:tocdepth: 2

Configuring kitty
===============================

.. highlight:: conf

|kitty| is highly customizable, everything from keyboard shortcuts, to
rendering frames-per-second. See below for an overview of all customization
possibilities.

You can open the config file within kitty by pressing :sc:`edit_config_file`.
You can reload the config file within kitty by pressing
:sc:`reload_config_file` or sending kitty the ``SIGUSR1`` signal.  You can also
display the current configuration by pressing the :sc:`debug_config` key.

.. _confloc:

|kitty| looks for a config file in the OS config directories (usually
:file:`~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf`) but you can pass a specific path via the
:option:`kitty --config` option or use the ``KITTY_CONFIG_DIRECTORY``
environment variable. See the :option:`kitty --config` option for full details.

Comments can be added to the config file as lines starting with the ``#``
character. This works only if the ``#`` character is the first character
in the line.

You can include secondary config files via the :code:`include` directive.  If
you use a relative path for include, it is resolved with respect to the
location of the current config file. Note that environment variables are
expanded, so :code:`${USER}.conf` becomes :file:`name.conf` if
:code:`USER=name`.  For example::

     include other.conf


.. note:: Syntax highlighting for :file:`kitty.conf` in vim is available via
   `vim-kitty <https://github.com/fladson/vim-kitty>`_.


.. include:: /generated/conf-kitty.rst


Sample kitty.conf
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. only:: html

    You can download a sample :file:`kitty.conf` file with all default settings and
    comments describing each setting by clicking: :download:`sample kitty.conf
    </generated/conf/kitty.conf>`.

.. only:: man

   You can edit a fully commented sample kitty.conf by pressing the
   :sc:`edit_config_file` shortcut in kitty. This will generate a config
   file with full documentation and all settings commented out. If you
   have a pre-existing kitty.conf, then that will be used instead, delete
   it to see the sample file.