// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Exploring Kittens With Kitty Terminal Emulator
Kitty is a popular terminal emulator that supports many modern features. Focused on power users, it offers a wide range of customization that other terminals often lack.
For example, it includes a functional image display protocol and smooth cursor animations.
I have shown Kitty tweaking in the past, and in the regards, I would like to discuss Kittens today.
Kittens are functional units that extend the features of the Kitty terminal or work as standalone programs. They have direct access to the running Kitty instance.
Kitty comes bundled with several of these kittens, written in Go, which we will explore in detail later. You even have the option to create your own custom Kittens in Python, if you find a specific need that hasn't been solved yet.
Let's start with the most popular tool first. If you use Kitty daily, you have likely come across this utility at some point.
Themes is a kitten that allows you to change your terminal color scheme interactively without editing any configuration files. Kitty includes a wide variety of preset themes that you can access by running a simple command:
In the overlay window, you can easily scroll through both dark and light themes to see a live preview. Once you find one you like, just press Enter and follow the prompts to set it as your preferred theme.
In my opinion, this is a feature I really miss when using Ghostty. While Ghostty has a similar interface, you still have to manually edit your configuration file to apply the theme name after you pick one.
If you have found a new font and want to set it as your terminal choice, this kitten has you covered. You can launch the interactive interface directly in your terminal using a simple command: