Essential Keyboard Shortcuts in Kitty: Mastering Your Terminal

Kitty is a terminal that shines for its performance and high customizability, but where it truly excels is in its keyboard-driven interface. Mastering its shortcuts will allow you to navigate, manage, and manipulate your terminal sessions with amazing efficiency.

Discover Your Shortcuts: show_shortcuts¶

The fastest way to know all the keyboard shortcuts configured in your Kitty instance is by using its own functionality:

kitty +kitten show_shortcuts

This will open an interactive window where you can see all shortcuts, both the default ones and those customized in your kitty.conf.

Essential Shortcuts for Every Day¶

Here are some of the most useful shortcuts that will help you optimize your workflow the most:

Window and Split Management (Panes)¶

• ctrl+shift+enter: Opens a new Kitty window.
• ctrl+shift+w: Closes the current Kitty window.
• ctrl+shift+o: Splits the current window vertically (new pane to the right).
• ctrl+shift+e: Splits the current window horizontally (new pane below).
• ctrl+shift+f: Toggles between split panes (focus).
• ctrl+shift+[ / ctrl+shift+]: Navigates between panes (left/right).
• ctrl+shift+alt+[ / ctrl+shift+alt+]: Moves the active pane (left/right).

Tab Management¶

• ctrl+shift+t: Opens a new tab.
• ctrl+shift+q: Closes the current tab.
• ctrl+shift+.: Moves to the next tab.
• ctrl+shift+,: Moves to the previous tab.
• ctrl+shift+alt+.: Moves the current tab to the right.
• ctrl+shift+alt+,: Moves the current tab to the left.

Copy and Paste¶

Kitty has its own copy/paste implementation, which can be more reliable than the system one when working in remote environments or with multiplexers:

• ctrl+shift+c: Copies the selected text to the system clipboard.
• ctrl+shift+v: Pastes text from the system clipboard.

Font and Appearance Control¶

• ctrl+shift+= (or +): Increases the font size.
• ctrl+shift+-: Decreases the font size.
• ctrl+shift+backspace: Resets the font size to the default value.
• ctrl+shift+k: Enters "scrollback" mode (to search or select historical text).

Customizing Your Shortcuts in kitty.conf¶

You can add or modify keyboard shortcuts in your configuration file ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf using the map directive. For example, to map F1 for a custom script:

map f1 launch --type=overlay bash -c "my_custom_script.sh"

Mastering these shortcuts will transform your interaction with the terminal, making it more fluid and intuitive. Experiment and customize Kitty to perfectly adapt to your work style!