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kovidgoyal
kitty
Python2017–2026
kovidgoyal / kitty
kitty
If you live in the terminal, kitty is made for you! Cross-platform, fast, feature-rich, GPU based.
87Distinct people
113Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
35.7KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
If you live in the terminal, kitty is made for you! Cross-platform, fast, feature-rich, GPU based.
GitHub
Where it is used
- Graphviz — Graphviz adds a -Tkitty output to display inline graphics using the kitty Terminal graphics protocol. This implements inline graphics in terminals that support that protocol, including kitty. Source
- mpv (media player) — mpv is documented on kitty's integrations page as using kitty's graphics/video output (vo=kitty) to play videos in the terminal. Source
What people are saying
I mostly switched to librem 14, arch linux (i3wm, gnome from time to time), still using a mac for work (mostly presentations, video conferencing). Development tends to get more…
kgarten used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- alacritty/alacritty · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- gnachman/iterm2 · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- tmux/tmux · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:01:40 AM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year113 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-01-07 04:17:33 UTC to 2026-10-07 18:29:01 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 3 | 5 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 1 | 13 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 1 | 11 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 2 | 12 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 19 | 1 | 18 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 1 | 10 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
What Hacker News says
8 sourcesAUaumerle·Oct 22, 2017Submission
Kitty v0.4 terminal emulator adds graphics support
2 points · Open discussionhttps://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty
and as for moving the state of terminals forward:
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/blob/master/protocol-ext...
In Modern terminal-based text editor> kitty is heavy […]
Please file a bug report: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues
Kitty aims to offload rendering to the GPU so if your CPU is being hammered that might indicate a problem either in Kitty or the GLFW library. The author is very quick to respond to such bug reports.
In Extensions to the xterm protocolExtensions to the xterm protocol
3 points · Open discussionI use this pattern a lot. For example, in https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty where the UI layer is in python and the performance critical code is in C. I find this pattern gives me an optimum in performance + maintainability.
In Show HN: Fast C-based HTML 5 parsing for PythonHere's what I did on mac:
brew install glew # install glew
git clone https://github.com/glfw/glfw.git # install glfw
cd glfw
cmake -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON .
make install
cd ..
git clone https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty # install kitty
cd kitty
# Then delete ", '-l' + lib" on line 78 of setup.py... and run:
python setup.py install
But I get this error:
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
In Show HN: Kitty – A modern, hackable, featureful, OpenGL based terminal emulatorShow HN: Kitty – A modern, hackable, featureful, OpenGL based terminal emulator
192 points · Open discussion