Office suites have changed a lot since the first ones landed on desktops decades ago. What began as basic tools for typing letters and totaling numbers has turned into sprawling software loaded with templates, cloud sync, and now, AI.
It's 2026, and that last part has split the office suite market into two camps.
Microsoft has leaned into pushing AI everywhere, with Copilot showing up across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint whether you want it there or not. Others have gone the calmer route, building AI in as something you can turn on, not something forced.
GenOffice is a new offering from MainFunc.ai that strongly focuses on AI, putting it in the first camp, featuring a range of editors that one might expect from a modern office suite.
GenOffice: A quick look
Built by a single developer equipped with $10,000 worth of tokens (for AI), GenOffice bundles four editors, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and PDF, into one Electron-based desktop app.
For .docx work, Docs lets you draft a section, restyle a paragraph, or rewrite it for a different reader from a simple prompt, with the AI working directly inside the document rather than a side panel.
Sheets, for .xlsx files, runs on Univer, an open source spreadsheet engine, paired with an in-house Rust sidecar for reading and writing files.
Presentations run through Slides, which builds .pptx decks from a single prompt, picking a layout, writing the copy, and dropping in data cards as needed.
Rounding out the office suite is PDF, built on the open source pdf.js and pdf-lib libraries, letting you read long documents and ask questions about specific passages without you needing to switch between apps.
It's quite obvious that AI runs through every one of these editors. All of that is made possible via Genspark's Super Agent, which is treated as a core part of the app rather than a chat window tacked on the side.
Opening, editing, and saving files costs nothing, but AI features draw from Genspark's credit system, tying them to an account rather than a local model.
That matters, because GenOffice doesn't appear to have its own privacy policy. AI features run through Genspark's service, so anything you send them falls under Genspark's terms and privacy policy instead.
That policy states text fed to the AI features gets passed to third-party providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and ElevenLabs, and that no API key is stored on your device.
Currently, GenOffice is available only for Windows (x64) and macOS on Apple Silicon. Intel Macs are not supported, and as you've probably guessed, neither is Linux.
Where's the Linux build?
I did find an open issue (very likely AI-generated) that mentions a native Linux build, filed by a community member. It explains how shipping GenOffice for Linux isn't as simple as it sounds.
As of writing, there was no reply from the lead developer of GenOffice, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a Linux build anytime soon.
If you still want to try GenOffice, you can grab installers for Windows and macOS from the official website or go through the source code on GitHub to see if you can get a Linux build running yourself.
Greg Kroah-Hartman's "clanker" branch started as his own experiment, where an AI-assisted fuzzing tool turned up real bugs in the ksmbd and SMB code. These days, he isn't the only one using it, as other contributors have started sending in patches of their own, tagged the same way.
So when he posted a new AI policy a few days ago, restricting use of AI, it wasn't him turning against a tool he's comfortable with. It was a restriction that applied to one part of the kernel, the one place he doesn't want AI anywhere near the code.
A new rule
In a post to the linux-staging mailing list, GKH said he's now proactively rejecting LLM-generated patches for drivers/staging, pointing to an "onslaught" of them showing up lately.
His reasoning comes down to what staging is actually for. The subsystem exists primarily as a training ground, full of relatively simple cleanups and API changes that let newcomers learn the submission process.
The project already skips "fix all the coding style issues" patches generated by automated tools because clearing out that mess would eliminate the reason staging exists. GKH argues an LLM doing the same cleanup work defeats its purpose while calling out wannabe tricksters by saying that:
And yes, it is VERY obvious when people submit LLM-generated patches, so don't think that just not disclosing the use of them will allow you to "get away" with anything here. The goal is for people to be able to learn, not to try to "trick" a maintainer. If anyone is determined to have deliberately "tricked" us, well, consider this your warning ahead of time...
There's an exception, a strict one that too. A genuine security fix found by an LLM can still be submitted, but only if the submitter has tested it on the actual hardware the driver targets and can convincingly explain how testing was carried out.
A line drawn while Linus makes peace
This move lands right as Linus Torvalds is coming around on AI. He's spent years shifting his stance, and in a recent mailing list post he made it clear to critics that Linux "is not one of those anti-AI projects," telling them to fork the project or walk away if they disagreed.
