Name

       kitten-query-terminal - Query the terminal for various capabilities

Overview

       This  kitten  is  used  to  query  kitty  from terminal programs about version, values of various runtime
       options controlling its features, etc.

       The querying is done using the (semi) standard XTGETTCAP escape sequence pioneered by xterm, so it  works
       over SSH as well. The downside is that it is slow, since it requires a roundtrip to the terminal emulator
       and back.

       If you want to do some of the same querying in your terminal program without depending on the kitten, you
       can do so, by processing the same escape codes.  Search this page for XTGETTCAP to see the syntax for the
       escape code and read the source of this kitten to find the values of the keys for the various queries.

Source code for query_terminal

       The source code for this kitten is available on GitHub.

Command line interface

          kitty +kitten query_terminal [options] [query1 query2 ...]

       Query  the  terminal  this  kitten  is  run  in  for various capabilities. This sends escape codes to the
       terminal and based on its response prints out data about supported capabilities.  Note  that  this  is  a
       blocking  operation,  since  it has to wait for a response from the terminal. You can control the maximum
       wait time via the --wait-for option.

       The output is lines of the form:

          query: data

       If a particular query is unsupported by the running kitty version, the data will be blank.

       Note that when calling this from another program, be very careful not to perform any I/O on the  terminal
       device until this kitten exits.

       Available queries are:

       name:  Terminal name (e.g. xterm-kitty)

       version:
              Terminal version (e.g. 0.32.2)

       allow_hyperlinks:
              The config option allow_hyperlinks in kitty.conf for allowing hyperlinks can be yes, no or ask

       font_family:
              The current font's PostScript name

       bold_font:
              The current bold font's PostScript name

       italic_font:
              The current italic font's PostScript name

       bold_italic_font:
              The current bold-italic font's PostScript name

       font_size:
              The current overall font size (individual windows can have different per window font sizes)

       clipboard_control:
              The config option clipboard_control in kitty.conf for allowing reads/writes to/from the clipboard

   Options
       --wait-for <WAIT_FOR>
              The  amount  of  time  (in  seconds)  to wait for a response from the terminal, after querying it.
              Default: 10

Author

       Kovid Goyal

Copyright

       2025, Kovid Goyal

0.32.2                                            Jun 25, 2025                          kitten-query-terminal(1)