{"slug": "kitty", "name": "Kitty", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "GPU-accelerated, cross-platform terminal emulator with built-in tabs, splits, and extensions called kittens.", "recommenders": 17, "commenters": 25, "warners": 3, "score": 14.108, "rising": 6.38, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "HN commenters like Kitty for built-in kittens such as hints, diff and SSH, for scriptable remote control and native sessions that can replace tmux, and for its terminal graphics support.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 17, "neutral": 3, "compare": 2, "warn": 3}, "spark": [1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 3, 0, 6], "listed": true, "loved": ["Built-in kittens", "Scriptability"], "caveat": "Config-file setup", "short_quote": "kitty was the only one that covered most of my needs without feeling like it suffers from random quirks", "icon": true, "domain": "kovidgoyal.net", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Kitty", "kitty"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Kitty for built-in kittens such as hints, diff and SSH,", "cites": [{"id": 804218353, "item_id": 50263647, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263647", "by": "jaywcarman", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty", "excerpt": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great, but Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty. There are quite a few discussions around this and similar features in the Ghosstty-org/ghostty Discussions[2] which I follow. Most of them are references from ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394[3]. Maybe now that Ghostty has finished implementing Kitty graphics hints will be next . [1]: h", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator with hints mode", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 754853904, "item_id": 47178369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178369", "by": "toastal", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty terminal has diff like this builtin", "excerpt": "kitty terminal has diff like this builtin https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/diff/ I use it with darcs diff --diff-command=\"kitten diff %1 %2\"", "context": "", "use_case": "side-by-side diff", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Deff \u2013 side-by-side Git diff review in your terminal"}, {"id": 755329953, "item_id": 47208122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208122", "by": "Myzel394", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still use Kitty, especially for SSH connections.", "excerpt": "I love Ghostty, especially the UI is so much nicer than Kitty. However, for some reason ghostty sometimes has severe issues with dealing with SSH connections. The terminal is like broken and wrongly displayed and you can't properly type something. Therefore, I still use Kitty, especially for SSH connections. I don't know what `kitten ssh` does, but it makes my terminal work with SSH.", "context": "", "use_case": "SSH terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}]}, {"text": " for scriptable remote control and native sessions that can replace tmux,", "cites": [{"id": 781254400, "item_id": 48828400, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828400", "by": "lemontheme", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "embracing the total scriptability of my favorite terminal, Kitty", "excerpt": "If you do most of your work on a central server and treat your other devices as thin clients, then (afaik) Tmux/Zellij are the way to go \u2013 not to mention if you want to multiplayer with colleagues. (I know Wezterm has remote session multiplexing in beta, but I\u2019d be surprised if you can re-attach from a different machine.) Lately I\u2019ve been experimenting with embracing the total scriptability of my favorite terminal, K", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with scripted layouts", "switched_from": "Zellij", "story": "Herdr: One terminal to rule them all"}, {"id": 770224641, "item_id": 48139040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139040", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty has remote protocol.", "excerpt": "> what the other parts are Of course I can't explain in detail in a single comment everything I listed, besides, that's just a subset of things I do through Emacs. Sometimes I want to kick off a process in the external terminal - long-lived processes are better handled that way. Kitty has remote protocol. I needed bidirectionally - being able to pipe into and from an arbitrary Emacs buffer to and from the terminal, s", "context": "", "use_case": "external terminal for long-lived processes", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 785602256, "item_id": 49100141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100141", "by": "azuanrb", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I decided to move to Kitty and use its built-in sessions instead.", "excerpt": "That explains why he built sessions into libghostty instead of Ghostty itself. Looking forward to it. I spend most of my time in the terminal and have been using tmux to manage my sessions and workspaces, mainly via sesh. But recently, I decided to move to Kitty and use its built-in sessions instead. I built something around it as well. It\u2019s still early, but I\u2019m really liking this workflow so far. https://github.com/", "context": "spends most time in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal with sessions", "switched_from": "tmux", "story": "Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical"}]}, {"text": " and for its terminal graphics support.", "cites": [{"id": 732839520, "item_id": 45802470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802470", "by": "ziotom78", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly.", "excerpt": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly. Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager, but I can also display plots within the Julia REPL, thanks to the KittyTerminalImages.jl package [2]. It's even more crucial when I'm navigating a remote directory and need to check an image file, as I usually have timg [3] installed on those servers. Once you discover how valuable this is, it becomes a per", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with image display", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}, {"id": 799549264, "item_id": 49971829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971829", "by": "neomantra", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing", "excerpt": "I'm exploring aspects of these \"other ways\". I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing and then layering libraries over that. I've also been working on remoting Golang programs over the network as well as compiling them to WASM and embedding that in browsers. This WebGPU browser shader is an example of that mashed together [1]. Same code for native and browser. Shout out to TUIOS [2] that is in the articl", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal graphics", "switched_from": "", "story": "A third way of using Linux"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaints are that setup happens entirely in config files and that it looks poor on macOS,", "cites": [{"id": 777268177, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}, {"id": 804390225, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804269571, "item_id": 50266848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266848", "by": "thiht", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "If you\u2019re fine using iTerm just use iTerm. In my case I used iTerm for years and kinda liked it, but not completely. I\u2019d been looking for an alternative for years but couldn\u2019t find one I like (Alacritty doesn\u2019t support pane splitting, Wezterm has full code config which I hate, Kitty doesn\u2019t look good on Mac, Terminal.app is dog slow\u2026). Ghostty just fits my needs pretty much exactly.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 799950096, "item_id": 49996881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996881", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left!", "excerpt": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left! Kovid not only consistently innovates in the terminal space, he also helps set standards. It really is a great, non-commercial project that I think everyone should support. I'd love if they a better icon on Mac OS though. https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Ghostty", "story": "No new Ghostty updates since March"}]}, {"text": " with some reports of font rendering trouble and crashes in the Debian package.", "cites": [{"id": 804390225, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Built-in kittens", "summary": "Built-in tools like hints mode, diff, and kitten ssh are valued enough to keep users from switching.", "quotes": [{"id": 804218353, "item_id": 50263647, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263647", "by": "jaywcarman", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty", "excerpt": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great, but Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty. There are quite a few discussions around this and similar features in the Ghosstty-org/ghostty Discussions[2] which I follow. Most of them are references from ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394[3]. Maybe now that Ghostty has finished implementing Kitty graphics hints will be next . [1]: h", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator with hints mode", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 754853904, "item_id": 47178369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178369", "by": "toastal", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty terminal has diff like this builtin", "excerpt": "kitty terminal has diff like this builtin https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/diff/ I use it with darcs diff --diff-command=\"kitten diff %1 %2\"", "context": "", "use_case": "side-by-side diff", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Deff \u2013 side-by-side Git diff review in your terminal"}, {"id": 755329953, "item_id": 47208122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208122", "by": "Myzel394", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still use Kitty, especially for SSH connections.", "excerpt": "I love Ghostty, especially the UI is so much nicer than Kitty. However, for some reason ghostty sometimes has severe issues with dealing with SSH connections. The terminal is like broken and wrongly displayed and you can't properly type something. Therefore, I still use Kitty, especially for SSH connections. I don't know what `kitten ssh` does, but it makes my terminal work with SSH.", "context": "", "use_case": "SSH terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}]}, {"label": "Scriptability", "summary": "Commenters build workflows on its remote control protocol and full scriptability.", "quotes": [{"id": 781254400, "item_id": 48828400, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828400", "by": "lemontheme", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "embracing the total scriptability of my favorite terminal, Kitty", "excerpt": "If you do most of your work on a central server and treat your other devices as thin clients, then (afaik) Tmux/Zellij are the way to go \u2013 not to mention if you want to multiplayer with colleagues. (I know Wezterm has remote session multiplexing in beta, but I\u2019d be surprised if you can re-attach from a different machine.) Lately I\u2019ve been experimenting with embracing the total scriptability of my favorite terminal, K", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with scripted layouts", "switched_from": "Zellij", "story": "Herdr: One terminal to rule them all"}, {"id": 770224641, "item_id": 48139040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139040", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty has remote protocol.", "excerpt": "> what the other parts are Of course I can't explain in detail in a single comment everything I listed, besides, that's just a subset of things I do through Emacs. Sometimes I want to kick off a process in the external terminal - long-lived processes are better handled that way. Kitty has remote protocol. I needed bidirectionally - being able to pipe into and from an arbitrary Emacs buffer to and from the terminal, s", "context": "", "use_case": "external terminal for long-lived processes", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 789362625, "item_id": 49335164, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335164", "by": "rickye26", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I want to keep my existing workflow in Kitty and tmux/zellij", "excerpt": "This looks really cool, especially on the remote control part. I've experienced exactly the same problem, but ended up building my own tool through an opposite architectural approach than Saggar. The main difference is that I want to keep my existing workflow in Kitty and tmux/zellij. Since all of them provide solid remote control protocol, I wrote captain-miao (https://github.com/hyperlogue/captain-miao) which is a ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Saggar, a Mac terminal that keeps sessions and your attention organized"}]}, {"label": "Won-over switchers", "summary": "Users who moved from Terminal.app, Konsole, or Ghostty say they did not look back.", "quotes": [{"id": 804428480, "item_id": 50276780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276780", "by": "bayesnet", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "excerpt": "I was literally just griping about how I couldn't do this. I had no idea it was possible with kitty. Now to decide whether to switch back for it... As an aside, I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around. But kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804287440, "item_id": 50267965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50267965", "by": "kombine", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since.", "excerpt": "Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since. This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Konsole", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 799950096, "item_id": 49996881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996881", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left!", "excerpt": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left! Kovid not only consistently innovates in the terminal space, he also helps set standards. It really is a great, non-commercial project that I think everyone should support. I'd love if they a better icon on Mac OS though. https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Ghostty", "story": "No new Ghostty updates since March"}]}, {"label": "Speed", "summary": "Commenters report it as much faster than Konsole and as starting instantly in single-instance mode.", "quotes": [{"id": 804211745, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster.", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "Gentoo user with NVIDIA GPUs", "use_case": "fast terminal", "switched_from": "Konsole", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 786422689, "item_id": 49151418, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151418", "by": "porridgeraisin", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty has the single instance feature and starts instantly with it.", "excerpt": "Yep, I want really fast startup too. Of the two I use: xfce4-terminal starts utterly instantly without single instance feature. Kitty has the single instance feature and starts instantly with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "fast-starting terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours"}]}, {"label": "Terminal graphics", "summary": "Its graphics protocol lets users view images and plots in tools like Yazi and the Julia REPL.", "quotes": [{"id": 732839520, "item_id": 45802470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802470", "by": "ziotom78", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly.", "excerpt": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly. Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager, but I can also display plots within the Julia REPL, thanks to the KittyTerminalImages.jl package [2]. It's even more crucial when I'm navigating a remote directory and need to check an image file, as I usually have timg [3] installed on those servers. Once you discover how valuable this is, it becomes a per", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with image display", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}, {"id": 799549264, "item_id": 49971829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971829", "by": "neomantra", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing", "excerpt": "I'm exploring aspects of these \"other ways\". I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing and then layering libraries over that. I've also been working on remoting Golang programs over the network as well as compiling them to WASM and embedding that in browsers. This WebGPU browser shader is an example of that mashed together [1]. Same code for native and browser. Shout out to TUIOS [2] that is in the articl", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal graphics", "switched_from": "", "story": "A third way of using Linux"}]}, {"label": "Built-in sessions", "summary": "Native