Provided by: kitty_0.44.0-1_amd64 
Name
kitten-hints - Select text from screen with keyboard
Overview
kitty has a hints mode to select and act on arbitrary text snippets currently visible on the screen. For
example, you can press ctrl+shift+e <#shortcut-kitty.Open-URL> to choose any URL visible on the screen
and then open it using your default web browser.
URL hints mode (images not supported)
Similarly, you can press ctrl+shift+p>f <#shortcut-kitty.Insert-selected-path> to select anything that
looks like a path or filename and then insert it into the terminal, very useful for picking files from
the output of a git or ls command and adding them to the command line for the next command.
You can also press ctrl+shift+p>n <#shortcut-kitty.Open-the-selected-file-at-the-selected-line> to select
anything that looks like a path or filename followed by a colon and a line number and open the file in
your default editor at the specified line number (opening at line number will work only if your editor
supports the +linenum command line syntax or is a "known" editor). The patterns and editor to be used can
be modified using options passed to the kitten. For example:
map ctrl+g kitten hints --type=linenum --linenum-action=tab nvim +{line} {path}
will open the selected file in a new tab inside Neovim <https://neovim.io/> when you press Ctrl+G.
Pressing ctrl+shift+p>y <#shortcut-kitty.Open-the-selected-hyperlink> will open hyperlinks <#
term-hyperlinks>, i.e. a URL that has been marked as such by the program running in the terminal, for
example, by ls --hyperlink=auto. If ls comes with your OS does not support hyperlink, you may need to
install GNU Coreutils <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>.
You can also customize what actions are taken for different types of URLs <>.
Note:
If there are more hints than letters, hints will use multiple letters. In this case, when you press
the first letter, only hints starting with that letter are displayed. Pressing the second letter will
select that hint or press Enter or Space to select the empty hint.
For mouse lovers, the hints kitten also allows you to click on any matched text to select it instead of
typing the hint character.
The hints kitten is very powerful to see more detailed help on its various options and modes of
operation, see below. You can use these options to create mappings in kitty.conf to select various
different text snippets. See insert_selected_path <#shortcut-kitty.Insert-selected-path> for examples.
Completely customizing the matching and actions of the kitten
The hints kitten supports writing simple Python scripts that can be used to completely customize how it
finds matches and what happens when a match is selected. This allows the hints kitten to provide the user
interface, while you can provide the logic for finding matches and performing actions on them. This is
best illustrated with an example. Create the file custom-hints.py in the kitty config directory <#
confloc> with the following contents:
import re
def mark(text, args, Mark, extra_cli_args, *a):
# This function is responsible for finding all
# matching text. extra_cli_args are any extra arguments
# passed on the command line when invoking the kitten.
# We mark all individual word for potential selection
for idx, m in enumerate(re.finditer(r'\w+', text)):
start, end = m.span()
mark_text = text[start:end].replace('\n', '').replace('\0', '')
# The empty dictionary below will be available as groupdicts
# in handle_result() and can contain string keys and arbitrary JSON
# serializable values.
yield Mark(idx, start, end, mark_text, {})
def handle_result(args, data, target_window_id, boss, extra_cli_args, *a):
# This function is responsible for performing some
# action on the selected text.
# matches is a list of the selected entries and groupdicts contains
# the arbitrary data associated with each entry in mark() above
matches, groupdicts = [], []
for m, g in zip(data['match'], data['groupdicts']):
if m:
matches.append(m), groupdicts.append(g)
for word, match_data in zip(matches, groupdicts):
# Lookup the word in a dictionary, the open_url function
# will open the provided url in the system browser
boss.open_url(f'https://www.google.com/search?q=define:{word}')
Now run kitty with:
kitty -o 'map f1 kitten hints --customize-processing custom-hints.py'
When you press the F1 key you will be able to select a word to look it up in the Google dictionary.
Source code for hints
The source code for this kitten is available on GitHub <https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/tree/master/
kittens/hints>.
Command line interface
kitten hints [options]
Select text from the screen using the keyboard. Defaults to searching for URLs.
Options
--program <PROGRAM>
What program to use to open matched text. Defaults to the default open program for the operating
system. Various special values are supported:
- paste the match into the terminal window.
@ copy the match to the clipboard
* copy the match to the primary selection (on systems that support primary selections)
@NAME copy the match to the specified buffer, e.g. @a
default
run the default open program. Note that when using the hyperlink --type the default is to
use the kitty hyperlink handling <> facilities.
launch run The launch command <> to open the program in a new kitty tab, window, overlay, etc. For
example:
--program "launch --type=tab vim"
Can be specified multiple times to run multiple programs.
