I'm ditching Alacritty. Here's why

[@cat47]

tl;dr: kitty supports showing images in the terminal while alacritty doesn't

[@Err-G]

And kitty is easier to configure thanks to kittens.

[@stephanbylkov8215]

it does, the documentation of yazi literally says what you need to do in order to use peviews in alacritty (install ueberzug)

[@8ack2Lobby]

lmfao that's it? 😂

[@obestatrovao]

wezterm also can :)

[@Darkstar159]

Man I thought 6 minutes was a short video but somehow even that was an extreme stretch for making such a simple point.

[@hank9th]

I use fish inside of kitty for maximum cat-themed goodness.

[@typecraft_dev]

meow

[@zhongxina728]

catppuccin?

[@s00774]

fish aint posix compliant, id use something else

[@werecynicalwhywolf8700]

@@typecraft_dev Tse-Tung

[@subatomicmolecules]

​@@s00774 honestly, is it really all that important? Ask yourself, why does POSIX compliance matter for an interactive shell? For making/using portable scripts? That's what shebangs are for, /bin/sh or bash and no problems. Instead of using one shell for everything, you can use fish for interactive terminal use, and bash or even dash for scripting (dash is already used instead of bash for sh on Debian based systems). Fish just makes a lot more sense for interactive use imo, and you don't really have to learn a whole new language (it's not like you're using test and if statements on a terminal directly anyway). The only reason I wouldn't use fish is if I already had a working zsh configuration I'd been using for years.

[@CollinWilliams-by5cs]

0:00 I'm calling it: Alacritty -> Kitty for Image support

[@NJ-wb1cz]

I'm calling it GUI

[@pixl_xip]

To be honest I was expecting ligatures.

[@driden1987]

Next video: ditching Kitty for Wezterm. We’ve all done it 😅

[@typecraft_dev]

Haha ok

[@kylekettler]

Been there. It's bound to happen 😅

[@kalvinarts]

Switched this week to wezterm … never going back to alacritty. I considered kitty but the the lua config for wezterm is much more powerful.

[@Vreth6]

I am still on Kitty even after trying wezterm. Both are great tbh, but Kitty felt a little more fitting for someone who is in tmux a lot.

[@hoxefko]

I came to the comments to say exactly the same 😂

[@VoyivodaFTW1]

you've been on fire lately. keep the new videos rolling.

[@typecraft_dev]

Thanks! Will do!

[@keyboard_g]

@@typecraft_devit’s a bot…

[@iduran]

How about Wezterm? Also written in Rust and is configured using Lua.

[@AlexNovak]

Also supports image rendering!

[@256k_]

wezterm is the best really.

[@htlin.lizard]

I vote for Wezterm. If you're familiar with configuring Neovim using Lua, using WezTerm will be no problem at all.

[@TokyoXtreme]

Bunch of fine fellas with good taste in terminals in this little thread here.

[@khanra17]

WezTerm is a bloat & a mess

[@jeanclaudedusse6176]

Amazing video as always ... now all we need is a video about yazi :D

[@typecraft_dev]

Working on it!

[@minecraftpufferfish9066]

I have switched from Alacritty to foot. It's BLAZING fast and it has image support. Kitty has font ligature support, but it's just noticeably slow; foot, on the other hand, opens faster than any other terminal emulator I've ever tried.

[@tonynguyen725]

I agree, been using foot and never looked back

[@SunHail8]

never tried it. is Foot faster than Konsole???

[@minecraftpufferfish9066]

@@SunHail8 yeah, it's significantly faster.

[@resofactor]

KZbin popped this up as Recommended Video due to my Linux searches. This is cool to know. Thanks for producing this one. Just Subscribed.

[@vimrichie]

I ditched kitty when I saw the project owner being super to toxic to the community.

[@typecraft_dev]

Was not aware of this!