sessions and tab management replace tmux for some users.", "quotes": [{"id": 785602256, "item_id": 49100141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100141", "by": "azuanrb", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I decided to move to Kitty and use its built-in sessions instead.", "excerpt": "That explains why he built sessions into libghostty instead of Ghostty itself. Looking forward to it. I spend most of my time in the terminal and have been using tmux to manage my sessions and workspaces, mainly via sesh. But recently, I decided to move to Kitty and use its built-in sessions instead. I built something around it as well. It\u2019s still early, but I\u2019m really liking this workflow so far. https://github.com/", "context": "spends most time in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal with sessions", "switched_from": "tmux", "story": "Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical"}, {"id": 764233106, "item_id": 47764569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764569", "by": "itzami", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i miss kitty's way of doing stuff", "excerpt": "i apologize for my heresy on doing this! i'm actually swinging into two different approaches for my tmux panes and none of them conform to what tmux expects (again, i'm sorry for that!) i miss kitty's way of doing stuff so i had to make some sense out of tmux and ghostty to make the change less brutal! i also suck at remembering keybinds my other approach is, on doing `cmd+enter` running the following script https://", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal panes", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Tmux-grid \u2013 a visual layout builder for tmux"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Config-file setup", "summary": "Nearly everything must be configured in a config file, and tab customization needed Python.", "quotes": [{"id": 777268177, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}, {"id": 804390225, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "macOS appearance", "summary": "Commenters say it doesn't look good on Mac and wish for a better macOS icon.", "quotes": [{"id": 804269571, "item_id": 50266848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266848", "by": "thiht", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "If you\u2019re fine using iTerm just use iTerm. In my case I used iTerm for years and kinda liked it, but not completely. I\u2019d been looking for an alternative for years but couldn\u2019t find one I like (Alacritty doesn\u2019t support pane splitting, Wezterm has full code config which I hate, Kitty doesn\u2019t look good on Mac, Terminal.app is dog slow\u2026). Ghostty just fits my needs pretty much exactly.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 799950096, "item_id": 49996881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996881", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left!", "excerpt": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left! Kovid not only consistently innovates in the terminal space, he also helps set standards. It really is a great, non-commercial project that I think everyone should support. I'd love if they a better icon on Mac OS though. https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Ghostty", "story": "No new Ghostty updates since March"}]}, {"label": "Font rendering", "summary": "One user could not get consistent font rendering across screens with different pixel densities.", "quotes": [{"id": 804390225, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Stability", "summary": "One user had crashes with the Debian package, though it later became stable.", "quotes": [{"id": 804390225, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Not fastest", "summary": "Some found Ghostty faster or returned to lighter terminals, and one latency benchmark placed Kitty mid-pack.", "quotes": [{"id": 804211745, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster.", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "Gentoo user with NVIDIA GPUs", "use_case": "fast terminal", "switched_from": "Konsole", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 769649204, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I was curious to see what the actual latency was, so I used Pavel Fatin's https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/. Notes: This system is running Arch, with kernel 7.0.3, scx_bpfland, and i3 on X11. Primary GPU is an integrated Intel GPU. Using picom: Terminal Min Max Avg SD alacritty 20.1 111.4 43.8 18.0 xfce4-terminal 19.1 112.5 49.1 17.9 xterm 12.3 152.6 53.1 26.4 wezterm 28.3 106.0 56.2 15.4 kitty 25.3 115.9 57.2 18.5 g", "context": "Arch Linux user on i3 and X11", "use_case": "terminal latency benchmark", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage"}, {"id": 804347889, "item_id": 50271743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271743", "by": "Shugyousha", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have tried other terminal emulators as well (kitty, for example)", "excerpt": "I do most of my work in a terminal emulator and I mostly want the terminal I use to be fast to run and start. I have tried other terminal emulators as well (kitty, for example) since they promise to be GPU-accelerated which sounded relevant to my needs. I always end up back at \"st\" though. It is fast enough for my purposes and does just about exactly what I want and not more. Reading about Ghostty 1.4's D-bus activat", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}], "who": [{"by": "adrian_b", "context": "Gentoo user with NVIDIA GPUs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "date": "2026-10-27"}, {"by": "diath", "context": "evaluated about 12 terminals", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262965", "date": "2026-10-27"}, {"by": "azuanrb", "context": "spends