin-source=@screen_scrollback --stdin-add-formatting --type=overlay less +G -R For more details on piping screen and buffer contents to external programs, see The launch command. Browse output of the last shell command in pager map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+g show_last_command_output You can also define additional shortcuts to get the command output. For example, to get the first command output on screen: map f1 show_first_command_output_on_screen To get the command output that was last accessed by a keyboard action or mouse action: map f1 show_last_visited_command_output You can pipe the output of the last command run in the shell using the launch action. For example, the following opens the output in less in an overlay window: map f1 launch --stdin-source=@last_cmd_output --stdin-add-formatting --type=overlay less +G -R To get the output of the first command on the screen, use @first_cmd_out- put_on_screen. To get the output of the last jumped to command, use @last_visited_cmd_output. Requires shell integration to work. Search the scrollback within a pager map ctrl+shift+/ search_scrollback map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+f search_scrollback dh Search for currently selected text in the scrollback using the configured scrollback_pager. Assumes that pressing the / key triggers search mode in the pager. If you want to create a manual mapping with a special pager for this, you can use something like: map f1 combine : launch --stdin-source=@screen_scrollback --stdin-add-formatting --type=overlay mypager : send_key / For more sophisticated control, such as using the current selection, use remote_control_script. Window management New window map ctrl+shift+enter new_window map cmd+enter new_window dh You can open a new kitty window running an arbitrary program, for example: map kitty_mod+y launch mutt You can open a new window with the current working directory set to the working directory of the current window using: map ctrl+alt+enter launch --cwd=current You can open a new window that is allowed to control kitty via the kitty remote control facility with launch --allow-remote-control. Any programs running in that window will be allowed to control kitty. For example: map ctrl+enter launch --allow-remote-control some_program You can open a new window next to the currently active window or as the first window, with: map ctrl+n launch --location=neighbor map ctrl+f launch --location=first For more details, see The launch command. New OS window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+n new_os_window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+n new_os_window dh Works like new_window above, except that it opens a top-level OS window. In particular you can use new_os_window_with_cwd to open a window with the current working directory. Close window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+w close_window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii shift+cmd+d close_window dh Next window map ctrl+shift+] next_window Previous window map ctrl+shift+[ previous_window Move window forward map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+f move_window_forward Move window backward map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+b move_window_backward Move window to top map ctrl+shift+` move_window_to_top Start resizing window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+r start_resizing_window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+r start_resizing_window dh First window map ctrl+shift+1 first_window map cmd+1 first_window dh Second window map ctrl+shift+2 second_window map cmd+2 second_window dh Third window map ctrl+shift+3 third_window map cmd+3 third_window dh Fourth window map ctrl+shift+4 fourth_window map cmd+4 fourth_window dh Fifth window map ctrl+shift+5 fifth_window map cmd+5 fifth_window dh Sixth window map ctrl+shift+6 sixth_window map cmd+6 sixth_window dh Seventh window map ctrl+shift+7 seventh_window map cmd+7 seventh_window dh Eighth window map ctrl+shift+8 eighth_window map cmd+8 eighth_window dh Ninth window map ctrl+shift+9 ninth_window map cmd+9 ninth_window dh 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 focus to the window when you press the key. When there are only two windows, the focus will be switched directly without displaying the overlay. 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 dh map ctrl+tab next_tab Previous tab map ctrl+shift+left previous_tab map shift+cmd+[ previous_tab dh map ctrl+shift+tab previous_tab New tab map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+t new_tab map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+t new_tab dh Close tab map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+q close_tab map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii cmd+w close_tab dh Close OS window map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii shift+cmd+w close_os_window dh Move tab forward map ctrl+shift+. move_tab_forward Move tab backward map ctrl+shift+, move_tab_backward Set tab title map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+alt+t set_tab_title map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii shift+cmd+i set_tab_title dh 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 be- ing 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 number 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 com- mands 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 --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii 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 temporarily "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 dh map cmd+equal change_font_size all +2.0 dh map shift+cmd+equal change_font_size all +2.0 dh 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 dh map shift+cmd+minus change_font_size all -2.0 dh Reset font size map ctrl+shift+backspace change_font_size all 0 map cmd+0 change_font_size all 0 dh 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 To setup shortcuts to multiply/divide the font size: