Configuring kitty¶
kitty is highly customizable, everything from keyboard shortcuts, to painting 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.
You can also display the current configuration by running kitty
--debug-config.
kitty looks for a config file in the OS config directories (usually
~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf) but you can pass a specific path via the
kitty --config option or use the KITTY_CONFIG_DIRECTORY
environment variable. See the kitty --config option for full details.
You can include secondary config files via the include directive. If
you use a relative path for include, it is resolved with respect to the
location of the current config file. Note that environment variables are
expanded, so ${USER}.conf becomes name.conf if
USER=name. For example:
include other.conf
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. By default they are derived automatically, by the OSes font system. Setting them manually is useful for font families that have many weight variants like Book, Medium, Thick, etc. For example:
font_family Operator Mono Book
bold_font Operator Mono Medium
italic_font Operator Mono Book Italic
bold_italic_font Operator Mono Medium Italic
-
font_size¶
font_size 11.0
Font size (in pts)
-
adjust_line_height,adjust_column_width¶
adjust_line_height 0
adjust_column_width 0
Change the size of each character cell kitty renders. You can use either numbers, which are interpreted as pixels or percentages (number followed by %), which are interpreted as percentages of the unmodified values. You can use negative pixels or percentages less than 100% to reduce sizes (but this might cause rendering artifacts).
-
symbol_map¶
symbol_map U+E0A0-U+E0A2,U+E0B0-U+E0B3 PowerlineSymbols
Map the specified unicode codepoints to a particular font. Useful if you need
special rendering for some symbols, such as for Powerline. Avoids the need for
patched fonts. Each unicode code point is specified in the form U+<code point
in hexadecimal>. You can specify multiple code points, separated by commas and
ranges separated by hyphens. symbol_map itself can be specified multiple times.
Syntax is:
symbol_map codepoints Font Family Name
-
box_drawing_scale¶
box_drawing_scale 0.001, 1, 1.5, 2
Change 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.
Cursor customization¶
-
cursor¶
cursor #cccccc
Default cursor color
-
cursor_shape¶
cursor_shape block
The cursor shape can be one of (block, beam, underline)
-
cursor_blink_interval,cursor_stop_blinking_after¶
cursor_blink_interval 0.5
cursor_stop_blinking_after 15.0
The interval (in seconds) at which to blink the cursor. Set to zero to disable
blinking. Note that numbers smaller than repaint_delay will be limited
to repaint_delay. Stop blinking cursor after the specified number of
seconds of keyboard inactivity. Set to zero to never stop blinking.
Scrollback¶
-
scrollback_lines¶
scrollback_lines 2000
Number of lines of history to keep in memory for scrolling back. Memory is allocated on demand.
-
scrollback_pager¶
scrollback_pager less --chop-long-lines --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS +INPUT_LINE_NUMBER
Program with which to view scrollback in a new window. The scrollback buffer is passed as STDIN to this program. If you change it, make sure the program you use can handle ANSI escape sequences for colors and text formatting. INPUT_LINE_NUMBER in the command line above will be replaced by an integer representing which line should be at the top of the screen.
-
wheel_scroll_multiplier¶
wheel_scroll_multiplier 5.0
Modify the amount scrolled by the mouse wheel or touchpad. Use negative numbers to change scroll direction.
Mouse¶
-
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, single, double, curly
-
open_url_modifiers¶
open_url_modifiers kitty_mod
The modifier keys to press when clicking with the mouse on URLs to open the URL
-
open_url_with¶
open_url_with default
The program with which to open URLs that are clicked on.
The special value default means to use the
operating system’s default URL handler.
-
copy_on_select¶
copy_on_select no
Copy to clipboard on select. With this enabled, simply selecting text with the mouse will cause the text to be copied to clipboard. Useful on platforms such as macOS/Wayland that do not have the concept of primary selections. Note that this is a security risk, as all programs, including websites open in your browser can read the contents of the clipboard.
-
rectangle_select_modifiers¶
rectangle_select_modifiers ctrl+alt
The modifiers to use rectangular selection (i.e. to select text in a rectangular block with the mouse)
-
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 alpha-numeric character in the unicode database will be matched.
-
click_interval¶
click_interval 0.5
The interval between successive clicks to detect double/triple clicks (in seconds)
-
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.
-
focus_follows_mouse¶
focus_follows_mouse no
Set the active window to the window under the mouse when moving the mouse around
Performance tuning¶
-
repaint_delay¶
repaint_delay 10
Delay (in milliseconds) between screen updates. 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.
-
input_delay¶
input_delay 3
Delay (in milliseconds) before input from the program running in the terminal is processed. 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.