GKH's approach to drivers/staging fits inside the AI Coding Assistants policy, where he isn't undoing what Linus signed off on but rather focusing on a narrower scope.
He is treating this subsystem as a gym, one where developers are supposed to show up and lift the weights themselves, not have an AI do the reps and hand them the result.
That's the line GKH has drawn. AI can be used to carry out work elsewhere in the kernel, but in a subsystem built for people still learning, he'd rather they build it the hard way first.
💬 What do you think of GKH's decision? Will it help newcomers?
Rhythmbox is one of those applications that you will find lurking on a GNOME-equipped desktop. If you are someone who has fully moved on to streaming music/podcasts online, then it doesn't have much purpose for you.
Even with the rise of streaming, many people do prefer hosting media locally, and that is partly why the GStreamer-powered music player refuses to die.
The GNOME project just pushed out Rhythmbox 3.5.0, the newest release in about nine months. The last one, 3.4.9, mostly patched up plugin loading and swapped in a new playback backend. This time around, the changes are more visible.
The new bits
Buried in the changelog is a fix for the year 2038 problem, the one where systems counting time as a 32-bit number run out of room and start thinking it's 1901 again. Rhythmbox has swapped the deprecated GTime type for time_t to stay ahead of it.
Then there's the podcasts page, which has gotten the most visible upgrade in this release.
Episode lists now mark which ones you have already played; notifications for updates and downloads have been reworked; and a new plugin allows you to sync your feeds and episodes through the gPodder.net API.
Lyrics support has also been expanded, where Rhythmbox can now pull lyrics from lrclib.net, read them from sidecar .lrc files sitting next to your audio, and grab lyrics embedded directly inside Ogg Vorbis, Opus, and FLAC files, using a tag that GStreamer recently added.
We round out this release with a couple of smaller fixes that are worth knowing.
The new playback backend, introduced back in 3.4.9 to replace the old crossfading system, is now switched on by default, and a bug that broke playback entirely whenever the crossfade duration was set to zero has been fixed.
The music player also dropped its old appdata.xml file in favor of metainfo.xml, bringing it in line with other GNOME projects.
Download this release
While it doesn't look like much on paper, Rhythmbox 3.5.0 manages to introduce some important quality-of-life upgrades that will go a long way in keeping the experience clean and the music player relevant.
Seeing that it just landed, most distributions haven't caught up yet. If you want to install it quickly, there's an unofficial Flatpak on Flathub.
But building it from source is the recommended way. The repo has all the required instructions and files for you to get it installed on your computer. If that's too much of an ask, then you could just wait for your distro's repositories to catch up with the new release.
Every platform wants to decide what they think you should read. RSS feed is the resistance. You have a list of your own favorite websites that you trust (like It's FOSS), you add these sources in the feed reader and you get to see all the newly published articles from the sources you want.
There are several feed readers for Linux desktop. Even email clients allow you to read from RSS feeds.
But they are confined with a single machine. Since self-hosting is increasingly (and rightly) being popular these days, you can try self-hosting feed readers in your homelab. This should allow you to access your feeds on all the compatible devices on the home network.
And if you want to go the self hosting way, I have a bunch of suggestions for you to explore.
For this list, I looked at how easy each tool is to actually self-host with Docker, whether it can be used with mobile apps (through the Fever or Google Reader API), whether it can generate a feed for a site that doesn't provide an RSS feed on its own, and whether there's a real hosted option if you'd rather not run the server yourself and yet pay for an open source software service.
1. Yarr
Yarr (short for "yet another rss reader") is a single Go binary with an embedded SQLite database. No separate database server, no multi-container setup, just one file you run.
You can run it as a desktop app with a system tray icon on Linux (and Windows and macOS), or point the same binary at a server and use it headlessly over the browser. It picked up Fever API support a while back, so it now works with Fever-compatible mobile clients like Reeder and Unread, something it didn't have for most of its life.
It's built for single person use. There's no multi-user support and OPML handling is basic compared to FreshRSS or Miniflux, so double check your import works before you commit to it.
