kitty - Binary install

You can install pre-built binaries of kitty if you are on macOS or Linux using the following simple command:

curl -L https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/installer.sh | sh /dev/stdin

The binaries will be installed in the standard location for your OS, /Applications/kitty.app on macOS and ~/.local/kitty.app on Linux. The installer only touches files in that directory. To update kitty, simply re-run the command.

Manually installing

If something goes wrong or you simply do not want to run the installer, you can manually download and install kitty from the GitHub releases page. If you are on macOS, download the .dmg and install as normal. If you are on Linux, download the tarball and extract it into a directory. The kitty executable will be in the bin sub-directory.

Desktop integration on Linux

If you want the kitty icon to appear in the taskbar and an entry for it to be present in the menus, you will need to install the kitty.desktop file. The details of the following procedure may need to be adjusted for your particular desktop, but it should work for most major desktop environments.

# Create a symbolic link to add kitty to PATH (assuming ~/.local/bin is in
# your PATH)
ln -s ~/.local/kitty.app/bin/kitty ~/.local/bin/
# Place the kitty.desktop file somewhere it can be found by the OS
cp ~/.local/kitty.app/share/applications/kitty.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
# Update the path to the kitty icon in the kitty.desktop file
sed -i "s/Icon\=kitty/Icon\=\/home\/$USER\/.local\/kitty.app\/share\/icons\/hicolor\/256x256\/apps\/kitty.png/g" ~/.local/share/applications/kitty.desktop

Customizing the installation

  • You can specify a different install location, with dest:

    curl -L https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/installer.sh | sh /dev/stdin \
    dest=/some/other/location

  • You can tell the installer not to launch kitty after installing it with launch=n:

    curl -L https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/installer.sh | sh /dev/stdin \
    launch=n

  • You can use a previously downloaded dmg/tarball, with installer:

    curl -L https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/installer.sh | sh /dev/stdin \
    installer=/path/to/dmg or tarball

Uninstalling

All the installer does is copy the kitty files into the install directory. To uninstall, simply delete that directory.

Building from source

kitty is easy to build from source, follow the instructions.