[@vimrichie]

@@typecraft_dev yeah it’s unfortunate. The app is great. Owner kinda ruined it for many.

[@stevemorgandev]

I’ve switched back and forth between these two terminals. Usually a little thing will annoy me enough. I forget exactly why I switched back to alacritty this last time. I just make sure I back up my configs with stow so that I can switch seamlessly when needed.

[@amarug]

Kitty is the best for a desktop with a gpu, but if you are using a laptop mostly on battery, kitty isnt the best, its resource hungry. I actually just use the xfce4 term, it opens immediately and doesnt hog resources. Kitty takes literally like 1.5 seconds to open (which for a terminal is an eternity) and hogs ram, cpu etc.

[@darkarie]

did you try foot? it uses the cpu and its really nice

[@rewindyourmind321]

These videos always come out so timely, I just finished my configuring the foot terminal on my Arch machine for the same reason!

[@oglothenerd]

Something that Kitty must add for me to use it instead of Alacritty is the bright bold feature. Essentially, when text is bold, make it use the bright variant of the text color.

[@GrahamAtDesk]

Great stuff. You prompted me to bite the bullet and Ansible this thing up. 🙂 After decades in GNOME Terminal, I'm looking forward to this. My main motivation for switching was simply to hide the menubar!

[@aquepaique]

I use Kitty instead of wezterm because kitty feels smoother, no laggy when I scroll down. Also, wezterm consumes more ram.

[@dgames218]

typecraft, Do you think you could make a video comparing Kitty, wezterm and contour? It would be great to hear your opinion

[@typecraft_dev]

I think I’ll have to!

[@rodelias9378]

Wezterm is the new kid in the block.. Go give it a try!

[@typecraft_dev]

I'll have to check it out!

[@vaisakh_km]

i personally Worked with vhyrro to make a latex rendering lib for neovim to use in neorg, which uses kitty terminal graphics protocol.. such a cool protocol to work with (currently it's not used as hologram depricated) though now i switched after 1y to foot terminal as i can feel the lag in kitty, which is much nicer and support images with sixel

[@dv_xl]

Kitty is way faster than for me than most other terminals, although havent tried foot. Wezterm and Alacritty both performed very poorly on my laptop, and I'm not sure why. I'm still using X, maybe that has something to do with it

[@vaisakh_km]

@@dv_xl that's really odd.. i am not sure about wezterm, but alacritty should be performing really well..

[@halano]

Foot is best terminal : - footclient start in 98 ms - image rendering supported - small memory fingerprint - support emojis - flexible - fast

[@rev4324]

it's nice, but it isn't as fast at rendering as gpu based terminal emulators, like kitty, alacritty or ghostty

[@youdontknowme2508]

​@@rev4324Where have you noticed the performance difference?

[@victorbitencourt9481]

wayland only

[@matejlaskomulej]

@@rev4324 Is wezterm gpu based too? I tested printing out entire home directory file structure with "tree" command in both alacritty and wezterm at the same time and they both finished at precisely the same time as well. GNOME Ubuntu 24.0.4 / Wayland

btw, wezterm also supports image preview and is config file is written in lua :D

[@stroiman.development]

4:45 Why quit and restart? You can reload the config at runtime. I have it on cmd+ctrl+, on Mac (think it's default)

[@typecraft_dev]

Honestly I didn’t think about it!

[@DEVDerr]

I like to think that you made the switch, because of my last comment on one of your videos haha :D but seriously - good switch mate! I made the same switch 1 month ago and I'm enjoying kitty so far. Also thanks for that `kittens` tip! I didn't know about that and it's amazing

[@typecraft_dev]

Thanks! 😁

[@sethback]

Ngl, thought you were gonna jump on Ghostty terminal (closed beta for now) from Mitchell H :D

[@typecraft_dev]

I just got an invite :)

[@sethback]

@@typecraft_dev next video compare kitty to ghostty :3

[@freeyourmind757]

I wonder why don't we have a terminal with command prompt at first line not on the last. You type commands on first line always and see the result below like stack. It's easier to read the results. No need to seek where output starts, it's right below the command prompt.