Yarr is open source under the MIT license and self-hosted only. There's no official paid hosting.
💡
Use it if you want a dead-simple, single-user reader with nothing to maintain but one binary.
2. Fusion
Fusion is a newer, lightweight reader built with Go and TypeScript. It's pretty much like Yarr.
It ships as a single binary with SQLite, has a proper PWA you can add to your phone's home screen, and supports the Fever API for third-party clients like Reeder, Unread, and FeedMe.
The official Docker image is here, and there's a docker-compose example in the README if you want to get it running fast. It deliberately skips AI features, which the project states outright as a design choice rather than an oversight.
There's no official first-party hosted version yet, though the community has put together one-click templates for Fly.io and Railway if you don't want to manage a server yourself. It is also available on PikaPods.
💡
Use it if you want something built on a modern stack with zero AI clutter bolted on.
3. CommaFeed
CommaFeed is a Java and React reader built to feel like the old Google Reader. I am not sure if that's a positive thing or not.
It supports the Fever API and push notifications for new articles, plus a browser extension for quick access. The official Docker image is on Docker Hub, and native binaries are also published if you'd rather skip containers. OPML import and export both work as expected.
If you don't want to host it yourself, there's a free public instance at commafeed.com funded by donations, or you can use PikaPods for one-click hosting starting around $1 a month with a $5 welcome credit. PikaPods shares 20% of that revenue back to the CommaFeed project.
💡
Use it if you want the feel of old Google Reader without FreshRSS's plugin and theme sprawl.
4. Stringer
Stringer bills itself as a self-hosted, "anti-social" RSS reader, meaning no sharing features, no social layer, just a clean list of articles.
It implements a Fever API clone, so it does work with Fever-compatible mobile apps, even though its client ecosystem is smaller and less talked about than Miniflux's or FreshRSS's.
Docker is the common way to deploy it, going back to the original mdswanson/stringer image and continuing under the current stringer-rss organization on GitHub. Feed import has historically been a little clunky, closer to adding one URL at a time than a smooth bulk OPML migration, so test that step before you commit your existing subscriptions.
Stringer is open source under the MIT license and self-hosted only, with no official paid hosting.
💡
Use it if you want a minimal reader with zero social features baked in.
5. Miniflux
Miniflux is the reader for people who just want to read their feeds and nothing else. It's deliberately opinionated about staying small, and plain looking. You can understand why there is a 'mini' in its name.
It's a single Go binary that only works with PostgreSQL, no MySQL or SQLite option here. It supports both the Fever and Google Reader APIs, so it plugs into most mobile RSS clients without a dedicated app of its own.
Docker images are published to Docker Hub, GHCR, and Quay with ARM and RISC-V support, alongside Debian and RPM packages if you'd rather skip containers entirely. OPML import and export both work, including URL-based imports.
For saving articles, Miniflux integrates with more than 25 third-party services including Wallabag, Pinboard, Instapaper, and Linkding, and it can auto-send bookmarked entries to whichever one you use.
If you don't want to run it yourself, the official hosted version costs $15 a year with a 15-day free trial, and it runs the exact same open-source code as the self-hosted version.
💡
Use it if you want the smallest possible footprint and don't mind a plain interface. Third-party integration is definitely a plus.
6. FreshRSS
FreshRSS is the other half of the decision everyone ends up making. Where Miniflux stays deliberately small, FreshRSS goes the other way: multi-user, extension-friendly, and closer to a full Feedly replacement.
It supports SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, so you can start tiny and grow into a bigger database later without switching tools.
It's multi-user, with an anonymous read-only mode if you want to share a public instance. Thanks to WebSub, it can receive instant push updates from compatible sources instead of waiting on a polling interval.
It also has built-in web scraping, so it can generate feeds for sites that don't publish RSS at all, no separate bridge tool required for basic cases.
Official Docker image is available for easy deployment. Extensions and themes fill in most of the gaps in the default interface.
💡
Use it if you want a full-featured, multi-user reader.