-
sync_to_monitor¶
sync_to_monitor yes
Sync screen updates to the refresh rate of the monitor. This prevents tearing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing) when scrolling. However, it limits the rendering speed to the refresh rate of your monitor. With a very high speed mouse/high keyboard repeat rate, you may notice some slight input latency. If so, set this to no.
Terminal bell¶
-
enable_audio_bell¶
enable_audio_bell yes
Enable/disable the audio bell. Useful in environments that require silence.
-
visual_bell_duration¶
visual_bell_duration 0.0
Visual bell duration. Flash the screen when a bell occurs for the specified number of seconds. Set to zero to disable.
-
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 yes
Show a bell symbol on the tab if a bell occurs in one of the windows in the tab and the window is not the currently focused window
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 window size will be remembered so that new instances of kitty will have the same size as the previous instance. If disabled, the window will initially have size configured by initial_window_width/height, in pixels. You can use a suffix of “c” on the width/height values to have them interpreted as number of cells instead of pixels.
-
enabled_layouts¶
enabled_layouts *
The enabled window layouts. A comma separated list of layout names. The special
value * means all layouts. The first listed layout will be used as the
startup layout. 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 windows. The cells value is used for horizontal resizing and the lines value for vertical resizing.
-
window_border_width¶
window_border_width 1.0
The width (in pts) of window borders. Will be rounded to the nearest number of pixels based on screen resolution. Note that borders are displayed only when more than one window is visible. They are meant to separate multiple windows.
-
window_margin_width¶
window_margin_width 0.0
The window margin (in pts) (blank area outside the border)
-
window_padding_width¶
window_padding_width 0.0
The window padding (in pts) (blank area between the text and the window border)
-
active_border_color¶
active_border_color #00ff00
The color for the border of 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 (a number between zero and one, with zero being fully faded).
Tab bar¶
-
tab_bar_edge¶
tab_bar_edge bottom
Which 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_style¶
tab_bar_style fade
The tab bar style, can be one of: fade or separator. In the fade style,
each tab’s edges fade into the background color, in the separator style, tabs are
separated by a configurable separator.
-
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 " ┇"
The separator between tabs in the tab bar when using separator as the tab_bar_style.
-
active_tab_foreground,active_tab_background,active_tab_font_style,inactive_tab_foreground,inactive_tab_background,inactive_tab_font_style¶
active_tab_foreground #000
active_tab_background #eee
active_tab_font_style bold-italic
inactive_tab_foreground #444
inactive_tab_background #999
inactive_tab_font_style normal
Tab bar colors and styles
Color scheme¶
-
foreground,background¶
foreground #dddddd
background #000000
The foreground and background colors
-
background_opacity,dynamic_background_opacity¶
background_opacity 1.0
dynamic_background_opacity no
The opacity of the background. A number between 0 and 1, where 1 is opaque and 0 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 default background color’s opacity. This is 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 terminals default colors in a shell script to launch your editor. Be aware that using a value less than 1.0 is a (possibly significant) performance hit. If you want to dynamically change transparency of windows set dynamic_background_opacity to yes (this is off by default as it has a performance cost)
-
dim_opacity¶
dim_opacity 0.75
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 for text selected with the mouse
The color table¶
The 16 terminal colors. There are 8 basic colors, each color has a dull and bright version. You can also set the remaining colors from the 256 color table 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
Advanced¶
-
shell¶
shell .
The shell program to execute. The default value of . means
to use 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 to
ensure that the shell starts in interactive mode and reads its startup rc files.
-
editor¶
editor .
The console editor to use when editing the kitty config file or similar tasks. A value of . means to use the environment variable EDITOR. Note that this environment variable has to be set not just in your shell startup scripts but system-wide, otherwise kitty will not see it.
-
close_on_child_death¶
close_on_child_death no
Close the window when the child process (shell) exits. If no (the default), the terminal will remain open when the child exits as long as there are still processes outputting to the terminal (for example disowned or backgrounded processes). If yes, the window will close as soon as the child process exits. Note that setting it to yes means that any background processes still using the terminal can fail silently because their stdout/stderr/stdin no longer work.
-
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.
-
clipboard_control¶
clipboard_control write-clipboard write-primary
Allow programs running in kitty to read and write from the clipboard. You can control exactly which actions are allowed. The set of possible actions is: write-clipboard read-clipboard write-primary read-primary The default is to allow writing to the clipboard and primary selection. Note that enabling the read functionality is a security risk as it means that any program, even one running on a remote server via SSH can read your clipboard.
-
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.