[@freeyourmind757]

@chrishoppner150 thanks for you reply I've found WARP terminal emulator it does exactly what i described

[@davindersiwal1180]

Thanks for the video, kitty also supports pdf file view as well as scrolling

[@StefanSonesson]

Currently looking at how to open files from yazi in different editors depending on file extension. E.g. *.txt with nvim, *.java with Intellij. Is that the next video coming up? ;-)

[@mckdoeful]

Is there a markdown viewer/editor that I can use in the terminal and that shows images?

[@typecraft_dev]

You could use yazi. And get previews for images and markdown. It doesn’t edit though

[@PhysicsLaboratory-cp7eq]

Both terminal on default conf, the alacrity anti aliasing of font looks way good at least on my 720 display. But the actually reason no kitty is, just try to run unimatrix -l e on both terminal. Couldn't get colored emoji work on kitty 😂 no matter what. *yes few color emoji show but to make alacritty show all the color emoji was way way simpler then kitty (still could get it working)

[@PercyGTM]

Yazi's image rendering works with WezTerm and Foot too.

[@typecraft_dev]

oh very cool!

[@samuraijosh1595]

​@@typecraft_devyes the images look high quality in windows wezterm too although western hangs when you do any quick movements while editing heavily for whatever reason

[@NeythEU]

and with alacritty ;-) and every other terminal emulator - you need ueberzugpp and set it as render backend in the yazi config

[@offerurain8641]

image render is indeed fantastic. But i use kitty mainly for the built in tab, it's really easy to use, i don't need tmux or zellij anymore.

[@minhtienao2306]

I also changed to kitty because I want to use yazi too, basically still like the simplicity of alacrity's setting more but kitty is okay though

[@GrantCuster]

did you get images to show up with yazi with tmux? they currently only work when not in tmux for me.

[@arztareef]

you couldve done that with ueberzug protocol which works on all terminal and im pretty sure it works with yazi, it really wasnt necessary and you'll miss the dynamic cursor from alacritty

[@ejiek]

You're correct, Yazi has built-in support for ueberzugpp and it does work in alacritty

[@wojciech-kulik]

Good timing nerd, I've just switched to Kitty & Yazi around 3 days ago, hahaha :D. Amazing tools!

[@user-ek8cd1gg3f]

I also use kitty, mainly because of the extensivility and the ligatures. Alacritty text rendering looks a bit better to me, but kitty is very very good (much better than wezterm). I'm happy with it but the most disappointing thing about kitty is that developing custom kittens is super frustrating because de python API is not documented.

[@user-ek8cd1gg3f]

Extensibility*

[@joergw]

There is no need to use Nerd Fonts in kitty Kitty allows you to use a second font just for the icons, so you can use any regular (unpatched) font

[@justronny20]

Loved watching this video being recorded live on yesterday's stream!

[@jozsefk9]

I tried many terminals. Ended up using Alacritty at the end. And still using it now for more than a year I think. Added Zellij to it few months ago, and it's a dream. Except that I don't have image, videos, PDFs... previews in Yazi. But it didn't work for me with Kitty either so no difference. And I already tried Kitty before...

[@jozsefk9]

just got the image previews now in Kitty. Not sure if I will leave Alacritty though.

[@mischavandenburg]

Great video! Been on Alacritty for almost 3 years now and I'm not going anywhere. Portability and minimalism win it for me

[@QuebnQ]

currently on kitty and I will only consider switching to alacritty only if they support font ligatures.

[@12px]

you will feel at home when ghostty is publicly available. it has everything and is faster than all of them. I really mean it!

[@QuebnQ]

i've heard of ghostty before, now i'm looking forward for it. Thanks

[@ForeverZer0]

I understand that ligatures are not a trivial thing to implement, but I feel that Alacritty really misses out on a significant user-base by not supporting them.