7. Tiny Tiny RSS
Tiny Tiny RSS has been around since 2005. In 2025, the original developer quit the project and a long-time contributor forked the project to GitHub the same month and has kept development going since.
Its plugin system exposes Fever, FreshRSS, and Google Reader compatible APIs for other mobile clients. Docker is the recommended install path, though it seems a bit heavier, more multi-container setup than Miniflux or FreshRSS.
OPML import and export both work, and its plugin ecosystem covers full-content scraping similar to a built-in readability tool.
💡
Use it if you want a deep, plugin-driven reader and don't mind a heavier Docker setup.
8. NewsBlur
NewsBlur is both a hosted SaaS product and a fully self-hostable open-source reader.
It has native apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Mac, and it syncs with third-party clients like Reeder and NetNewsWire too. OPML import pulls in feeds and folders from Google Reader, Feedly, or Inoreader exports.
Its standout feature is "Web Feeds," which can follow a website for updates even if it has no RSS feed at all, by watching the page for changes instead of relying on a bridge tool (mentioned later).
It also supports saved stories with an "intelligence" training system that learns what you want to see more or less of. There are a few more AI features here to explore.
Self-hosting is the heaviest lift on this list. The stack includes PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch, run through make nb with Docker Compose. All this realistically needs a few gigs of RAM to run comfortably.
The hosted version has a free tier limited to 64 sites, with Premium at $36 a year (a 30-day free trial) unlocking unlimited feeds, full-text search, and notifications.
💡
Use it if you want to try the hosted version first and keep self-hosting as an option later, not the other way around. AI features are also a decisive criteria.
9. Feedbin
Feedbin has one of the more polished reading experiences on this list but you should know that the maintainer doesn't recommend self-hosting it, even though you can.
Feedbin's own documentation says its goal is to be a great web-based service, and that this is "at odds with being a great self-hosted RSS reader."
It doesn't recommend running it in production unless you have real time to configure it, and instead points people toward community Docker projects like feedbin-docker if they want to try anyway.
That's a starkly different stance from Miniflux or FreshRSS, which are built with self-hosting as the primary use case.
If you do use it, the syncing story is strong. It works with Reeder, NetNewsWire, Unread, and ReadKit through its API, and it turns newsletters into feeds by giving you a unique subscription email address. It also does full-content extraction for partial feeds and supports podcast playback with resume.
The hosted version costs $7 a month or $70 a year, with a 30-day free trial.
💡
Use it if you want Feedbin's reading experience and are fine paying for the hosted version or not afraid of self-hosting it despite the warning from the developer.
10. Glance
Glance is the odd one out to close on. It's not an RSS reader, it's a self-hosted dashboard that happens to fetch RSS feed from websites alongside Reddit, YouTube, weather, and server stats. Remember Google homepage from twenty years ago?
If you've ever wanted your feeds sitting on the same page as your homelab status and the weather instead of in their own dedicated app, this is that.
Configuration is a single YAML file rather than anything OPML-based, so backing it up is just copying that file. There is an official docker image and it also ships as a single binary under 20MB for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD.
It's picked up a lot of attention fast, with more than 36,000 GitHub stars and still climbing. It's not going to replace a dedicated reader if you follow hundreds of feeds seriously, but as a "everything I check every morning" page, it's difficult to be ignored.
💡
Use it if you want your RSS feeds sitting on the same page as the rest of your homelab, not in a separate app.
Bonus: RSS-feed generator apps
What I discussed so far are the self-hostable RSS feed readers. There are a couple of additional tools that help you generate or find RSS feeds.
For example, RSS-Bridge is a companion tool that generates RSS and Atom feeds for sites that don't publish one, and it's meant to sit in front of whichever reader from this list you actually pick.
Similarly, RSSHub is the bigger sibling to RSS-Bridge, another feed generator rather than a reader, built on Node and TypeScript with a much larger route library.
Easily Start Your Homelab with ZimaBoard 2
If you want to start your own homelab but not sure if you can manage all the technical things, try ZimaBoard. Zima devices come with ZimaOS, a very friendly operating system that easily allow deploying containerized self-hostable apps. This is how I started my homelab journey.
