kitty

kitty is a fast, feature-rich, GPU-based terminal emulator written in C and Python, created by Kovid Goyal. The terminal offloads all text rendering to the GPU using OpenGL, and leverages SIMD vector CPU instructions for layout and other computations, achieving best-in-class performance with threaded rendering that provides absolutely minimal input latency. kitty implements a powerful extension system called kittens, which are small terminal programs that run in separate processes and can interact with kitty via IPC. Notable kittens include icat for inline image display in the terminal, unicode_input for entering characters by name or codepoint, themes for browsing and applying over 300 color schemes, hyperlinked_grep for ripgrep integration with clickable results, remote_file for SSH file management, and broadcast for sending input to multiple windows simultaneously. The Remote Control Protocol allows external programs and scripts to control kitty programmatically, enabling automation of window layout, tab management, font changes, and screenshot capture. The Kitty Shell provides a command-line interface for interacting with kitty itself. The Graphics Protocol supports displaying PNG, JPEG, GIF, SVG, and animated images inline with live updates, making kitty suitable for terminal-based image viewers and document renderers. The terminal supports true 24-bit color, ligatures, font fallback chains, per-window configuration, startup sessions for restoring window layouts, and deep integration with tmux and Neovim. kitty runs on Linux and macOS with performance tradeoffs tunable through over 100 configuration options. The project is open source under the GPL v3 license.