OS specific tweaks¶
-
macos_titlebar_color¶
macos_titlebar_color system
Change the color of the kitty window’s titlebar on macOS. A value of system
means to use the default system color, 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. WARNING: This option works by
using a hack, as there is no proper Cocoa API for it. It sets the background
color of the entire window and makes the titlebar transparent. As such it is
incompatible with background_opacity. If you want to use both, you are
probably better off just hiding the titlebar with macos_hide_titlebar.
-
macos_hide_titlebar¶
macos_hide_titlebar no
Hide the kitty window’s title bar on macOS.
-
x11_hide_window_decorations¶
x11_hide_window_decorations no
Hide the window decorations (title bar and window borders) on X11 and Wayland. Whether this works and exactly what effect it has depends on the window manager, as it is the job of the window manager/compositor to draw window decorations.
-
macos_option_as_alt¶
macos_option_as_alt yes
Use the option key as an alt key. With this set to no, kitty will use the macOS native Option+Key = unicode character behavior. This will break any Alt+key keyboard shortcuts in your terminal programs, but you can use the macOS unicode input technique.
-
macos_hide_from_tasks¶
macos_hide_from_tasks no
Hide the kitty window from running tasks (Option+Tab) on macOS.
-
macos_quit_when_last_window_closed¶
macos_quit_when_last_window_closed no
Have kitty quit when all the top-level windows are closed. By default, kitty will stay running, even with no open windows, as is the expected behavior on macOS.
Keyboard shortcuts¶
For a list of key names, see: GLFW keys For a list of modifier names, see: GLFW mods
You can use the special action no_op to unmap a keyboard shortcut that is
assigned in the default configuration.
You can combine multiple actions to be triggered by a single shortcut, using the syntax below:
map key combine <separator> action1 <separator> action2 <separator> action3 ...
For example:
map kitty_mod+e combine : new_window : next_layout
this will create a new window and switch to the next available layout
You can use multi-key shortcuts using the syntax shown below:
map key1>key2>key3 action
For example:
map ctrl+f>2 set_font_size 20
-
kitty_mod¶
kitty_mod ctrl+shift
The value of kitty_mod is used as the modifier for all default shortcuts, you
can change it in your kitty.conf to change the modifiers for all the default
shortcuts.
-
clear_all_shortcuts¶
clear_all_shortcuts no
You can have kitty remove all shortcut definition seen up to this point. Useful, for instance, to remove the default shortcuts.
Clipboard¶
-
Copy to clipboard¶
map ctrl+shift+c copy_to_clipboard
-
Paste from clipboard¶
map ctrl+shift+v paste_from_clipboard
-
Paste from selection¶
map ctrl+shift+s paste_from_selection
map shift+insert paste_from_selection
-
Pass selection to program¶
map ctrl+shift+o pass_selection_to_program
You can also pass the contents of the current selection to any program using
pass_selection_to_program. By default, the system’s open program is used, but
you can specify your own, for example:
map kitty_mod+o pass_selection_to_program firefox
You can pass the current selection to a terminal program running in a new kitty window, by using the @selection placeholder:
map kitty_mod+y new_window less @selection
Scrolling¶
-
Scroll line up¶
map ctrl+shift+up scroll_line_up
map ctrl+shift+k scroll_line_up
-
Scroll line down¶
map ctrl+shift+down scroll_line_down
map ctrl+shift+j scroll_line_down
-
Scroll page up¶
map ctrl+shift+page_up scroll_page_up
-
Scroll page down¶
map ctrl+shift+page_down scroll_page_down
-
Scroll to top¶
map ctrl+shift+home scroll_home
-
Scroll to bottom¶
map ctrl+shift+end scroll_end
-
Browse scrollback buffer in less¶
map ctrl+shift+h show_scrollback
You can send the contents of the current screen + history buffer as stdin to an arbitrary program using the placeholders @text (which is the plain text) and @ansi (which includes text styling escape codes). For only the current screen, use @screen or @ansi_screen. For example, the following command opens the scrollback buffer in less in a new window:
map kitty_mod+y new_window @ansi less +G -R
Window management¶
map ctrl+shift+enter new_window
You can open a new window running an arbitrary program, for example:
map kitty_mod+y new_window 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 new_window_with_cwd
-
New OS window¶
map ctrl+shift+n new_os_window
-
Close window¶
map ctrl+shift+w close_window
-
Next window¶
map ctrl+shift+] next_window
-
Previous window¶
map ctrl+shift+[ previous_window
-
Move window forward¶
map ctrl+shift+f move_window_forward
-
Move window backward¶
map ctrl+shift+b move_window_backward
-
Move window to top¶