So, which self-hosted RSS reader should you actually use?
I have not included some older, once-popular tools like Winds, Leed, FeedHQ etc in this list because they're no longer actively maintained.
As for what to actually run: if you want the smallest possible footprint, go with Miniflux. If you want more features and don't mind a bit more setup, FreshRSS is the safer multi-user pick. If your want all things at a glance, go with Glance. NewsBlur is a good option if you don't mind paying.
But at the end, the decision is totally yours. You can go through individual projects, see their features, try deploying them on your own and make a decision accordingly.
What are you using to read your feeds these days? Let me know in the comments, and if you've found something newer than what's on this list, I'd love to hear about it.
The lone developer behind GNOME Boxes, Felipe Borges, has shown off a complete rewrite of the app as a Flatpak-only beta, featuring a modern interface foundation.
Balancing his day job at Red Hat and his usual GNOME Settings maintenance duties, Felipe says that he has been working on this by himself for the past two years, talking about his efforts at community events.
The first design call was going Flatpak-only. Boxes is a front end for libvirt and QEMU, so a lot of its behavior depends on what the host distro ships. Maintaining separate code paths for every distro isn't realistic for a single maintainer, so the new build bundles the entire virtualization stack itself instead of leaning on the host.
The second call is the one you will notice first. Boxes has moved to GTK4 and Libadwaita, dropping the old GTK3-based SPICE widget for a new display widget called Libmks. This is where the dated visual style finally goes away.
The third one was to fix Windows 11, where the rewritten Boxes can now successfully install it without requiring any manual workarounds or other kind of sorcery since it configures Secure Boot and a virtual TPM device on its own.
Moreover, a new VSOCK device gets around Flatpak sandboxing limits and lets you SSH straight into a guest, as long as it runs systemd v256 or newer. Early port forwarding support is also in, currently covering SSH and HTTP.
What's different?
Notice the difference? Ignore the bars in the title bar on the right.
Everywhere you see in the revamped Boxes is the result of the new interface components. Despite that, the app felt familiar right from the first look. Being a regular Boxes user, I just knew where to click.
The new virtual machine (VM) creation flow backed that up beautifully. I began installing Windows 11, and Boxes just pre-filled the memory and storage values on its own and set UEFI as the preferred boot method without me touching anything.
The installation itself went through without a hitch, but Windows then insisted on a Microsoft account before letting me anywhere near the desktop, so that's where I had to stop.
Still, the three-dot menu in the top-right of the VM window gave me plenty to work with before that point. I could take screenshots, send key combinations, and open a full Properties page.
None of it looks like what current Boxes offers today, btw. 🤓
The video above walks through that new Properties dialog. What used to be part of a single window with a header menu is now a dialog with a sidebar that houses seven sections.
General, Resources, Network, Devices, Snapshots, Logs, and Configuration.
Resources lets you adjust RAM and resize storage; Devices handles the boot order and removable media; Logs shows the actual commands Boxes is running under the hood; and Configuration hands over the raw Libvirt Domain XML to edit directly.
Similarly, the Network page lets you forward ports from the host into the VM, with toggles for SSH and HTTP. The Snapshots page lets you capture the VM's exact state at a point in time, then revert to it or delete it later.
Compare that to what current Boxes offers (shown above). The classic Properties window packs Resources, Devices & Shares, and Snapshots into just three tabs that are functional but very clunky.
Though there was a major snafu. The Windows 11 VM crashed soon after I created that snapshot. I couldn't pin down the exact cause, though me ejecting the ISO around the same time is a likely culprit.
Before all this, I had also tried installing EndeavourOS but kept running into an unsupported configuration error no matter what I tried. Switching the OS type between Generic Linux and Arch Linux and the firmware between UEFI and Legacy BIOS, none of it fixed the issue.
A couple of smaller things changed too. Getting out of a VM window now takes Super+Escape instead of the Ctrl+Alt combo current Boxes uses. There's also no dedicated fullscreen button, and F11 doesn't do anything either.
See for yourself
If you're on Ubuntu or another Debian-based distro, getting the beta running only takes a few terminal commands. You'll need to set up Flatpak first.
