PBKittyConfigStudio

Although kitty is a keyboard-driven terminal for power users that also fully supports the mouse, editing its configuration file can be a chore: knowing the options, their possible values, their defaults... you need the documentation open in front of you.

This program is a graphical interface for configuring the kitty terminal. It covers a broad set of kitty's configuration options, pulled directly from kitty's own source (see CODING.md for how).

Built with Python and PySide6 (Qt6), the app needs nothing else.

Features

• ~237 settings across 12 categories, mirroring kitty's own grouping: fonts, cursor, scrollback, mouse, performance, terminal bell, window layout, tab bar, color scheme (including the 16 ANSI colors and mark colors), advanced, OS-specific tweaks, and the non-mapping keyboard shortcut settings.
• Real widgets for real values — color pickers, spin boxes, toggle switches, dropdowns, a font picker built on Qt's own font database (no shelling out to fc-list), and a list editor for repeatable settings such as font_features/modify_font.
• Search — a search box above the sidebar filters settings by name or label across every category.
• Default vs. modified at a glance — every row is badged "default" or "modified" against kitty's own default value.
• Non-destructive — every save writes a timestamped backup (kitty.conf.bak_<date>) first, and rewrites existing lines (including commented-out ones) in place with a targeted regex, leaving comments and everything else in the file untouched. A value equal to its default is written back as a commented-out line, documenting it without forcing it.
• Hot reload — best-effort SIGUSR1 to running kitty instances after a save.
• Restore default configuration — regenerates kitty's own pristine, fully-commented example kitty.conf (via a throwaway kitty instance) and overwrites the current file, behind a confirmation dialog and the usual timestamped backup.
• Translated UI — English and French out of the box (see Development to add a language).
• Stays in sync with kitty — the settings schema is generated straight from kitty's own option definitions rather than hand-maintained; see CODING.md for the full pipeline.

Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• kitty terminal
• pixi (recommended) to manage the development environment

Quick Start

make venv   # create the pixi environment (installs pixi if missing)
make run    # launch PBKittyConfigStudio

Or, without pixi, in any Python 3.12+ environment:

pip install -e .
python -m pb_kitty_config_studio

Development

This project uses pixi for environment management and a Makefile for all common tasks — see make help for the full list.

make venv      # create/update the pixi environment
make install   # editable install + pre-commit hooks
make test      # run the test suite
make lint      # ruff check + format --check
make format    # ruff format + check --fix

See CODING.md for the architecture, the schema generation/ curation pipeline, and the i18n extraction details — start there before adding or changing a setting.

Translations

Strings are managed with pybabel (never xgettext/msgfmt directly).

make translate                  # extract strings, update & compile .po/.mo
make new-lang LOCALE=de         # scaffold a new language
python tools/po_check.py        # translation stats / search untranslated entries

Packaging

make dist      # standalone PyInstaller executable → dist/
make srcdist   # source archive (git archive) → dist/

The PyInstaller build embeds the OS-level app icon (.ico on Windows, .icns in the macOS .app bundle). Icons are sourced from the PBIcons project; sync them with:

make update-icons

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later — see LICENSE.

Credits

• Kovid Goyal and the kitty development team — many thanks for building and maintaining the kitty terminal this app configures.

Author

Marcel Spock mrspock@cardolan.net PBMou

PBMou is a cross-language pun: "PB" stands for "Poilbarbe", and "Mou" is the French translation of "Soft" — so PBMou reads like "PBSoft" half-translated into French.