map ctrl+shift+` move_window_to_top
-
Start resizing window¶
map ctrl+shift+r start_resizing_window
-
First window¶
map ctrl+shift+1 first_window
-
Second window¶
map ctrl+shift+2 second_window
-
Third window¶
map ctrl+shift+3 third_window
-
Fourth window¶
map ctrl+shift+4 fourth_window
-
Fifth window¶
map ctrl+shift+5 fifth_window
-
Sixth window¶
map ctrl+shift+6 sixth_window
-
Seventh window¶
map ctrl+shift+7 seventh_window
-
Eight window¶
map ctrl+shift+8 eighth_window
-
Ninth window¶
map ctrl+shift+9 ninth_window
-
Tenth window¶
map ctrl+shift+0 tenth_window
Tab management¶
-
Next tab¶
map ctrl+shift+right next_tab
-
Previous tab¶
map ctrl+shift+left previous_tab
-
New tab¶
map ctrl+shift+t new_tab
-
Close tab¶
map ctrl+shift+q close_tab
-
Move tab forward¶
map ctrl+shift+. move_tab_forward
-
Move tab backward¶
map ctrl+shift+, move_tab_backward
-
Set tab title¶
map ctrl+shift+alt+t set_tab_title
You can also create shortcuts to go to specific tabs, with 1 being the first tab:
map ctrl+alt+1 goto_tab 1
map ctrl+alt+2 goto_tab 2
Just as with new_window above, you can also pass the name of arbitrary
commands to run when using new_tab and use new_tab_with_cwd.
Layout management¶
-
Next layout¶
map ctrl+shift+l next_layout
You can also create shortcuts to switch to specific layouts:
map ctrl+alt+t goto_layout tall
map ctrl+alt+s goto_layout stack
Font sizes¶
You can change the font size for all top-level kitty windows at a time or only the current one.
-
Increase font size¶
map ctrl+shift+equal change_font_size all +2.0
-
Decrease font size¶
map ctrl+shift+minus change_font_size all -2.0
-
Reset font size¶
map ctrl+shift+backspace change_font_size all 0
To setup shortcuts for specific font sizes:
map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all 10.0
To setup shortcuts to change only the current window’s font size:
map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size current 10.0
Select and act on visible text¶
Use the hints kitten to select text and either pass it to an external program or insert it into the terminal or copy it to the clipboard.
-
Open URL¶
map ctrl+shift+e kitten hints
Open a currently visible URL using the keyboard. The program used to open the
URL is specified in open_url_with.
-
Insert selected path¶
map ctrl+shift+p>f kitten hints --type path --program -
Select a path/filename and insert it into the terminal. Useful, for instance to run git commands on a filename output from a previous git command.
-
Open selected path¶
map ctrl+shift+p>shift+f kitten hints --type path
Select a path/filename and open it with the default open program.
-
Insert selected line¶
map ctrl+shift+p>l kitten hints --type line --program -
Select a line of text and insert it into the terminal. Use for the output of things like: ls -1
-
Insert selected word¶
map ctrl+shift+p>w kitten hints --type word --program -
Select words and insert into terminal.
-
Insert selected hash¶
map ctrl+shift+p>h kitten hints --type hash --program -
Select something that looks like a hash and insert it into the terminal. Useful with git, which uses sha1 hashes to identify commits
The hints kitten has many more modes of operation that you can map to different shortcuts. For a full description see Hints.
Miscellaneous¶
-
Toggle fullscreen¶
map ctrl+shift+f11 toggle_fullscreen
-
Unicode input¶
map ctrl+shift+u input_unicode_character
-
Edit config file¶
map ctrl+shift+f2 edit_config_file
-
Open the kitty command shell¶
map ctrl+shift+escape kitty_shell window
Open the kitty shell in a new window/tab/overlay/os_window to control kitty using commands.
-
Increase background opacity¶
map ctrl+shift+a>m set_background_opacity +0.1
-
Decrease background opacity¶
map ctrl+shift+a>l set_background_opacity -0.1
-
Make background fully opaque¶
map ctrl+shift+a>1 set_background_opacity 1
-
Reset background opacity¶
map ctrl+shift+a>d set_background_opacity default
-
Send arbitrary text on key presses¶
You can tell kitty to send arbitrary (UTF-8) encoded text to the client program when pressing specified shortcut keys. For example:
map ctrl+alt+a send_text all Special text
This will send “Special text” when you press the ctrl+alt+a key
combination. The text to be sent is a python string literal so you can use
escapes like \x1b to send control codes or \u21fb to send
unicode characters (or you can just input the unicode characters directly as
UTF-8 text). The first argument to send_text is the keyboard modes in which to
activate the shortcut. The possible values are normal or application or kitty
or a comma separated combination of them. The special keyword all means all
modes. The modes normal and application refer to the DECCKM cursor key mode for
terminals, and kitty refers to the special kitty extended keyboard protocol.