--type <TYPE>
The type of text to search for. A value of linenum is special, it looks for error messages using
the pattern specified with --regex, which must have the named groups: path and line. If not
specified, will look for path:line. The --linenum-action option controls where to display the
selected error message, other options are ignored. Default: url Choices: hash, hyperlink, ip,
line, linenum, path, regex, url, word
--regex <REGEX>
The regular expression to use when option --type is set to regex, in Perl 5 syntax. If you specify
a numbered group in the regular expression, only the group will be matched. This allows you to
match text ignoring a prefix/suffix, as needed. The default expression matches lines. To match
text over multiple lines, things get a little tricky, as line endings are a sequence of zero or
more null bytes followed by either a carriage return or a newline character. To have a pattern
match over line endings you will need to match the character set [\0\r\n]. The newlines and null
bytes are automatically stripped from the returned text. If you specify named groups and a
--program, then the program will be passed arguments corresponding to each named group of the form
key=value. Default: (?m)^\s*(.+?)\s*$
--linenum-action <LINENUM_ACTION>
Where to perform the action on matched errors. self means the current window, window a new kitty
window, tab a new tab, os_window a new OS window and background run in the background.
remote-control is like background but the program can use kitty remote control without needing to
turn on remote control globally. The actual action is whatever arguments are provided to the
kitten, for example: kitten hints --type=linenum --linenum-action=tab vim +{line} {path} will open
the matched path at the matched line number in vim in a new kitty tab. Note that in order to use
--program to copy or paste the provided arguments, you need to use the special value self.
Default: self Choices: background, os_window, remote-control, self, tab, window
--url-prefixes <URL_PREFIXES>
Comma separated list of recognized URL prefixes. Defaults to the list of prefixes defined by the
url_prefixes <#opt-kitty.url_prefixes> option in kitty.conf. Default: default
--url-excluded-characters <URL_EXCLUDED_CHARACTERS>
Characters to exclude when matching URLs. Defaults to the list of characters defined by the
url_excluded_characters <#opt-kitty.url_excluded_characters> option in kitty.conf. The syntax for
this option is the same as for url_excluded_characters <#opt-kitty.url_excluded_characters>.
Default: default
--word-characters <WORD_CHARACTERS>
Characters to consider as part of a word. In addition, all characters marked as alphanumeric in
the Unicode database will be considered as word characters. Defaults to the
select_by_word_characters <#opt-kitty.select_by_word_characters> option from kitty.conf.
--minimum-match-length <MINIMUM_MATCH_LENGTH>
The minimum number of characters to consider a match. Default: 3
--multiple [=no]
Select multiple matches and perform the action on all of them together at the end. In this mode,
press Esc to finish selecting.
--multiple-joiner <MULTIPLE_JOINER>
String for joining multiple selections when copying to the clipboard or inserting into the
terminal. The special values are: space - a space character, newline - a newline, empty - an empty
joiner, json - a JSON serialized list, auto - an automatic choice, based on the type of text being
selected. In addition, integers are interpreted as zero-based indices into the list of selections.
You can use 0 for the first selection and -1 for the last. Default: auto
--add-trailing-space <ADD_TRAILING_SPACE>
Add trailing space after matched text. Defaults to auto, which adds the space when used together
with --multiple. Default: auto Choices: always, auto, never
--hints-offset <HINTS_OFFSET>
The offset (from zero) at which to start hint numbering. Note that only numbers greater than or
equal to zero are respected. Default: 1
--alphabet <ALPHABET>
The list of characters to use for hints. The default is to use numbers and lowercase English
alphabets. Specify your preference as a string of characters. Note that you need to specify the
--hints-offset as zero to use the first character to highlight the first match, otherwise it will
start with the second character by default.
--ascending [=no]
Make the hints increase from top to bottom, instead of decreasing from top to bottom.
--hints-foreground-color <HINTS_FOREGROUND_COLOR>
The foreground color for hints. You can use color names or hex values. For the eight basic named
terminal colors you can also use the bright- prefix to get the bright variant of the color.
Default: black
--hints-background-color <HINTS_BACKGROUND_COLOR>
The background color for hints. You can use color names or hex values. For the eight basic named
terminal colors you can also use the bright- prefix to get the bright variant of the color.
Default: green
--hints-text-color <HINTS_TEXT_COLOR>
The foreground color for text pointed to by the hints. You can use color names or hex values. For
the eight basic named terminal colors you can also use the bright- prefix to get the bright
variant of the color. The default is to pick a suitable color automatically. Default: auto
--customize-processing <CUSTOMIZE_PROCESSING>
Name of a python file in the kitty config directory which will be imported to provide custom
implementations for pattern finding and performing actions on selected matches. You can also
specify absolute paths to load the script from elsewhere. See <https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
kittens/hints/> for details.
--window-title <WINDOW_TITLE>
The title for the hints window, default title is based on the type of text being hinted.
Note:
To avoid having to specify the same command line options on every invocation, you can use the
action_alias <#opt-kitty.action_alias> option in kitty.conf, creating aliases that have common sets of
options. For example:
action_alias myhints kitten hints --alphabet qfjdkslaureitywovmcxzpq1234567890
map f1 myhints --customize-processing custom-hints.py
Author
Kovid Goyal
Copyright
2025, Kovid Goyal
0.44.0 Nov 26, 2025 kitten-hints(1)