Our guide covers the whole process if you don't already have it installed. Once that's done, add the GNOME Nightly repo:
This is still beta software, so back up any VMs you care about before testing it, and don't be surprised if you run into some of the rough edges mentioned above.
You can stay in sync with its development by keeping an eye on its code repository.
GNOME Shell Extensions are usually sourced from extensions.gnome.org, or "EGO" as the GNOME folks call it. Every submission on this portal is manually reviewed, and that review process has been under strain for months now.
We covered this back in December when GNOME added a rule to its EGO review guidelines rejecting AI-generated slop.
They did allow the use of AI for learning and code completion purposes, but generating the entire extension where the developer can't explain or debug it convincingly was explicitly forbidden.
Months later, and the deluge of AI slop hasn't slowed.
So last week, Javad Rahmatzadeh, the same developer behind that original rule, tried a different approach. Instead of just rejecting bad submissions after the fact, he wrote instructions aimed directly at the AI models generating them.
Making the clankers understand
Given that the review queue is still flooded with AI-generated extensions, and most of them repeat the exact same mistakes (bad practices, as he puts it), Javad's new approach skips the reject-and-explain method entirely.
Most of the guidance is about cleanup. Extensions need to remove timeouts, disconnect signals, and destroy widgets in a specific order inside destroy(). Javad also calls out AI models for adding boolean flags like _destroyed to guard against improper calls, when the instance should just be nulled out and never referenced again after destroy() runs.
Then there's the overengineering. AI models tend to wrap safe function calls in unnecessary error handling and add checks for methods that are guaranteed to exist. Javad traces this back to models trying to write code that works across several GNOME Shell versions at once, and his fix is simple.
Just target one version instead of covering every possible one.
The rest is about keeping code organized. Split logic across multiple files instead of one bloated entry point, keep related functions close together so cleanup is easy to check, and don't submit placeholder code with empty functions just to have something to show for it.
There's a separate rule aimed at the AI models themselves. Any AI-generated extension meant only for personal use has to ship with a comment saying so, telling the person not to upload it to EGO unless they actually understand the code well enough to maintain it. 👇
// Generated with AI for personal use.
// Do NOT upload to extensions.gnome.org (EGO) unless you understand JavaScript
// and can maintain this code.
Some thoughts
Clankers overwhelming open source contributors is not new news. We've seen more than enough by now to conclude that these bots will take the open source ecosystem down if not moderated with a strong hand.
What GNOME's Javad has done here is damage control. He and the other EGO reviewers have an important job. If they get inundated with AI slop that literally doesn't make sense, then that is a big loss for us, the GNOME users who install extensions to improve our desktop experience.
Kitty is a popular terminal emulator that supports many modern features. Focused on power users, it offers a wide range of customization that other terminals often lack.
For example, it includes a functional image display protocol and smooth cursor animations.
I have shown Kitty tweaking in the past, and in the regards, I would like to discuss Kittens today.
Kittens are functional units that extend the features of the Kitty terminal or work as standalone programs. They have direct access to the running Kitty instance.
Kitty comes bundled with several of these kittens, written in Go, which we will explore in detail later. You even have the option to create your own custom Kittens in Python, if you find a specific need that hasn't been solved yet.
Some Cool Default Kittens
🚧
In my opinion, it is important to remember that many kittens are Kitty terminal exclusive. Before you build muscle memory around it, make sure you aren't planning to switch to a different terminal emulator anytime soon.
Themes
Let's start with the most popular tool first. If you use Kitty daily, you have likely come across this utility at some point.
Themes is a kitten that allows you to change your terminal color scheme interactively without editing any configuration files. Kitty includes a wide variety of preset themes that you can access by running a simple command:
kitten themes
Apply themes in Kitty
In the overlay window, you can easily scroll through both dark and light themes to see a live preview. Once you find one you like, just press Enter and follow the prompts to set it as your preferred theme.
💡
Latest versions of Kitty now support automatic theme changes based on your system's dark and light mode. This is a very convenient feature if you want your terminal to stay in sync with your global OS settings.