Another example, that outputs a word and then moves the cursor to the start of the line (same as pressing the Home key):
map ctrl+alt+a send_text normal Word\x1b[H
map ctrl+alt+a send_text application Word\x1bOH
Sample kitty.conf¶
Below is a sample kitty.conf with all default settings.
# vim:fileencoding=utf-8:ft=conf:foldmethod=marker
#: Fonts {{{
#: kitty has very powerful font management. You can configure
#: individual font faces and even specify special fonts for particular
#: characters.
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. By default they are derived automatically, by the OSes
#: font system. Setting them manually is useful for font families that
#: have many weight variants like Book, Medium, Thick, etc. For
#: example::
#: font_family Operator Mono Book
#: bold_font Operator Mono Medium
#: italic_font Operator Mono Book Italic
#: bold_italic_font Operator Mono Medium Italic
font_size 11.0
#: Font size (in pts)
adjust_line_height 0
adjust_column_width 0
#: Change the size of each character cell kitty renders. You can use
#: either numbers, which are interpreted as pixels or percentages
#: (number followed by %), which are interpreted as percentages of the
#: unmodified values. You can use negative pixels or percentages less
#: than 100% to reduce sizes (but this might cause rendering
#: artifacts).
# symbol_map U+E0A0-U+E0A2,U+E0B0-U+E0B3 PowerlineSymbols
#: Map the specified unicode codepoints to a particular font. Useful
#: if you need special rendering for some symbols, such as for
#: Powerline. Avoids the need for patched fonts. Each unicode code
#: point is specified in the form U+<code point in hexadecimal>. You
#: can specify multiple code points, separated by commas and ranges
#: separated by hyphens. symbol_map itself can be specified multiple
#: times. Syntax is::
#: symbol_map codepoints Font Family Name
box_drawing_scale 0.001, 1, 1.5, 2
#: Change 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.
#: }}}
#: Cursor customization {{{
cursor #cccccc
#: Default cursor color
cursor_shape block
#: The cursor shape can be one of (block, beam, underline)
cursor_blink_interval 0.5
cursor_stop_blinking_after 15.0
#: The interval (in seconds) at which to blink the cursor. Set to zero
#: to disable blinking. Note that numbers smaller than repaint_delay
#: will be limited to repaint_delay. Stop blinking cursor after the
#: specified number of seconds of keyboard inactivity. Set to zero to
#: never stop blinking.
#: }}}
#: Scrollback {{{
scrollback_lines 2000
#: Number of lines of history to keep in memory for scrolling back.
#: Memory is allocated on demand.
scrollback_pager less --chop-long-lines --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS +INPUT_LINE_NUMBER
#: Program with which to view scrollback in a new window. The
#: scrollback buffer is passed as STDIN to this program. If you change
#: it, make sure the program you use can handle ANSI escape sequences
#: for colors and text formatting. INPUT_LINE_NUMBER in the command
#: line above will be replaced by an integer representing which line
#: should be at the top of the screen.
wheel_scroll_multiplier 5.0
#: Modify the amount scrolled by the mouse wheel or touchpad. Use
#: negative numbers to change scroll direction.
#: }}}
#: Mouse {{{
url_color #0087BD
url_style curly
#: The color and style for highlighting URLs on mouse-over. url_style
#: can be one of: none, single, double, curly
open_url_modifiers kitty_mod
#: The modifier keys to press when clicking with the mouse on URLs to
#: open the URL
open_url_with default
#: The program with which to open URLs that are clicked on. The
#: special value default means to use the operating system's default
#: URL handler.
copy_on_select no
#: Copy to clipboard on select. With this enabled, simply selecting
#: text with the mouse will cause the text to be copied to clipboard.
#: Useful on platforms such as macOS/Wayland that do not have the
#: concept of primary selections. Note that this is a security risk,
#: as all programs, including websites open in your browser can read
#: the contents of the clipboard.
rectangle_select_modifiers ctrl+alt
#: The modifiers to use rectangular selection (i.e. to select text in
#: a rectangular block with the mouse)
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
#: alpha-numeric character in the unicode database will be matched.
click_interval 0.5
#: The interval between successive clicks to detect double/triple
#: clicks (in seconds)
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.
focus_follows_mouse no
#: Set the active window to the window under the mouse when moving the
#: mouse around
#: }}}
#: Performance tuning {{{
repaint_delay 10
#: Delay (in milliseconds) between screen updates. 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.
input_delay 3
#: Delay (in milliseconds) before input from the program running in
#: the terminal is processed. 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.
sync_to_monitor yes
#: Sync screen updates to the refresh rate of the monitor. This
#: prevents tearing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing)
#: when scrolling. However, it limits the rendering speed to the
#: refresh rate of your monitor. With a very high speed mouse/high
#: keyboard repeat rate, you may notice some slight input latency. If
#: so, set this to no.
