Kitty

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Kitty is a low-latency, full-featured, modern, terminal emulator, written in C and Python, that offloads rendering to the GPU. Kitty is designed for speed, functionality, and extensibility, aiming to include useful functionality while still remaining fast and light.

By default, a little performance is traded-off against usability, though this can be adjusted.

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for x11-terms/kitty Fast, feature-rich, GPU-based terminal

+X Add support for X11
test Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
verify-sig Verify upstream signatures on distfiles
wayland Enable dev-libs/wayland backend
Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2025-02-10 06:29 More information about USE flags

Emerge

root #emerge --ask x11-terms/kitty

Configuration

Files

kitty does not automatically create or install a configuration file, but it will search for one in the following locations:

  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.config/kitty/kitty.conf
  • $KITTY_CONFIG_DIRECTORY/kitty.conf
  • $HOME/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

Configuration files with currently supported values are provided with each upstream release. On Gentoo, depending on the version installed, the file can be found in the following location. Be sure to adjust the PV ( package version) value to align with whatever version is currently installed on the system.

The default configuration can be created in a users' home directory with the following commands:

user $mkdir --parents ~/.config/kitty
user $bzcat /usr/share/doc/kitty-${PV}/kitty.conf.bz2 > ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

Live reload

Kitty doesn't support live reload of the configuration.

Font configuration

One can run the following command and copy the desired font name:

user $fc-list -f '%{family}\n' | awk '!x[$0]++'

Changing the default font by editing the config file.

FILE ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conffont configure
# Font configuration (changes require restart)
font_family      hack
bold_font        auto
italic_font      auto
bold_italic_font auto
font_size 11.0

This will change the font to one provided by media-fonts/hack, given that the package is installed.

Colors configuration

FILE ~/.config/kitty/kitty.confcolor schemes
# Special
foreground #...
background #...

# Black
color0 #...
color8 #...

# Red
color1 #...
color9 #...

# Green
color2  #...
color10 #...

# Yellow
color3  #...
color11 #...

# Blue
color4  #...
color12 #...

# Magenta
color5  #...
color13 #...

# Cyan
color6  #...
color14 #...

# White
color7  #...
color15 #...

# Cursor
cursor #...
cursor_text_color #...

Transparent background

FILE ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conftransparent background configure
# value range is 0 ~ 1
background_opacity 0.9

Tabs

Kitty does support tabs, here are keybinds how to use them:

New tab: ctrl+shift+t

Close tab: ctrl+shift+q

Next tab: ctrl+shift+right

Previous tab: ctrl+shift+left

Next layout: ctrl+shift+l

Move tab forward: ctrl+shift+.

Move tab backward: ctrl+shift+,

Set tab title: ctrl+shift+alt+t

Usage

Invocation

Kitty will generally be launched from an on screen menu or keyboard shortcut in a user's graphical environment.

Kitty may be launched from a shell under X11 or Wayland.

user $kitty --help
Usage: kitty [options] [program-to-run ...]

Run the kitty terminal emulator. You can also specify the program
to run inside kitty as normal arguments following the options.
For example: kitty sh -c "echo hello, world. Press ENTER to quit; read"

For comprehensive documentation for kitty, please see:
https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

Options:
  --class=CLS
    Set the class part of the WM_CLASS window property. On Wayland, it sets
    the app id.
    Default: kitty

  --name=NAME
    Set the name part of the WM_CLASS property (defaults to using the value
    from --class)

  --title, -T=TITLE
    Set the window title. This will override any title set by the program
    running inside kitty. So only use this if you are running a program that
    does not set titles. If combined with --session the title will be used
    for all windows created by the session, that do not set their own
    titles.

  --config, -c=CONFIG
    Specify a path to the configuration file(s) to use. All configuration
    files are merged onto the builtin kitty.conf, overriding the builtin
    values. This option can be specified multiple times to read multiple
    configuration files in sequence, which are merged. Use the special value
    NONE to not load a config file.
    
    If this option is not specified, config files are searched for in the
    order: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kitty/kitty.conf, ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf,
    $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/kitty/kitty.conf. The first one that exists is used as
    the config file.
    
