---
title: "kitty"
category: "Terminal and shell"
tagline: "A GPU-based terminal emulator you can script and extend."
source: "pacman"
package: "kitty"
command: "kitty"
website: "https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/"
code: "https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty"
---

## What it is

kitty is a terminal emulator that renders on the GPU and is built to be driven from the keyboard. It has its own tabs and window layouts, a protocol for showing images in the terminal, and "kittens": small add-on programs for things like viewing images, diffing files or picking Unicode characters. Everything is set in a plain text file, `~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf`.

## Why it's here

- **Keyboard-first.** Tabs, splits and layouts are all on shortcuts.
- **Scriptable.** You can control a running kitty from the command line or from scripts.
- **Graphics in the terminal.** Tools that support its image protocol can show pictures inline.

## On CoreDesktop

kitty is installed from pacman. Open it from the app grid or type `kitty`. It's the last fallback CoreDesktop's update notification uses to open a terminal for `update`.

`update` keeps kitty current along with the rest of the pacman packages.