#: }}}
#: Terminal bell {{{
enable_audio_bell yes
#: Enable/disable the audio bell. Useful in environments that require
#: silence.
visual_bell_duration 0.0
#: Visual bell duration. Flash the screen when a bell occurs for the
#: specified number of seconds. Set to zero to disable.
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 yes
#: Show a bell symbol on the tab if a bell occurs in one of the
#: windows in the tab and the window is not the currently focused
#: window
#: }}}
#: Window layout {{{
remember_window_size yes
initial_window_width 640
initial_window_height 400
#: If enabled, the window size will be remembered so that new
#: instances of kitty will have the same size as the previous
#: instance. If disabled, the window will initially have size
#: configured by initial_window_width/height, in pixels. You can use a
#: suffix of "c" on the width/height values to have them interpreted
#: as number of cells instead of pixels.
enabled_layouts *
#: The enabled window layouts. A comma separated list of layout names.
#: The special value * means all layouts. The first listed layout will
#: be used as the startup layout. For a list of available layouts, see
#: the layouts.
window_resize_step_cells 2
window_resize_step_lines 2
#: The step size (in units of cell width/cell height) to use when
#: resizing windows. The cells value is used for horizontal resizing
#: and the lines value for vertical resizing.
window_border_width 1.0
#: The width (in pts) of window borders. Will be rounded to the
#: nearest number of pixels based on screen resolution. Note that
#: borders are displayed only when more than one window is visible.
#: They are meant to separate multiple windows.
window_margin_width 0.0
#: The window margin (in pts) (blank area outside the border)
window_padding_width 0.0
#: The window padding (in pts) (blank area between the text and the
#: window border)
active_border_color #00ff00
#: The color for the border of the active window
inactive_border_color #cccccc
#: The color for the border of inactive windows
bell_border_color #ff5a00
#: The color for the border of inactive windows in which a bell has
#: occurred
inactive_text_alpha 1.0
#: Fade the text in inactive windows by the specified amount (a number
#: between zero and one, with zero being fully faded).
#: }}}
#: Tab bar {{{
tab_bar_edge bottom
#: Which edge to show the tab bar on, top or bottom
tab_bar_margin_width 0.0
#: The margin to the left and right of the tab bar (in pts)
tab_bar_style fade
#: The tab bar style, can be one of: fade or separator. In the fade
#: style, each tab's edges fade into the background color, in the
#: separator style, tabs are separated by a configurable separator.
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 " ┇"
#: The separator between tabs in the tab bar when using separator as
#: the tab_bar_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
#: }}}
#: Color scheme {{{
foreground #dddddd
background #000000
#: The foreground and background colors
background_opacity 1.0
dynamic_background_opacity no
#: The opacity of the background. A number between 0 and 1, where 1 is
#: opaque and 0 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 default background color's
#: opacity. This is 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 terminals default colors in a shell script to
#: launch your editor. Be aware that using a value less than 1.0 is a
#: (possibly significant) performance hit. If you want to dynamically
#: change transparency of windows set dynamic_background_opacity to
#: yes (this is off by default as it has a performance cost)
dim_opacity 0.75
#: 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 #000000
selection_background #FFFACD
#: The foreground and background for text selected with the mouse
#: The 16 terminal colors. There are 8 basic colors, each color has a
#: dull and bright version. You can also set the remaining colors from
#: the 256 color table as color16 to color255.
color0 #000000
color8 #767676
#: black
color1 #cc0403
color9 #f2201f
#: red
color2 #19cb00
color10 #23fd00
#: green
color3 #cecb00
color11 #fffd00
#: yellow
color4 #0d73cc
color12 #1a8fff
#: blue
color5 #cb1ed1
color13 #fd28ff
#: magenta
color6 #0dcdcd
color14 #14ffff
#: cyan
color7 #dddddd
color15 #ffffff
#: white
#: }}}
#: Advanced {{{
shell .
#: The shell program to execute. The default value of . means to use
#: 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 to ensure that the shell starts in interactive mode and
#: reads its startup rc files.
editor .