[@FHorrigan2]

​​@@ForeverZer0why people care so much about ligatures? They look horrible and make code unreadable

[@antiwokehuman]

@@12pxghostty is out. It has all the features i want, but it also takes a long time to launch which to me is a bit disappointing. I use it in my special workspace in hyprland. Another thing i really want is for them to support remembering my splits in linux like it does in mac os

[@tobias-edwards]

When using tmux within any terminal emulator, how do you search for words? I currently enter vim mode and search but it feels very cumbersome. I've tried tmux plugins like tmux-copycat but it's slow

[@xXhotshot55Xx]

If you hit ctrl+b and then [, you'll go into "copy mode" which will allow you to scrollback through your history. When you're in this mode you can hit ctrl+s which will allow you to search, from there you can hit 'n' to goto the next match or "N" to go to the previous match.

[@benjaminschultz6501]

Good luck with Kitty. It works well, so long as you stay within the choke-hold configuration bounds of the developer. Changing fonts is a nightmare, but example. And if you look at the repo’s bug report page, you don’t have to dig deep to see that the developer can be a single-minded jerk at times.

[@solitudesf8111]

Yeah, he is based

[@takharamazanpolat7610]

How's changing the font a nightmare?

[@archip8021]

Lol he changes the font in the video takes literally 10 second

[@juipeltje]

i'm not sure what you mean by changing fonts being a nightmare. on both alacritty and kitty it was very simple

[@rizakhan1002]

Dude your vids are killer. Great content and well paced. Thanks for sharing.

[@typecraft_dev]

Thank you! I always appreciate these comments

[@ZilverDx]

The problem that I got with kitty is that it has memory leak on mac m1 when using tmux 😢

[@knotrocket4825]

You should try Foot which also has image support if you like the simplicity of Alacritty and don't mind not having GPU acceleration or X11/MacOS support.

[@geanb.8699]

In my experience, GPU acceleration only results in screen tearing and lag in the terminal. That's why I switched to Foot.

[@4awpawz449]

Yea, yazi is a really nice file explorer and it works perfectly in western also. Regarding fish, has it improved in its compliance with bash scripts? Thanks for sharing.

[@DGDG0000000]

wow, nice. Thank you for Kitty, and for yazi-fm too.

[@epotnwarlock]

what is your shell prompt config?

[@NotSykesz]

Hey, nerd, thank you for sharing. If possible can you share which software do you use to record and edit your videos?

[@DarthVader11912]

I'm glad the video turned out great 😃

[@typecraft_dev]

Me too! Thanks for being there, was fun!

[@Reducer]

I've been using kitty for about a year now... but I'm doing absolutely nothing fancy whatsoever with it. Should really look more at what it can do.

[@rossvold]

Watching this created live on Twitch was fun. Although I’m surprised you kept in the “meow”’s 😂

[@dr.mikeybee]

I need the blocks that the warp terminal has. As far as I know, no other terminal offers blocks.

[@riufq]

For tldw: It because kitty terminal have image preview, but Alacrity not.

[@keyboard_g]

Does Kitty still open network connections and call home without user consent?

[@MarcelRobitaille]

iirc kitty images do not work inside of tmux, but with alacritty and ueberzug it does work

[@HaydonRyan]

If alacrity had image and tab support I’d consider switching from kitty, but doesn’t look like that will happen, so happily staying on kitty.

[@tinylith1603]

My kitty configuration is colorscheme and font and I'm happy with it :D

[@huljaxful]

I was using kitty but then switched back to alacritty when switching distros basically. Long story short, I didn't know about the themes in kitty. I am not a ricer, just a hopper 😂 but this is pure gold. Thank you for sharing info for us advanced/not advanced users. By the way, I use mint and pop 😮

[@ReneKnuvers74rk]

Wezterm supports image viewing too, just like Kitty. Warp seems to support it, but it doesn’t work out of the box on my mac.