    If the environment variable KITTY_CONFIG_DIRECTORY is specified, that
    directory is always used and the above searching does not happen.
    
    If /etc/xdg/kitty/kitty.conf exists it is merged before (i.e. with lower
    priority) than any user config files. It can be used to specify
    system-wide defaults for all users.

  --override, -o=OVERRIDE
    Override individual configuration options, can be specified multiple
    times. Syntax: name=value. For example: -o font_size=20

  --directory, -d=DIRECTORY
    Change to the specified directory when launching
    Default: .

  --detach
    Detach from the controlling terminal, if any

  --session=SESSION
    Path to a file containing the startup session (tabs, windows, layout,
    programs). Use - to read from STDIN. See the README file for details and
    an example.

  --watcher, -w=WATCHER
    Path to a python file. Appropriately named functions in this file will
    be called for various events, such as when the window is resized,
    focused or closed. See the section on watchers in the launch command
    documentation https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/launch.html. Relative
    paths are resolved relative to the kitty config directory. Note that
    this watcher will be added only to all initially created windows, not
    new windows created after startup.

  --hold
    Remain open after child process exits. Note that this only affects the
    first window. You can quit by either using the close window shortcut or
    Ctrl+d.

  --single-instance, -1
    If specified only a single instance of kitty will run. New invocations
    will instead create a new top-level window in the existing kitty
    instance. This allows kitty to share a single sprite cache on the GPU
    and also reduces startup time. You can also have separate groups of
    kitty instances by using the --instance-group option

  --instance-group=INSTANCE_GROUP
    Used in combination with the --single-instance option. All kitty
    invocations with the same --instance-group will result in new windows
    being created in the first kitty instance within that group

  --wait-for-single-instance-window-close
    Normally, when using --single-instance, kitty will open a new window in
    an existing instance and quit immediately. With this option, it will not
    quit till the newly opened window is closed. Note that if no previous
    instance is found, then kitty will wait anyway, regardless of this
    option.

  --listen-on=LISTEN_ON
    Tell kitty to listen on the specified address for control messages. For
    example, --listen-on=unix:/tmp/mykitty or
    --listen-on=tcp:localhost:12345. On Linux systems, you can also use
    abstract UNIX sockets, not associated with a file, like this:
    --listen-on=unix:@mykitty. Environment variables in the setting are
    expanded and relative paths are resolved with respect to the temporary
    directory. To control kitty, you can send it commands with kitty @ using
    the --to option to specify this address. This option will be ignored,
    unless you set allow_remote_control to yes in kitty.conf. Note that if
    you run kitty @ within a kitty window, there is no need to specify the
    --to option as it is read automatically from the environment. For UNIX
    sockets, this can also be specified in kitty.conf.

  --start-as=START_AS
    Control how the initial kitty window is created.
    Default: normal
    Choices: normal, minimized, maximized, fullscreen

Debugging options:
  --version, -v
    The current kitty version

  --dump-commands
    Output commands received from child process to stdout

  --replay-commands=REPLAY_COMMANDS
    Replay previously dumped commands. Specify the path to a dump file
    previously created by --dump-commands. You can open a new kitty window
    to replay the commands with::
    
        kitty sh -c "kitty --replay-commands /path/to/dump/file; read"

  --dump-bytes=DUMP_BYTES
    Path to file in which to store the raw bytes received from the child
    process

  --debug-gl, --debug-rendering
    Debug rendering commands. This will cause all OpenGL calls to check for
    errors instead of ignoring them. Also prints out miscellaneous debug
    information. Useful when debugging rendering problems

  --debug-keyboard
    This option will cause kitty to print out key events as they are
    received

  --debug-font-fallback
    Print out information about the selection of fallback fonts for
    characters not present in the main font.

  --debug-config
    Print out information about the system and kitty configuration.


kitty 0.19.3 created by Kovid Goyal

Troubleshooting

fcitx5 pinyin not working

According to the The Developer, kitty is neither GTK nor QT, so try this environment variable under X11 or Wayland:

CODE 
GLFW_IM_MODULE=ibus
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