most time in the terminal", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100141", "date": "2026-07-29"}], "tags": ["tmux alternative", "for Neovim users", "for SSH sessions", "for inline images", "for Linux users"], "use_cases": ["terminal emulator", "terminal emulator with hints mode", "fast terminal", "terminal graphics", "terminal workflow", "terminal"], "compared": [{"slug": "ghostty", "name": "Ghostty", "co": 15, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 6}, {"slug": "konsole", "name": "Konsole", "co": 5, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 4, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "zellij", "name": "Zellij", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "wezterm", "name": "WezTerm", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "alacritty", "name": "Alacritty", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "terminal-app", "name": "Terminal.app", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "neovim", "name": "Neovim", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261998", "title": "Ghostty 1.4", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331551", "title": "Show HN: Saggar, a Mac terminal that keeps sessions and your attention organized", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996286", "title": "No new Ghostty updates since March", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49970073", "title": "A third way of using Linux", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49254881", "title": "Closing Canario Terminal source code", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149326", "title": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 6, "warn": 2, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804428480, "item_id": 50276780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276780", "by": "bayesnet", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "excerpt": "I was literally just griping about how I couldn't do this. I had no idea it was possible with kitty. Now to decide whether to switch back for it... As an aside, I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around. But kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Terminal.app", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804390225, "item_id": 50274389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274389", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package", "excerpt": "I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years). For me, the major pain wa", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804347889, "item_id": 50271743, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271743", "by": "Shugyousha", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have tried other terminal emulators as well (kitty, for example)", "excerpt": "I do most of my work in a terminal emulator and I mostly want the terminal I use to be fast to run and start. I have tried other terminal emulators as well (kitty, for example) since they promise to be GPU-accelerated which sounded relevant to my needs. I always end up back at \"st\" though. It is fast enough for my purposes and does just about exactly what I want and not more. Reading about Ghostty 1.4's D-bus activat", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804287440, "item_id": 50267965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50267965", "by": "kombine", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since.", "excerpt": "Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since. This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Konsole", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804269571, "item_id": 50266848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266848", "by": "thiht", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "If you\u2019re fine using iTerm just use iTerm. In my case I used iTerm for years and kinda liked it, but not completely. I\u2019d been looking for an alternative for years but couldn\u2019t find one I like (Alacritty doesn\u2019t support pane splitting, Wezterm has full code config which I hate, Kitty doesn\u2019t look good on Mac, Terminal.app is dog slow\u2026). Ghostty just fits my needs pretty much exactly.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804218353, "item_id": 50263647, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263647", "by": "jaywcarman", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty", "excerpt": "I've tried Ghostty and it's great, but Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty. There are quite a few discussions around this and similar features in the Ghosstty-org/ghostty Discussions[2] which I follow. Most of them are references from ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394[3]. Maybe now that Ghostty has finished implementing Kitty graphics hints will be next . [1]: h", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator with hints mode", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804211745, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster.", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "Gentoo user with NVIDIA GPUs", "use_case": "fast terminal", "switched_from": "Konsole", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804207440, "item_id": 50262965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262965", "by": "diath", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty was the only one that covered most of my needs without feeling like it suffers from random quirks", "excerpt": "1) Personal preferences: different terminals come with different defaults, some people do not want to tinker with the settings, so they just stick with whatever immediately clicks. 2) Technical curiosity: some people probably started their own terminal project just for the fuck of having made their own - and they eventually gained a userbase. 