We stand with Ukraine to help keep people safe. Join us
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission

kitty for Mac

GPU-accelerated terminal emulator.

Free
In English
Version 0.44.0
5.0
Based on 4 user rates

kitty overview

kitty is a fast, featureful, GPU based terminal emulator.

Highlights:
  • Offloads rendering to the GPU for lower system load and buttery smooth scrolling. Uses threaded rendering to minimize input latency
  • Supports all modern terminal features: graphics (images), unicode, true-color, OpenType ligatures, mouse protocol, focus tracking, bracketed paste and several new terminal protocol extensions
  • Supports tiling multiple terminal windows side by side in different layouts without needing to use an extra program like tmux
  • Can be controlled from scripts or the shell prompt, even over SSH
  • Has a framework for Kittens, small terminal programs that can be used to extend kitty's functionality. For example, they are used for Unicode input, Hints and Side-by-side diff
  • Supports startup sessions which allow you to specify the window/tab layout, working directories and programs to run on startup
  • Cross-platform: kitty works on Linux and macOS, but because it uses only OpenGL for rendering, it should be trivial to port to other Unix-like platforms
  • Allows you to open the scrollback buffer in a separate window using arbitrary programs of your choice. This is useful for browsing the history comfortably in a pager or editor
  • Has multiple copy/paste buffers, like vim

What’s new in version 0.44.0

  • Allow kitty to read a specified set of environment variables from your login shell at startup using the env directive in kitty.conf (#9042)
  • A new option draw_window_borders_for_single_window to force kitty to always draw a window border even when only a single window is present (#9112)
  • Fix a regression in 0.43.0 that caused a black flicker when closing a tab in the presence of a background image (#9060)
  • Further improvements to rounded corner rendering, especially at low DPI (#9091)
  • Splits layout: Fix a bug that could cause a corrupted layout in some circumstances (#9059)
  • Fix a regression in the previous release that broke goto_session -1
  • Fix rendering broken on ancient GPU drivers that do not support rendering to 16 bit textures (#9068)
  • Fix tab bar sometimes showing incorrect tabs when it is filtered to show only tabs from the current session (#9079)
  • macOS: Workaround for bug in macOS Tahoe that caused OS Windows that are fullscreen to crash kitty when returning from sleep on some machines (#8983)
  • Graphics: Fix animated images sometimes not auto playing or auto playing at the wrong start frame if the same image id is used for a subsequent image
  • Fix a regression in 0.43.0 that caused high CPU usage when disable_ligatures was set to cursor and the tab bar was visible (#9071)
  • macOS: Handle dropping of file promises into kitty in addition to file paths (#9084)
  • macOS: Fix indeterminate progress bar displayed on dock icon increasing speed when indeterminate progress is set without being cleared first (#9114)
  • macOS: Performance and power usage improvements of about 5-10% (#9131)
  • macOS: Add an item to the global menu to Cycle through OS windows
  • macOS: Quick access terminal: Fix a crash when changing font size (#9178)
  • Wayland: Fix center-sized panels not working on smithay based compositors (#9117)
  • Wayland: Fix scrolling using some mouse wheels that produce “VALUE120” based scroll events too fast on some compositors (#9128)
  • Automatic color scheme switching: Fix title bar color not being updated (#9167)
  • Add support for Unicode 17
  • Fix a regression in 0.43.0 that caused tab_bar_margin_width to be doubled on the right edge of the tab bar (#9154)
  • Session files: Add a new focus_tab command to specify which tab should be active when a session is loaded. Accepts either a plain number (0-based index) or a match expression for flexible tab selection, allowing sessions to preserve the active tab state (Sessions)
  • save_as_session: Add --base-dir option to specify a base directory for saving session files with relative paths, useful when the current working directory is not the desired location (Sessions)
  • Add state:focused_os_window match query to select all windows in the currently focused OS window (Matching windows and tabs)
  • Session saving now preserves visual tab order and active tab rather than tab activation history as this is generally more important. In the future may have it save tab history as well (#9163)

kitty for Mac

Free
In English
Version 0.44.0
Write a detailed review about kitty

Write your thoughts in our old-fashioned comment

MacUpdate Comment Policy. We strongly recommend leaving comments, however comments with abusive words, bullying, personal attacks of any type will be moderated.
5.0

(5 Reviews of kitty)

  • Comments

  • User Ratings

Chuckk
Chuckk
Aug 23 2024
0.36.0
5.0
Aug 23 2024
5.0
Version: 0.36.0
Great little terminal program. Highly recommneded.
Thinking-Differently
Thinking-Differently
Feb 18 2022
0.24.2
0.0
Feb 18 2022
0.0
Version: 0.24.2
It looks like the current version now requires macOS 10.14. Any chance of adding back support for macOS 10.13?
Derekcurrie
Derekcurrie
Aug 2 2021
0.22.2
0.0
Aug 2 2021
0.0
Version: 0.22.2
The developer is Kovid Goyal, developer of the remarkable Calibre application. -> https://kovidgoyal.net/ <- He's a hero of mine! (Even if he does *gag* like Ayn Rand and can't cook). If Kovid is 'codear' he's forgiven. Have a read through his website. He's a left-right brainer out to freely help the computer community and that's all right with me. I'm happy to support his work and try out 'kitty'.
George6
George6
Apr 29 2021
0.20.2
0.0
Apr 29 2021
0.0
Version: 0.20.2
the user codear has a visit count of 1, so this is a typical developer self comment. can't say if its good, but how the settings are handled seems complicated.
codear
codear
Jul 17 2020
0.18.1
5.0
Jul 17 2020
5.0
Version: 0.18.1
excellent - cross platform, blazing fast terminal emulator with unique features, like unicode search, configuration terminal, gpu accelerated rendering, ligatures etc. if you frequently use terminal emulator and work on different operating systems - perfect choice.
julejuli
julejuli
Oct 28 2025
0.43.1
5.0
Oct 28 2025
5.0
Version: 0.43.1
Chuckk
Chuckk
Aug 23 2024
0.36.0
5.0
Aug 23 2024
5.0
Version: 0.36.0
firewall00110-1
firewall00110-1
Feb 2 2023
0.27.0
5.0
Feb 2 2023
5.0
Version: 0.27.0
codear
codear
Jul 17 2020
5.0
Jul 17 2020
5.0
Version: null