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I've tried Ghostty and it's great, but Kitty's hints mode[1] is the one feature keeping me from switching from Kitty to Ghostty. There are quite a few discussions around this and similar features in the Ghosstty-org/ghostty Discussions[2] which I follow. Most of them are references from ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394[3]. Maybe now that Ghostty has finished implementing Kitty graphics hints will be next .

[1]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hints/

[2]: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions

[3]: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2394



Make a fork and Claude can probably one-shot it. Mitchell will not accept a vibe coded PR though, but that is fine if it is for personal use.

I added Tmux control mode (a pretty extensive feature) https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Control-Mode to Ghostty: https://github.com/eliasfloreteng/ghostty-tmux and I use that version every day


I wonder if these exist in Wezterm or can be added as a lua plugin?

How have I not heard of hints mode before, that is amazing. Thanks for pointing it out I need to go remember some new hotkeys now.

Definitely stealing those hotkeys for my own terminal emulator! Was wanting similar functionality but wasn't sure of the shortcuts to use.

Out of curiosity if Kitty works well for you what would be the reason to switch to Ghostty? I've never tried Kitty before but now want to see what it's like since it seems quite advanced.

I'm not the GP, but I did use Kitty, then switched to Ghostty. There were some great features (e.g. a shorcut to load the current terminal content in a text editor), some arguable points (e.g. Python is Kitty's script language and I had to use it to configure tabs to my taste) and some annoyances (I've had various crashes with Kitty's Debian package, though it did get stable in later years).

For me, the major pain was font rendering. I could not find a portable configuration that would work with any screen. And even worse, for some pixel densities, whatever configuration I tried, the result was awful. In some cases, I vaguely remember there was a legacy mode that made text legible, but it had its own problems.


Yeah this is what is keeping me from using ghostty. Unfortunately I think that discussion is dead and no one agrees on the design of the three or so separate parts. I maintain a fork with quick select for my own purposes but I can’t use it at work.

BTW here is my fork: https://github.com/Grazfather/ghostty/tree/quick_select

    link = copy_to_clipboard=[0-9a-f]{7,40}
    link = open=https?://[a-zA-Z0-9.]+[-a-zA-Z0-9()@:%_\\+.~#?&//=]*
    keybind = ctrl+o>y=quick_select
Far from perfect. No way to bind to specific action:regex pair, so `ctrl+o` then `y` will show hints for both urls, which it'll try to open, and git hashes, which it'll copy to the clipboard.

I was literally just griping about how I couldn't do this. I had no idea it was possible with kitty. Now to decide whether to switch back for it...

As an aside, I love ghostty and I think it's the most responsive terminal emulator around. But kitty was what got me off Terminal.app and I think it's not given enough love around here.


Wezterm has a similar feature with QuickSelect, absolutely game-changing for keyboard-driven workflows

Oof, I've never heard of that and it sounds amazing

Hints Mode, yummy. That would be nice.

See like something that can be handled by the multiplexer?

I'm thinking the same (e.g. extrakto). Am I missing something?



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