[@debajyatidey9468]

You are on the right path. Already ditched kitty for wezterm

[@typkrft]

Kitty was my terminal of choice for a long time. Just recently switched to wezterm after dabbling with it for a few years. Configured in lua, used multiple graphics protocols including kitties, and is similarly performant.

[@matiasfha]

Are you still using tmux within kitty?

[@TWidXugA]

Hmm, I use alacritty with ranger and it does support images with the controversial ueberzug, in fact it looks a lot like yazi... and it has for years. Only reason kitty has an slight upper hand isbthat sixel is an actual protocol, while ueberzug is a hack.

[@The8BitHero]

I just switched FROM Kitty to Alacritty because of no smooth scrolling when using a touchpad.

[@gandalf1783]

Hm, I've only had issues with kitty, mostly when using SSH kitty-terminfo was missing, and I cant just install something on other peoples servers just so I can ssh into them. How do you deal with this?

[@vonelfensenf8151]

This was one of the reasons for me to switch to wezterm. The other "big" one was the cross-platform support and the kitty maintainers hate against tmux.

[@roberto7102]

I was loving ranger and nerd-nnn but yazi with kitty is amaziiiiiing btw kitty was already my terminal emulator thanks man!

[@MichaelButlerC]

I really respect Kitty. But i actually switched from Kitty to Alacritty. If i remember correctly, with Kitty when i Ssh'd to a client's server the prompt was messed up for some reason and i couldn't figure out why. It didn't happen with Konsole or Alacritty so i decided not to go back . I also was reading some stuff about how against Tmux the Kitty dev is (i respect that too, he has his reasoning) and i like tmux, so I'd have to use something that worked well with it

[@7omA]

i also like kitty, but the fonts dont work properly for me for some reason. specifically, my icons don't register properly anywhere (nvim, ranger, ls-icons, nothing!). i toyed with it for a long time before giving up and going back to alacritty

[@AqgvP07r-hq3vu]

Wezterm is amazing

[@peterjansen4826]

I tried kitty multiple times, I can't use it because I feel a very noticeable inputlag with typing which Alacritty does not have nearly as much. I don't know what causes this inputlag, I suspect it might have to do with Python being slower and for that reason kitty needing more time to paste the letter which you just typed. Note that I use a 144 Hz monitor, it might be much less noticable on a 60 Hz monitor.

[@martinlarsson6621]

I wonder if you could set up image rendering within Neomutt when using Kitty, then I would consider switching back to Kitty. I actually switched from Kitty to Alacritty.

[@amodo80]

i really hated the kitty dev's attitude about which features go in and which won't and especially the way he communicated that. is ANSI-blink now supoprted? is it possible to turn off bold rendering? (most of the times you just want to render text *bright*ly and not bold when the ANSI bold is active due to historical reasons. this was not possible in kitty last time I checked.

[@jongeduard]

Anyone explored Zutty terminal here? The developer has quite an extensive explanation in which he explains that it's the most correct working terminal which is also about as fast as Alacritty and Kitty.

[@snsaisa]

you're looking for 5:30 (not a reason to change but that's his reason)

[@sassywoocooo]

we had the same story. but i really dislike kitty as its bloat. do you think there are some patches to get that feature in allacrity

[@sideone3581]

I use kitty and use tmux for everything else I don't understand what terminal in general matter other than some small features, they all are wrapper to shell

[@ForeverZer0]

They matter more when you heavily rely on CLI as part of your normal workflow, such as programming in CLI-based editors (nvim, etc.). If you just use them to execute the occasional command, I agree the choice of terminal is of little significance. My browser is pretty much the only GUI application I use, and everything else is within a terminal, so I appreciate the extra features, speed of opening/redrawing, etc, especially for writing code.