map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all *2.0 map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all /2.0 Select and act on visible text Use the hints kitten to select text and either pass it to an external pro- gram or insert it into the terminal or copy it to the clipboard. Open URL map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii 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 --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii 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 com- mand. Open selected path map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>shift+f kitten hints --type path Select a path/filename and open it with the default open program. Insert chosen file map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>c kitten choose-files Select a file using the choose-files kitten and insert it into the termi- nal. Insert chosen directory map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>d kitten choose-files --mode=dir Select a directory using the choose-files kitten and insert it into the terminal. Insert selected line map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>l kitten hints --type line --program - Select a line of text and insert it into the terminal. Useful for the out- put of things like: ls -1. Insert selected word map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>w kitten hints --type word --program - Select words and insert into terminal. Insert selected hash map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>h kitten hints --type hash --program - Select something that looks like a hash and insert it into the terminal. Useful with git, which uses SHA1 hashes to identify commits. Open the selected file at the selected line map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>n kitten hints --type linenum Select something that looks like filename:linenum and open it in your de- fault editor at the specified line number. Open the selected hyperlink map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+p>y kitten hints --type hyperlink Select a hyperlink (i.e. a URL that has been marked as such by the terminal program, for example, by ls --hyperlink=auto). The hints kitten has many more modes of operation that you can map to dif- ferent shortcuts. For a full description see hints kitten. Miscellaneous Show documentation map ctrl+shift+f1 show_kitty_doc overview Command palette map ctrl+shift+f3 command_palette Toggle fullscreen map ctrl+shift+f11 toggle_fullscreen map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+cmd+f toggle_fullscreen dh Toggle maximized map ctrl+shift+f10 toggle_maximized Toggle macOS secure keyboard entry map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii opt+cmd+s toggle_macos_secure_keyboard_entry dh macOS Cycle through OS Windows map cmd+` macos_cycle_through_os_windows dh macOS Cycle through OS Windows backwards map cmd+shift+` macos_cycle_through_os_windows_backwards dh Unicode input map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+u kitten unicode_input map ctrl+cmd+space kitten unicode_input dh Edit config file map ctrl+shift+f2 edit_config_file map cmd+, edit_config_file dh 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 --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>m set_background_opacity +0.1 Decrease background opacity map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>l set_background_opacity -0.1 Make background fully opaque map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>1 set_background_opacity 1 Reset background opacity map --allow-fallback=shifted,ascii ctrl+shift+a>d set_background_opacity default Reset the terminal map ctrl+shift+delete clear_terminal reset active map opt+cmd+r clear_terminal reset active dh 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 # Erase the last command and its output (needs shell integration to work) map f1 clear_terminal last_command 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 perform 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_cursor_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 it- self. Clear to start map cmd+k clear_terminal to_cursor active dh Clear scrollback map option+cmd+k clear_terminal scrollback active dh Clear the last command map cmd+l clear_terminal last_command active dh Clear screen map cmd+ctrl+l clear_terminal to_cursor_scroll active dh Reload kitty.conf map ctrl+shift+f5 load_config_file map ctrl+cmd+, load_config_file dh 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 shortcuts 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 dh 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 combina- tion. The text to be sent decodes ANSI C escapes so you can use escapes like \e to send control codes or \u21fb to send Unicode characters (or you can just input the Unicode characters directly as UTF-8 text). You can use kitten show-key to get the key escape codes you want to emulate. The first argument to send_text is the keyboard modes in which to activate the shortcut. The possible values are normal, application, kitty or a comma separated combination of them. The modes normal and application refer to the DECCKM cursor key mode for terminals, and kitty refers to the kitty ex- tended 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/ dh Hide macOS kitty application map cmd+h hide_macos_app dh Hide macOS other applications map opt+cmd+h hide_macos_other_apps dh Minimize macOS window map cmd+m minimize_macos_window dh Quit kitty map cmd+q quit dh 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 action using the map and mouse_map directives in kitty.conf. For configuration ex- amples, see the default shortcut links for each action. To read about key- board mapping in more detail, see Making your keyboard dance. You can also browse and trigger these actions by pressing ctrl+shift+f3 to run the Command palette. Copy/paste clear_selection Clear the current selection copy_and_clear_or_interrupt Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard and clear selection, if no selection, send SIGINT (aka ctrl+c) copy_ansi_to_clipboard Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard with ANSI formatting codes copy_last_command_output Copy the last non-empty output from a shell command to the clipboard Requires Shell integration to work copy_or_interrupt Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard, if no se- lection, send SIGINT (aka ctrl+c) copy_or_noop Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard, if no se- lection, pass the key through to the application running in the terminal. Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+c copy_selection_or_last_command_output Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard, if no se- lection, copy the last command output (requires shell integration to work) copy_to_clipboard Copy the selected text from the active window to the clipboard Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+c 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 de- coded. 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 simulate_color_scheme_preference_change Simulate a change in OS color scheme preference test_dragging Start a test drag operation, for use with mouse_map Font sizes change_font_size Change the font size for the current or all OS Windows See Font sizes for details. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+minus, ctrl+shift+equal, ctrl+shift+backspace 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. See also scrollback_fill_enlarged_window if you would like content from the scrollback buffer to scroll down into the zoomed window. For example: map f1 toggle_layout stack Marks remove_marker Remove a previously created marker scroll_to_mark Scroll to the next or previous mark of the specified type toggle_marker Toggle the current marker on/off create_marker Create a new marker Miscellaneous send_key Send the specified keys to the active window. Note that the key will be sent only if the current keyboard mode of the program running in the terminal supports it. Both key press and key re- lease are sent. First presses for all specified keys and then releases in reverse order. To send a pattern of press and release for multiple keys use the combine action. For example: map f1 send_key ctrl+x alt+y map f1 combine : send_key ctrl+x : send_key alt+y send_text Send the specified text to the active window See send_text 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 window 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 # Erase the last command and its output (needs shell integration to work) map f1 clear_terminal last_command active Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+l, 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 command_palette Browse and trigger keyboard shortcuts and actions in a searchable overlay (Command palette) Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f3 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 grab_keyboard Grab the keyboard. This means global shortcuts defined in the OS will be passed to kitty instead. Useful if you want to create an OS modal window. How well this works depends on the OS/window manager/desktop environment. On Wayland it works only if the com- positor implements the inhibit-keyboard-shortcuts protocol. On macOS Apple doesn't allow applications to grab the keyboard without special permis- sions, so it doesn't work. 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: * Selecting files, fast - ctrl+shift+p>d Insert chosen directory * Selecting files, fast - ctrl+shift+p>c Insert chosen file * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>h Insert selected hash * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>l Insert selected line * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>f Insert selected path * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>w Insert selected word * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>shift+f Open selected path * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>n Open the selected file at the selected line * Hints - ctrl+shift+p>y Open the selected hyperlink * Unicode input - ctrl+shift+u Unicode input kitty_shell Run the kitty shell to control kitty with commands Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+escape 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 replaces all config options. For example: map f5 load_config_file /path/to/some/kitty.conf Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+f5 macos_cycle_through_os_windows Cycle through OS windows on macOS Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+` macos_cycle_through_os_windows_backwards Cycle through OS windows backwards on macOS Default shortcuts using this action: cmd+shift+` 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 key- board modes. remote_control Run a remote control command without needing to allow remote control For example: map f1 remote_control set-spacing margin=30 See Mapping key presses to remote control commands for details. remote_control_script Run a remote control script without needing to allow remote control For example: map f1 remote_control_script /path/to/script arg1 arg2 ... See Mapping key presses to remote control commands for details. Relative paths are resolved with respect to the kitty config directory. set_colors Change colors in the specified windows 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 ungrab_keyboard Ungrab the keyboard if it was previously grabbed no_op Unbind a shortcut Mapping a shortcut to no_op causes kitty to not intercept the key stroke anymore, instead passing it to the program running inside it. 