Name

       kitten-themes - Manage kitty color schemes easily

Overview

       The  themes  kitten  allows  you  to  easily change color themes, from a collection of over three hundred
       pre-built themes available at kitty-themes. To use it, simply run:

          kitten themes

       The kitten allows you to pick a theme, with live previews of the colors. You can choose between light and
       dark themes and search by theme name by just typing a few characters from the name.

       The kitten maintains a list of recently used themes to allow quick switching.

       If you want to restore the colors to default, you can do so by choosing the Default theme.

       New in version 0.23.0: The themes kitten

How it works

       A theme in kitty is just a .conf file containing kitty settings.  When you select  a  theme,  the  kitten
       simply   copies   the   .conf   file  to  ~/.config/kitty/current-theme.conf  and  adds  an  include  for
       current-theme.conf to kitty.conf. It also comments out any existing color settings in kitty.conf so  they
       do not interfere.

       Once that's done, the kitten sends kitty a signal to make it reload its config.

Using your own themes

       You  can  also  create  your own themes as .conf files. Put them in the themes sub-directory of the kitty
       config directory, usually, ~/.config/kitty/themes. The kitten will automatically add them to the list  of
       themes.  You  can  use  this  to  modify  the builtin themes, by giving the conf file the name Some theme
       name.conf to override the builtin theme of that name. Here, Some theme name is the actual  builtin  theme
       name,  not  its file name. Note that after doing so you have to run the kitten and choose that theme once
       for your changes to be applied.

Contributing new themes

       If you wish to contribute a new theme to the kitty theme repository, start by going to  the  kitty-themes
       repository.  Fork it, and use the file template.conf as a template when creating your theme. Once you are
       satisfied with how it looks, submit a pull request to  have  your  theme  merged  into  the  kitty-themes
       repository, which will make it available in this kitten automatically.

Changing the theme non-interactively

       You  can  specify  the theme name as an argument when invoking the kitten to have it change to that theme
       instantly. For example:

          kitten themes --reload-in=all Dimmed Monokai

       Will change the theme to Dimmed Monokai in all running kitty instances. See below  for  more  details  on
       non-interactive operation.

Source code for themes

       The source code for this kitten is available on GitHub.

Command line interface

          kitty +kitten themes [options] [theme name to switch to]

       Change  the  kitty  theme.  If no theme name is supplied, run interactively, otherwise change the current
       theme to the specified theme name.

   Options
       --cache-age <CACHE_AGE>
              Check for new themes only after the specified number of days. A value of zero  will  always  check
              for  new  themes.  A negative value will never check for new themes, instead raising an error if a
              local copy of the themes is not available.  Default: 1

       --reload-in <RELOAD_IN>
              By default, this kitten will signal only the parent kitty instance it is running in to reload  its
              config, after making changes. Use this option to instead either not reload the config at all or in
              all running kitty instances.  Default: parent Choices: all, none, parent

       --dump-theme
              When running non-interactively, dump the specified theme to STDOUT instead of changing kitty.conf.
              Default: false

       --config-file-name <CONFIG_FILE_NAME>
              The  name  or  path to the config file to edit. Relative paths are interpreted with respect to the
              kitty config directory. By default the kitty config file,  kitty.conf  is  edited.  This  is  most
              useful  if you add include themes.conf to your kitty.conf and then have the kitten operate only on
              themes.conf, allowing kitty.conf to remain unchanged.  Default: kitty.conf

Author

       Kovid Goyal

Copyright

       2025, Kovid Goyal

0.32.2                                            Jun 25, 2025                                  kitten-themes(1)