3) Feature set: Most terminals implement most features these days, but at t", "context": "evaluated about 12 terminals", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 799950096, "item_id": 49996881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996881", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left!", "excerpt": "I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left! Kovid not only consistently innovates in the terminal space, he also helps set standards. It really is a great, non-commercial project that I think everyone should support. I'd love if they a better icon on Mac OS though. https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "Ghostty", "story": "No new Ghostty updates since March"}, {"id": 799549264, "item_id": 49971829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971829", "by": "neomantra", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing", "excerpt": "I'm exploring aspects of these \"other ways\". I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing and then layering libraries over that. I've also been working on remoting Golang programs over the network as well as compiling them to WASM and embedding that in browsers. This WebGPU browser shader is an example of that mashed together [1]. Same code for native and browser. Shout out to TUIOS [2] that is in the articl", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal graphics", "switched_from": "", "story": "A third way of using Linux"}, {"id": 789368960, "item_id": 49335560, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335560", "by": "mcclowes", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty is great too", "excerpt": "Looks great, well done! Kitty is great too, makes sense. I have purposefully kept things quite tight for my own sanity, but I think it makes sense market-share wise at the moment. At the moment I'm also assuming that if someone is using Cursor AI tooling/Grok, they're probably using Cursor IDE and terminals in there. I am planning on looking into integrating Pi.dev, which I love the philsophy of (though don't use per", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Saggar, a Mac terminal that keeps sessions and your attention organized"}, {"id": 789362625, "item_id": 49335164, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335164", "by": "rickye26", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I want to keep my existing workflow in Kitty and tmux/zellij", "excerpt": "This looks really cool, especially on the remote control part. I've experienced exactly the same problem, but ended up building my own tool through an opposite architectural approach than Saggar. The main difference is that I want to keep my existing workflow in Kitty and tmux/zellij. Since all of them provide solid remote control protocol, I wrote captain-miao (https://github.com/hyperlogue/captain-miao) which is a ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Saggar, a Mac terminal that keeps sessions and your attention organized"}, {"id": 788132416, "item_id": 49258276, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49258276", "by": "Aeolun", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "because I love cool retro terminal and kitty", "excerpt": "I don't really see how that works. I have my own terminal app (because I love cool retro terminal and kitty, but nobody combined them so far), built by Claude. It's open source. I don't think anyone but me uses it. There's nothing that says something I build only for myself can't be open source. I suspect it's more about the noise that comes along with it, if it's used by more people than you.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Closing Canario Terminal source code"}, {"id": 786422689, "item_id": 49151418, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151418", "by": "porridgeraisin", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty has the single instance feature and starts instantly with it.", "excerpt": "Yep, I want really fast startup too. Of the two I use: xfce4-terminal starts utterly instantly without single instance feature. Kitty has the single instance feature and starts instantly with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "fast-starting terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours"}, {"id": 785602256, "item_id": 49100141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100141", "by": "azuanrb", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I decided to move to Kitty and use its built-in sessions instead.", "excerpt": "That explains why he built sessions into libghostty instead of Ghostty itself. Looking forward to it. I spend most of my time in the terminal and have been using tmux to manage my sessions and workspaces, mainly via sesh. But recently, I decided to move to Kitty and use its built-in sessions instead. I built something around it as well. It\u2019s still early, but I\u2019m really liking this workflow so far. https://github.com/", "context": "spends most time in the terminal", "use_case": "terminal with sessions", "switched_from": "tmux", "story": "Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical"}, {"id": 781254400, "item_id": 48828400, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828400", "by": "lemontheme", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "embracing the total scriptability of my favorite terminal, Kitty", "excerpt": "If you do most of your work on a central server and treat your other devices as thin clients, then (afaik) Tmux/Zellij are the way to go \u2013 not to mention if you want to multiplayer with colleagues. (I know Wezterm has remote session multiplexing in beta, but I\u2019d be surprised if you can re-attach from a different machine.) Lately I\u2019ve been experimenting with embracing the total scriptability of my favorite terminal, K", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with