In my opinion, this is a feature I really miss when using Ghostty. While Ghostty has a similar interface, you still have to manually edit your configuration file to apply the theme name after you pick one.
Fonts
If you have found a new font and want to set it as your terminal choice, this kitten has you covered. You can launch the interactive interface directly in your terminal using a simple command:
kitten choose-fonts
Choose Fonts
This tool allows you to perform several actions within a single interface. You can select new fonts, preview how they look, and even fine-tune specific font faces.
The utility makes it much easier to manage your typography without guessing how a font will appear in your workspace. It handles the complex parts of the setup so you can focus on finding the perfect look.
Choose files
Choose files is a comprehensive file picker designed for Kitty and other GUI applications on your system. It functions similarly to fzf but is specifically optimized for finding and managing files.
Choose Files
This tool offers several powerful features, including the ability to select multiple files at once. It intelligently respects .gitignore rules in your git directories to keep your workflow clean.
To use it, run:
kitten choose-files
You can also select non-existent files to trigger a "save file" option or choose entire directories. In my opinion, this file picker will completely change the way you interact with files in your terminal.
Quick access terminal
If you remember Yakuake in KDE, you are already familiar with the concept of a drop down terminal for quick tasks. Kitty offers similar functionality through the Quick Access Terminal Kitten.
You can launch this feature at any time using a simple command in your terminal:
kitten quick-access-terminal
0:00
/0:19
Quick Access Terminal
If you want to personalize the experience, you can customize the tool using a specific configuration file. Simply create or edit quick-access-terminal.conf inside your ~/.config/kitty/ directory to adjust its behavior.
GPU accelerated dock panel
The Panel kitten is something truly special. It creates a desktop panel for you that functions much like i3bar.
0:00
/0:13
Kitten Panel
While some might feel this is a bit overpowered for a terminal application, the panel is quite interesting for minimal use cases. It even allows you to set tools like btop as your actual desktop wallpaper.
In my opinion, this is an incredible feature for anyone who loves a unique workspace. You heard that right, and here is a great example of how it looks in action.
A diff tool
The diff kitten is an excellent tool available directly within Kitty. It offers several advanced features like side-by-side comparisons, syntax highlighting, and even image diffs or recursive directory comparisons.
To use it, you simply pass the file names as shown in the command below:
kitten diff file1 file2
Diff Files
Other interesting Kittens
I use the terminal daily for standard update tasks and editing text files. If you are deeply involved in terminal usage, there are many kittens available for very niche use cases.
For example, the Broadcast kitten allows you to type text simultaneously across multiple Kitty windows. There are also SSH related kittens designed for editing files and even a specialized SSH supported clipboard.
In my opinion, these specific tools are essential for power users who manage remote servers regularly. Feel free to experiment with these options to make your terminal life significantly more productive.
Assign keybindings/alias for quick access
All these kittens can be bound to keyboard shortcuts or aliases so you don't have to manually run the command every time. This makes your workflow much faster by giving you instant access to your favorite actions.
I will show you how I mapped the kittens in my own configuration file. It is a straightforward process that keeps everything organized and easy to access.
The most important step is to make sure your chosen keys are uniquely assigned. You want to avoid any conflicts with existing terminal options or system-wide shortcuts.
In the below code, I mapped the F1 key to get the file chooser kitten in multiple file select mode.
map f1 kitten choose-files --mode=files
Adding the following line to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc) to add an alias to the diff tool:
alias d="kitten diff"
Now, you can run:
d file1 file2
To get the difference between them.
Another example, let's map the F2 key to get a quick access terminal:
map f2 kitten quick-access-terminal
Wrapping up
So, we have seen how kittens can improve your terminal productivity. While most of these have separate alternatives like fzf for file selection or difftastic for diffs, integrating them directly into your terminal with a clean UI is commendable.
Kitty also offers a desktop-ui kitten that lets you integrate the file picker into all your GUI apps. Since this can cause issues with some applications and is something I use rarely, it remains out of scope for this guide.
In my opinion, the seamless integration of these tools makes Kitty feel much more cohesive than a standard terminal emulator.
Did you find any of these kittens useful enough to replace your existing tools?