#: The console editor to use when editing the kitty config file or
#: similar tasks. A value of . means to use the environment variable
#: EDITOR. Note that this environment variable has to be set not just
#: in your shell startup scripts but system-wide, otherwise kitty will
#: not see it.
close_on_child_death no
#: Close the window when the child process (shell) exits. If no (the
#: default), the terminal will remain open when the child exits as
#: long as there are still processes outputting to the terminal (for
#: example disowned or backgrounded processes). If yes, the window
#: will close as soon as the child process exits. Note that setting it
#: to yes means that any background processes still using the terminal
#: can fail silently because their stdout/stderr/stdin no longer work.
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.
clipboard_control write-clipboard write-primary
#: Allow programs running in kitty to read and write from the
#: clipboard. You can control exactly which actions are allowed. The
#: set of possible actions is: write-clipboard read-clipboard write-
#: primary read-primary The default is to allow writing to the
#: clipboard and primary selection. Note that enabling the read
#: functionality is a security risk as it means that any program, even
#: one running on a remote server via SSH can read your clipboard.
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.
#: }}}
#: OS specific tweaks {{{
macos_titlebar_color system
#: Change the color of the kitty window's titlebar on macOS. A value
#: of system means to use the default system color, 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. WARNING: This option works by using a hack, as
#: there is no proper Cocoa API for it. It sets the background color
#: of the entire window and makes the titlebar transparent. As such it
#: is incompatible with background_opacity. If you want to use both,
#: you are probably better off just hiding the titlebar with
#: macos_hide_titlebar.
macos_hide_titlebar no
#: Hide the kitty window's title bar on macOS.
x11_hide_window_decorations no
#: Hide the window decorations (title bar and window borders) on X11
#: and Wayland. Whether this works and exactly what effect it has
#: depends on the window manager, as it is the job of the window
#: manager/compositor to draw window decorations.
macos_option_as_alt yes
#: Use the option key as an alt key. With this set to no, kitty will
#: use the macOS native Option+Key = unicode character behavior. This
#: will break any Alt+key keyboard shortcuts in your terminal
#: programs, but you can use the macOS unicode input technique.
macos_hide_from_tasks no
#: Hide the kitty window from running tasks (Option+Tab) on macOS.
macos_quit_when_last_window_closed no
#: Have kitty quit when all the top-level windows are closed. By
#: default, kitty will stay running, even with no open windows, as is
#: the expected behavior on macOS.
#: }}}
#: Keyboard shortcuts {{{
#: For a list of key names, see: GLFW keys
#: <http://www.glfw.org/docs/latest/group__keys.html> For a list of
#: modifier names, see: GLFW mods
#: <http://www.glfw.org/docs/latest/group__mods.html>
#: You can use the special action no_op to unmap a keyboard shortcut
#: that is assigned in the default configuration.
#: You can combine multiple actions to be triggered by a single
#: shortcut, using the syntax below::
#: map key combine <separator> action1 <separator> action2 <separator> action3 ...
#: For example::
#: map kitty_mod+e combine : new_window : next_layout
#: this will create a new window and switch to the next available
#: layout
#: You can use multi-key shortcuts using the syntax shown below::
#: map key1>key2>key3 action
#: For example::
#: map ctrl+f>2 set_font_size 20
kitty_mod ctrl+shift
#: The value of kitty_mod is used as the modifier for all default
#: shortcuts, you can change it in your kitty.conf to change the
#: modifiers for all the default shortcuts.
clear_all_shortcuts no
#: You can have kitty remove all shortcut definition seen up to this
#: point. Useful, for instance, to remove the default shortcuts.
#: Clipboard {{{
map kitty_mod+c copy_to_clipboard
map kitty_mod+v paste_from_clipboard
map kitty_mod+s paste_from_selection
map shift+insert paste_from_selection
map kitty_mod+o pass_selection_to_program
#: You can also pass the contents of the current selection to any
#: program using pass_selection_to_program. By default, the system's
#: open program is used, but you can specify your own, 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 {{{
map kitty_mod+up scroll_line_up
map kitty_mod+k scroll_line_up
map kitty_mod+down scroll_line_down
map kitty_mod+j scroll_line_down
map kitty_mod+page_up scroll_page_up
map kitty_mod+page_down scroll_page_down
map kitty_mod+home scroll_home
map kitty_mod+end scroll_end
map kitty_mod+h show_scrollback
#: You can send the contents of the current screen + history buffer as
#: stdin to an arbitrary program using the placeholders @text (which
#: is the plain text) and @ansi (which includes text styling escape
#: codes). For only the current screen, use @screen or @ansi_screen.