scripted layouts", "switched_from": "Zellij", "story": "Herdr: One terminal to rule them all"}, {"id": 777268177, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}, {"id": 770224641, "item_id": 48139040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139040", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kitty has remote protocol.", "excerpt": "> what the other parts are Of course I can't explain in detail in a single comment everything I listed, besides, that's just a subset of things I do through Emacs. Sometimes I want to kick off a process in the external terminal - long-lived processes are better handled that way. Kitty has remote protocol. I needed bidirectionally - being able to pipe into and from an arbitrary Emacs buffer to and from the terminal, s", "context": "", "use_case": "external terminal for long-lived processes", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 769649204, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I was curious to see what the actual latency was, so I used Pavel Fatin's https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/. Notes: This system is running Arch, with kernel 7.0.3, scx_bpfland, and i3 on X11. Primary GPU is an integrated Intel GPU. Using picom: Terminal Min Max Avg SD alacritty 20.1 111.4 43.8 18.0 xfce4-terminal 19.1 112.5 49.1 17.9 xterm 12.3 152.6 53.1 26.4 wezterm 28.3 106.0 56.2 15.4 kitty 25.3 115.9 57.2 18.5 g", "context": "Arch Linux user on i3 and X11", "use_case": "terminal latency benchmark", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage"}, {"id": 767373634, "item_id": 47960852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960852", "by": "bahadiraydin", "date": "2026-04-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Kitty terminal emulator, I have 4 tabs open.", "excerpt": "Today, I tried Zed because it made it to frontpage of HN and a lot of people were praising it in comments. However, I got lost. Every IDE is different. I felt very restricted. This is not the problem of Zed (or any IDE) but this is how they are compared to hand-crafted Neovim installation. They just can't compare. Neovim is simple but extensible. I have designed it over years to match my workflow and tools precisely.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Make HN great again: Neovim vs. IDEs"}, {"id": 764233106, "item_id": 47764569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764569", "by": "itzami", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i miss kitty's way of doing stuff", "excerpt": "i apologize for my heresy on doing this! i'm actually swinging into two different approaches for my tmux panes and none of them conform to what tmux expects (again, i'm sorry for that!) i miss kitty's way of doing stuff so i had to make some sense out of tmux and ghostty to make the change less brutal! i also suck at remembering keybinds my other approach is, on doing `cmd+enter` running the following script https://", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal panes", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Tmux-grid \u2013 a visual layout builder for tmux"}, {"id": 755329953, "item_id": 47208122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208122", "by": "Myzel394", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still use Kitty, especially for SSH connections.", "excerpt": "I love Ghostty, especially the UI is so much nicer than Kitty. However, for some reason ghostty sometimes has severe issues with dealing with SSH connections. The terminal is like broken and wrongly displayed and you can't properly type something. Therefore, I still use Kitty, especially for SSH connections. I don't know what `kitten ssh` does, but it makes my terminal work with SSH.", "context": "", "use_case": "SSH terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty \u2013 Terminal Emulator"}, {"id": 754853904, "item_id": 47178369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178369", "by": "toastal", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "kitty terminal has diff like this builtin", "excerpt": "kitty terminal has diff like this builtin https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/diff/ I use it with darcs diff --diff-command=\"kitten diff %1 %2\"", "context": "", "use_case": "side-by-side diff", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Deff \u2013 side-by-side Git diff review in your terminal"}, {"id": 739203712, "item_id": 46200232, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46200232", "by": "MarsIronPI", "date": "2025-12-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I highly recommend making the last program in your .xinitrc be a terminal emulator rather than Emacs", "excerpt": "For anyone interested in doing something similar, I highly recommend making the last program in your .xinitrc be a terminal emulator rather than Emacs, that way if Emacs crashes, your other windows will persist. Something like: # start other stuff emacs & exec kitty", "context": "", "use_case": "fallback terminal in xinitrc", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs is my new window manager (2015)"}, {"id": 732839520, "item_id": 45802470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802470", "by": "ziotom78", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly.", "excerpt": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly. Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager, but I can also display plots within the Julia REPL, thanks to the KittyTerminalImages.jl package [2]. It's even more crucial when I'm navigating a remote directory and need to check an image file, as I usually have timg [3] installed on those servers. Once you discover how valuable this is, it becomes a per", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal with image display", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}]}