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. Pass the smooth argument to have the scrolling be an- imated. For example: map kitty_mod+down scroll_line_down smooth 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. Pass the smooth argument to have the scrolling be an- imated. For example: map kitty_mod+up scroll_line_up smooth 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 two optional numbers as arguments: The first is the number of prompts to jump; negative values jump up and positive values jump down. A value of zero will jump to the last prompt visited by this action. Defaults to -1 The second is the number of lines to show above the prompt that was jumped to. This is somewhat like less's --jump-target option or vim's scrolloff setting. Defaults to 0. For example: map ctrl+p scroll_to_prompt -1 3 # jump to previous, showing 3 lines prior map ctrl+n scroll_to_prompt 1 # jump to next map ctrl+o scroll_to_prompt 0 # jump to last visited Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+x, ctrl+shift+z search_scrollback Search scrollback in a pager like less. If there is selected text, it is automatically searched for. Note that this assumes that pressing the / key triggers search mode in the page configured as the scrollback pager. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+/ 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 Sessions close_session Close a session, that is, close all windows that belong to the session. Examples:: # Ask for the session to close map f1 close_session # Close the cur- rently active session map f1 close_session . # Close session by name map f1 close_session "my session" # Close session by path to session file map f1 close_session "/path/to/session/file.kitty-ses- sion" goto_session Switch to the specified session, creating it if not already present. See Creating/Switching to sessions with a keypress. save_as_session Save the current kitty state as a session file. See The save_as_session ac- tion. 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. You can also use drag and drop to detach tabs. 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. You can also use drag and drop to re-arrange tabs. Default shortcuts using this action: ctrl+shift+, move_tab_forward Move the active tab forward. You can also use drag and drop to re-arrange tabs. 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. The tab is added to the currently active session, if any. 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 ti- tle. If you specify an argument to this action then that is used as the title 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 title 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. Does not traverse overlay win- dows. 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 nega- tive. 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. Does not traverse overlay windows. 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, selected 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 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 con- firmation when the window is sitting at a shell prompt (requires Shell in- tegration), 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 win- dow. The new OS Window is added to the currently active session, if any. 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 win- dow. The new window will belong to the active session if any. 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 expres- sion. For example: map f1 toggle_tab title:mytab toggle_window_title_bars Temporarily show window title bars to allow drag-to-reorder When window title bars are hidden (because window_title_bar_min_windows is not met), this action forces them temporarily visible so that they can be dragged to reorder windows. After any drag operation completes, the bars are automatically hidden again. Press again to cancel before dragging. Has no effect on tabs where title bars are already naturally visible. Map an action to this, then press it before dragging a window title bar. Wide gamut color formats kitty supports modern wide gamut color formats for precise color specifica- tion. These formats can be used anywhere a color value is accepted in the configuration (foreground, background, color0-color255, etc.). OKLCH Colors OKLCH is a perceptually uniform color space, ideal for creating color themes. The format is: foreground oklch(0.9 0.05 140) color1 oklch(0.7 0.25 25) Parameters: * L (Lightness): 0 to 1, where 0 is black and 1 is white * C (Chroma): 0 to approximately 0.4, represents color saturation * H (Hue): 0 to 360 degrees (0=red, 120=green, 240=blue) Benefits: * Perceptually uniform - equal changes produce equal perceived differences * Adjusting lightness preserves hue (unlike HSL) * Industry standard for modern color design Example: foreground oklch(0.9 0.05 140) color1 oklch(0.65 0.25 29) # Vibrant red-orange color2 oklch(0.65 0.25 142) # Vibrant green color3 oklch(0.70 0.19 90) # Warm yellow CIE LAB Colors CIE LAB is a device-independent color space designed to approximate human vision. The format is: background lab(20 5 -10) color4 lab(50 0 -50) Parameters: * L: Lightness, 0 to 100 (0 = black, 100 = white) * a: Green (-) to red (+), typically -100 to +100 * b: Blue (-) to yellow (+), typically -100 to +100 Example: background lab(10 0 0) # Very dark neutral gray foreground lab(90 0 0) # Very light neutral gray color1 lab(50 60 40) # Red color4 lab(50 0 -50) # Blue Gamut Mapping When you specify colors in OKLCH or CIE LAB formats that are outside the sRGB color gamut, kitty automatically converts them using the CSS Color Module Level 4 gamut mapping algorithm: * Preserves the original lightness and hue as much as possible * Reduces chroma (saturation) until the color fits within the displayable range * Uses perceptual color difference (deltaE OK) to minimize visible changes * Maximizes color saturation while staying in gamut This ensures that wide gamut colors gracefully degrade on standard sRGB displays while taking full advantage of wide gamut displays when available. The mapping happens automatically - you donat need to do anything special. For example, oklch(0.7 0.4 25) might be too saturated for sRGB but will be automatically adjusted to fit while preserving the perceived hue and light- ness. References * CSS Color Module Level 4 * OKLCH Color Space Author Kovid Goyal Copyright 2026, Kovid Goyal 0.47.4 Aug 30, 2026 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
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