kitty

kitty is cross-platform, fast terminal emulator. Users can customize the terminal in many ways easily with its text based configuration file. I’m using this because it can provide consistent terminal environment over multiple operating systems and has good documentation.

Installation

According to official guide, It requires some dependencies.

Built-time dependencies

Common

  • gcc or clang
  • go

Linux

apt-get install pkg-config libdbus-1-dev libxcursor-dev libxrandr-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libfontconfig-dev libx11-xcb-dev liblcms2-dev libssl-dev libpython3-dev libxxhash-dev libsimde-dev

macOS

brew install simde pkg-config

Run-time dependencies

Ubuntu

If Python (>= 3.8) does not exists in apt repository, install it manually.

apt-get install harfbuzz zlib libpng liblcms2 libxxhash openssl python

macOS (10.14 or newer)

macOS has old version of system python. Use python version manager like pyenv to install and use newer version of python.

brew install harfbuzz zlib libpng liblcms2 libxxhash openssl freetype fontconfig libcanberra

Build

./dev.sh build

There are other build options such as debug, sanitize. See the guide for the details.

Configuration

Open configuration file with a command Ctrl+Shift+F2 and reload it with Ctrl+Shift+F5 after saving the file. Options can be tested with those commands easily.

Keyboard shortcuts

map {key combination} {action} {args...}

Creation

# create vertical split window where shell's cwd is same as current window
map alt+d launch --location=vsplit --cwd=current

# create horizontal split window
map alt+shift+d launch --location=hsplit --cwd=current

Window traversal

map alt+k neighboring_window up
map alt+h neighboring_window left
map alt+l neighboring_window right
map alt+j neighboring_window down

Tab shortcut

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

Fonts

User can make fonts look similar over multiple operating systems by adjusting font options

font_family      family='{font name}'

text_composition_strategy 1.0 0
font_size        13.0
modify_font      cell_width 95%
modify_font      cell_height 0px

Tab bar

This example is for Vim-like tab bar

tab_bar_style separator
tab_title_template " {index}: {tab.active_exe} "
tab_separator " "
inactive_tab_foreground #000000
inactive_tab_background #707070