[@tears_falling]

for me, image rendering is a reason to not use kitty. i want my terminal emulator to be nothing more than a dumb terminal, rendering images inside it feels kinda weird

[@tears_falling]

i also don't like it when terminals have built in tab support, i use tmux for that

[@typecraft_dev]

that is a solid take! I don't disagree

[@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX]

No one is forcing you to use those features though

[@lancemarchetti8673]

I'm developing a Steganography app, so the image byte parser is a welcome bonus for me in 😺

[@zenitsu2989]

32 seconds in the video and I already know the missing feature, same reason why I left Alacritty. 😂

[@VANTYCSolutions]

Thank you! switching to kitty here.

[@Shizaru2723]

Supposed content subject: Why switch from Alacritty to Kitty? Actual video content: 5% relevent, 95% configuring Kitty

[@rkdeshdeepak4131]

ueberzug was right there

[@lightninguru26]

KDE's Konsole and yazi works for images in the terminal

[@gunnerjoe53]

Anyone know how to get Yazi to open mpeg with vlc? VLC is the default app everywhere else, I use Fedora40 / KDE ...BTW. Yazi uses mpv by default, which does work. Yazi shows previews of of all media types (after a bunch of requirement installs) and all files seem to open in the proper app except mp4, mp3, mov etc. Thanks, Joe

[@gamerboy4566]

zellij has issues with kittens. For example, if I try 'kittens themes' in zellij, I am stuck.

[@NormalNvim]

Foot terminal is objectively the best performing terminal for the case of use of working with VIM.

[@leopoId]

It's maintainer is just rude. I'll just keep using alacritty.

[@fredartchannel7508]

lol

[@Varadiio]

For others like me coming in late (using Wezterm) that might not know, see kitty github issue 2481. All I found immediately, but that's enough for me to avoid it. (the issue, but especially the response, that I interpret as hostility toward any other viewpoint) There are bound to be more.

[@alanxoc3]

I used alacritty & kitty before. But I'm using foot now since I'm on wayland... And I'm loving it.

[@nichohells]

After 2 years or use, I replaced Alacritty with Gnome's Terminal because why not

[@Beb0]

could this also render pdf previews?

[@vaisakh_km]

Yes, yazi supports it.., in fact, we can replace full pdf viewer with it There is even a full chromium fork tht runs in kitty with it's graphical protocol

[@Beb0]

@@vaisakh_km wow that is great! Could be nice for comlete in-terminal latex setup :D might try to set that up later, thanks

[@vaisakh_km]

@@Beb0 infact XD i build latex preview for neovim myself (google hologram-math-preview) though i haven't touched it in a year, i will rewrite it later

[@DariusPaveliu]

On my Mac kitty runs really slow when it opens up with the shortcut I made in skhd, however on my Arch Linux system (I use arch btw) it works really great in sway. Other than that I've basically had a better experience overall with kitty.

[@lukeh9897]

Once I figured out how to add kitty compatibility within ssh I am happy with it if the target machine doesn’t have kitty or its files you can’t use backspace and other functions while ssh connected into it but there is documentation on how to fix the issue thank god 😊

[@prakash.vishwakarma]

06:05 video preview also 🎉

[@fermelo100]

Yazi has a catpuccin theme also, so it all looks just purrfect

[@pritorchannel3698]

If it uses NVIDIA GPU on my laptop, it affects battery life, isn’t it?

[@the_schreiber]

Are you aware of the fact that image rendering doesn't work inside multiplexers like tmux or zellij?

[@Babbili]

i'm just using Gnome terminal, it's also GPU accelerated, happy with it

[@riufq]

Can you gave me the intro song name?

[@KK-4ever]

personally I felt kitty to be slower than alacritty. right click copy paste(putty like) is sluggish on kitty while alacritty does that with ease and faster.

[@typecraft_dev]

Interesting! I haven’t noticed any slow downs. I’ll keep my eyes open