#: For example, the following command opens the scrollback buffer in
#: less in a new window::
#: map kitty_mod+y new_window @ansi less +G -R
#: }}}
#: Window management {{{
map kitty_mod+enter new_window
#: You can open a new window running an arbitrary program, for
#: example::
#: map kitty_mod+y new_window 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 new_window_with_cwd
map kitty_mod+n new_os_window
map kitty_mod+w close_window
map kitty_mod+] next_window
map kitty_mod+[ previous_window
map kitty_mod+f move_window_forward
map kitty_mod+b move_window_backward
map kitty_mod+` move_window_to_top
map kitty_mod+r start_resizing_window
map kitty_mod+1 first_window
map kitty_mod+2 second_window
map kitty_mod+3 third_window
map kitty_mod+4 fourth_window
map kitty_mod+5 fifth_window
map kitty_mod+6 sixth_window
map kitty_mod+7 seventh_window
map kitty_mod+8 eighth_window
map kitty_mod+9 ninth_window
map kitty_mod+0 tenth_window
#: }}}
#: Tab management {{{
map kitty_mod+right next_tab
map kitty_mod+left previous_tab
map kitty_mod+t new_tab
map kitty_mod+q close_tab
map kitty_mod+. move_tab_forward
map kitty_mod+, move_tab_backward
map kitty_mod+alt+t set_tab_title
#: You can also create shortcuts to go to specific tabs, with 1 being
#: the first tab::
#: map ctrl+alt+1 goto_tab 1
#: map ctrl+alt+2 goto_tab 2
#: Just as with new_window above, you can also pass the name of
#: arbitrary commands to run when using new_tab and use
#: new_tab_with_cwd.
#: }}}
#: Layout management {{{
map kitty_mod+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
#: }}}
#: Font sizes {{{
#: You can change the font size for all top-level kitty windows at a
#: time or only the current one.
map kitty_mod+equal change_font_size all +2.0
map kitty_mod+minus change_font_size all -2.0
map kitty_mod+backspace change_font_size all 0
#: To setup shortcuts for specific font sizes::
#: map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size all 10.0
#: To setup shortcuts to change only the current window's font size::
#: map kitty_mod+f6 change_font_size current 10.0
#: }}}
#: Select and act on visible text {{{
#: Use the hints kitten to select text and either pass it to an
#: external program or insert it into the terminal or copy it to the
#: clipboard.
map kitty_mod+e kitten hints
#: Open a currently visible URL using the keyboard. The program used
#: to open the URL is specified in open_url_with.
map kitty_mod+p>f kitten hints --type path --program -
#: Select a path/filename and insert it into the terminal. Useful, for
#: instance to run git commands on a filename output from a previous
#: git command.
map kitty_mod+p>shift+f kitten hints --type path
#: Select a path/filename and open it with the default open program.
map kitty_mod+p>l kitten hints --type line --program -
#: Select a line of text and insert it into the terminal. Use for the
#: output of things like: ls -1
map kitty_mod+p>w kitten hints --type word --program -
#: Select words and insert into terminal.
map kitty_mod+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
#: The hints kitten has many more modes of operation that you can map
#: to different shortcuts. For a full description see kittens/hints.
#: }}}
#: Miscellaneous {{{
map kitty_mod+f11 toggle_fullscreen
map kitty_mod+u input_unicode_character
map kitty_mod+f2 edit_config_file
map kitty_mod+escape kitty_shell window
#: Open the kitty shell in a new window/tab/overlay/os_window to
#: control kitty using commands.
map kitty_mod+a>m set_background_opacity +0.1
map kitty_mod+a>l set_background_opacity -0.1
map kitty_mod+a>1 set_background_opacity 1
map kitty_mod+a>d set_background_opacity default
#: You can tell kitty to send arbitrary (UTF-8) encoded text to the
#: client program when pressing specified shortcut keys. For example::
#: map ctrl+alt+a send_text all Special text
#: This will send "Special text" when you press the ctrl+alt+a key
#: combination. The text to be sent is a python string literal so you
#: can use escapes like \x1b to send control codes or \u21fb to send
#: unicode characters (or you can just input the unicode characters
#: directly as UTF-8 text). The first argument to send_text is the
#: keyboard modes in which to activate the shortcut. The possible
#: values are normal or application or kitty or a comma separated
#: combination of them. The special keyword all means all modes. The
#: modes normal and application refer to the DECCKM cursor key mode
#: for terminals, and kitty refers to the special kitty extended
#: keyboard protocol.
#: Another example, that outputs a word and then moves the cursor to
#: the start of the line (same as pressing the Home key)::
#: map ctrl+alt+a send_text normal Word\x1b[H
#: map ctrl+alt+a send_text application Word\x1bOH
#: }}}
# }}}
